Separation Anxiety...

I just finished reading a book called Good News About Sex and Marriage: Answers to Your Honest Questions About Catholic Teaching by Christopher West.  Mine was not the revised edition the link goes to.

As a convert this book was helpful.  It went into greater depth on many subjects than hubby could, and it answered my questions - some of which I didn't even know I had.  More than that, the book solidified my theory that there is a great divide between society and Christian morals.  I know that's like pointing to the sky and saying, "look! It's blue!" but the separation is more noticeable to me now.

Before I had even thought about converting, in 2006(ish), I was living with my first boyfriend.  I had been neglecting my religious life except to attend a church camp during high school ('06 was my graduation year) but I still held firm to waiting until marriage...until pushover me happened.  I was devastated, and I should have known right then and there to leave and put myself back together, but the stubborn me decided I could make things right if only I married this boy.  I was 18, and being 18 I was pretty dumb.  Maybe not dumb, but certainly clueless. 
At any rate, I would come across the Christian teaching of sex and marriage in various ways and I would willfully ignore it.  I chose not to acknowledge it because it made me uncomfortable.  I wouldn't even take the time to really think about why it made me uncomfortable, I'd just forget about it and go about my merry way.  Because if I didn't pretend it didn't exist (via making fun of it with all of my other liberal friends) I had to look my mistake square in the eyes and completely reorder my life.  I knew I was wrong, and I knew I wasn't happy, but I wasn't willing to face the amount of change that needed to happen to make things right.  It wasn't until I was completely miserable that I decided to make a change, but even then it was a pathetic change, and I didn't learn anything. 
I didn't learn anything because according to society I had nothing to learn, I just had to find myself a better boy.
So I went on toeing around the Christian teaching, making absurd excuses like, "everybody else does it," to bandage the wound I had so covertly inflicted upon myself.  I say covertly because I didn't even realize what I was doing when it happened, all I knew was that I was hurting.  I spent a few years playing the blame game and pointing fingers to things that had nothing to do with my pain.  But it always came back, and each time it was a little more acute.  I was bandaging the wound, but not cleaning it so that it could truly heal.

Then I met my husband.

We had a lot of conversations while riding around the city in his car.  A very large portion of them was me posing theoretical situations to him regarding Christian teaching.  Eventually I decided to go to midnight mass, and then I made the commitment to convert.  It took me a long time to level with my past decisions, and I still haven't found peace from them, but I'm getting there: it's hard to say, "yeah, I messed up," instead of making excuses.

But now I understand the way things are meant to be.  I understand that society has degraded and is degrading sex in such a way that is laying the foundation for social turmoil.  The separation that has occurred regarding sexuality is quietly destructive.  Women complain that they can't find a decent man, but they don't understand that a huge part of the reason for this is because of what society is teaching.  A lot of people seem to miss the real importance of the contraceptive debate for this reason.  More is at stake here than people realize, and those that don't see are (more often than not) blinded by the intentional divorce of sex and children.

Huffery-snuffery Heathen Chinese.

I have come to the conclusion that there is a language barrier present between pro-life and pro-choice people.  I think that this is intentional: when someone says that abortion is killing babies - which when you come right down to it, that's what it actually is - someone else is very quick to respond that abortion is, in fact, only killing fetuses.  Why?  Because if abortion kills fetuses rather than babies it's okay.  It's a form of denial that a lot of people (including myself) sort of cling to; if you use a different word, somehow the act has become less brutal.

I'm not going to bother explaining exactly how an abortion works.  Mainly because I don't particularly feel like upsetting myself right this second.  Lets just say that it makes calling our society "civilized" a stretch.

To say that you are pro-choice because a woman shouldn't have to experience the "negative" consequences of her actions (barring incest and rape, as those are not the fault of the woman) is to say that murder is an acceptable response to the normal product of sex.
Maybe that was harsh, but I can't think of a better way to phrase it.

Here is where the language barrier springs up again: sex.
Society has taken sex and removed children from it.  What was largely stressed during sex ed when I was in school was to wear protection to avoid sexually transmitted infections.  There wasn't much about children or abstinence.  Sure, it was mentioned, but with the assumption that we were going to engage in sexual activity anyway so we should be taught how to do it safely.  There's nothing wrong with that because people do need that information, however, I think it would benefit everyone involved if it was stressed that the main byproduct of being sexually active is the chance of creating life.
We have created a dichotomy where there should be unison.

So when you say to someone who is pro-choice that instead of abortion being legal people should be more responsible with their bodies the point is missed.  Not only is it not very fun to be more responsible with your body, it's somehow become an attack on women's rights.  Because we have stripped the meaning from sex.  Now, I'm not saying that sex is limited to the production of children.  Far from it; sex is a wonderful bonding experience, not to mention it's lots of fun.  What I am saying is the idea of sexual responsibility is lost because we've removed part of the meaning of sex.

I suppose another thing this issue broaches is our society's view (fear) of childbirth and being pregnant in general.  Maybe not society as a whole but media for sure, which I think says something about society.
If birth was not demonized the way mainstream media tends to demonize it, maybe being pregnant wouldn't seem so terrible as to warrant killing the growing baby.  But it's not viewed as killing the growing baby because most women are not informed about exactly how a baby grows.  Abortion terminology is very clinical and removed; I would argue intentionally.  We don't want to know the truth.

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Here's a point to ponder, though: if the pro-choice slogan is, "my body, my choice" are all pro-choice people then against circumcision or piercing a baby girl's ears?
If the answer to that question is "no," I wonder if they're aware of exactly how much doublethink is happening in their mind.

Image found here.

"Your Body is Incapable."

So I've been thinking (uh-oh).  All of this reading about pregnancy, babies, birth, and a woman's right to choose (elective cesarean) sort of makes me wonder where the feminist movement stands on this issue.  How do women like Erica Jong feel about birth?  I'd venture a guess and say she's all for medicated birth and whatnot (pain/suffering is bad and should be avoided at all costs).  But she doesn't make up the entirety of the feminist movement.  As this article states, there are women on both sides of the fence.

Because of my difference of opinion with Erica Jong (and my heated response to her article) I've lost a progressive friend, so having a conversation about this with someone who is on that particular side of the fence with other things is a little less feasible for me.  I don't have a lot of friends who seem so decidedly on one side or the other, and talking about this to someone who is undecided isn't helpful in figuring out how one side thinks of something.
The questions this raises are a whole other bag of tricks.

I wouldn't call myself regressive per se, but some of the staunchly progressive ideas out there raise more concern in me than hope.  It is my opinion that the mechanization of birth is terrible in several ways.  Yes, hospital technology and medicine in general are great, for those who need it.  But the obstetric model of care - that a woman's body is inherently flawed and cannot handle childbirth (something it was designed to do) without the aide of technology - is something I have issues with.  This makes me think of a certain gentleman's opinion that Catholicism taught the very thing obstetrics teaches to it's practitioners.  How, then, do you explain a backwards view of women seeming to be present in our forward-moving medical society?
I suggest that if we were as progressive as pro-choice people want, we would not have women writing about how home birth is something only narcissistic power-hungry women do - because everyone knows that medicine is God and there is no way that an informed woman can safely birth her baby without obstetric intervention (pitocin, epidural, etc).
What I would love to know is how pro-choice people feel about women having the right to choose where they have children.  Given that pro-choice is obliviously medical, I'd wager that they are against assisted home birth, free-standing birth centers and midwifery in general.  But I could be wrong.

As a small side note, the woman behind the above link (Skeptical OB) is getting her information from somewhere that is completely different from everything I've read, and studies I have looked at for myself (also what I've read about the history of obstetrics taking over birthing).  I haven't found any citations on her entries, but I also haven't read a terribly large amount of her blog.  It gets tiring to be told over and over that I need technological intervention, that I cannot survive without it, and that attempting to do so (even if I am informed) makes me nothing short of an idiot.  These aren't her exact words, but the tone I get from her articles gives me that impression.  It's all very fear-based, and I don't trust fear-based information.

So those are my musings, regurgitated because I sat down to stare at the blank new entry box and wondered for a good amount of time what in the world I was going to write about.

I do want to say that I am not against hospital birth.  I am against pressuring mothers into procedures they do not need (episiotomy) for the sake of obstetric convenience.
Hospital birth is a great thing for those mothers who do need it.

A Shift in the Tide.

On being pregnant:

I used to say things like, "by the time I'm pregnant, birth will be pain-free!"  I was definitely a fan of medicine's version of childbirth.  But that was before I really gave it any thought, or looked into it at all.
Medicine is fantastic for the women who really need it; women are saved pretty regularly by hospital staff for various reasons.  However, the interventions these women need are not the interventions all women need.  There should not be a standard of care where you receive the one thing that has been proven to work regardless of your actually needing it.
Hey, hospitals need to cover their ass.  They could get sued.

I digress.

My original intent is to write about what I thought before and what I think now, because what you think before you live something is not necessarily what you think after or during.
As with my opinion on abortion, my opinion of birth is much different now.
I believe that birth can (and should) be a positive experience for mother and baby.  There are risks to the birth I am choosing to try to have, but there are also risks in choosing a hospital birth.  Birth is not risk free, no matter what you choose.
I will be the first to admit that birth terrifies me somewhat.  I think it's mostly the unknown that scares me.  Every birth is different, someone's story about when they gave birth will be different than what I have to say, so the question remains: what will it be like?  I am intimidated by not knowing what to expect (other than pain).  I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in feeling this way among first-time mothers, which is why hospital birth is so appealing to women - there's a certain sense of safety associated with being in a hospital at a time of potential medical crisis.  And yes, there are benefits to being in a hospital if something does go wrong.

People tend to assume that I have just up and decided to have my baby at home.  With this assumption comes the inevitable, "don't you know that birth is dangerous!?"
Yes, I do know this.  I have made this decision based on the information I have acquired and I really believe it to be the best choice for me.  It is by no means the best choice for everyone, and I have neither said this nor meant to imply it.  It is, I believe, the best choice for me.
In talking to these same people I often find that they base their opinions on an article they read in a magazine, or some form of media coverage of something.  And they are adamant that what they think is the only right way to think.
Some of them have never had children.
Some of them will never have children.
These two latter groups I try to take in stride, as they are usually the most vehement backers of hospital birth.  There is nothing to be done but smile and nod at them, because they will never listen to why I made this decision (and continue to research it).  They only want to tell me how stupid and selfish I am for making it.  One blogger (who happens to be an O.B.) called the home birth "movement" narcissistic.  The people I talk to in person are generally of a similar mindset.
As I said earlier: there is no middle ground.

The above is what bothers me most.  I shall call it "the great divide."  People must have their opinions and your opinion is only okay if it matches their own.  Never-mind being open minded about things, or at the very least receptive.
I understand why people are shocked when I say I'm going to try to have my baby at home.  I know that it's not how the majority would do it.  And I know there is a lot of media available against it.  And of course I know the risks involved with it (they are not as terrible as one is led to believe, but they are still present).  I feel, sometimes, that my understanding is like banging my head against a brick wall.  It doesn't matter that I understand these things, all that matters is that I see the error in my own judgement and the terrible mistake I'm about to make.
Dealing with it is even more difficult when it's coming from people who aren't pregnant and potentially never will be.  I'm glad they are concerned for my well-being, but I would appreciate if they gave me credit for the information I've gathered.  I'm doing my best to make an educated decision, and that does include looking at the situation from all of the angles I can perceive.  So in a way these people are helping me, just not in the manner they had in mind.  Still, I'm not really a fan of being given a rather loud version of the cold shoulder.

When I speak with someone who has a different opinion I try to figure out where the opinion came from.  What information led them here?  I tend to work under the assumption that they had some sort of logical thought process behind it (which is not always the case).
I was one such person in my days of, "just give me pain killers," and my pro-choice opinions.  I now understand what I had to overlook to hold those opinions.  For me, it's a damned lot to overlook.

Being pregnant is a life-altering journey.  It certainly has changed my mind about a number of things and solidified my pro-life stance quite a bit just from what I've learned about Baby's development.  It has also opened my mind to things I'd never thought of, and would never have thought of if I was not pregnant.

I suppose what I'm driving at here is that opinions are all well and good, until you're actually living the situation you've formed your opinion about.
Experience can change a lot about a person, not the least of which being their worldview.

The Benefits of Home Birth...and such.

So, I'm still discovering new things about the different kinds of birth you can have, but here's what I've got so far:

Hospitals tend to end up in cascading interventions that usually benefit the doctor, not the mother.  They will tell you all sorts of things to manipulate you into doing what they want, and you don't know whether these things they say are true. 
When they take your baby away "to run tests" the nurses could very well just be bottle feeding him/her regardless of your consent: you don't know what's happening once your baby is removed.
I'm of the opinion that they take your baby far too quickly, and most of the time they cut the chord too soon.
As a side note: everything the OB/GYN office gives me to take home has some advertisement for chord blood banking.  This seems like an expensive bonfire to me, although I could see the possible benefits.

I don't know anything about birthing centers as of yet.

Home birth seems to be the way to go if you are low-risk.  Natural birth is ideal, regardless of location, but at home you can at least be more comfortable with your surroundings, and you won't have a bunch of medical staff pressuring you about pitosin.
Additionally, your baby is not removed immediately so you can nurse as soon as baby is ready.
Home birth also opens up options for things like lotus birth (where you don't cut/tie the chord until the placenta falls off on it's own) and water birth.
It really just seems like being at home is the best way to go, if you can.

According to The Business of Being Born America has the highest infant/mother mortality rate during childbirth of all the industrialized countries.  Why?  Because midwives didn't integrate into hospitals.  In fact, the hospitals launched an intensive smear campaign against midwives claiming the method of birth was unsafe.  In reality, it was safer than the hospital.

Yes, things do go wrong during childbirth.  But things go wrong in every day life as well.

Hubby raises a good point when I complain about all the unsolicited advice/admonishments I receive at work:
Most of these people are likely to be pro-choice.  This translates to the saying, "it's my body," so what do they care what I do with my body?

That brings me to what people have said to me.

• A friend of mine sent me a URL to a site all about how dangerous home birth is.  I appreciate the concern; I'll take it with all the stories I read/hear about hospital shenanigans.
• The first thing that was said to me was, "I gotta fatten you up!" followed a bit later by, "oh, you're pregnant you can eat crap now."
• I shouldn't be lifting anything, regardless of weight.
• I shouldn't eat/drink unpasteurized stuff, or anything raw for that matter.
• Don't touch the litter box.
•  "You painted!?  You can't be painting!"  Sure I can, I have an enormous window in the room that needed paint on a total of two walls.  It's not like I shut myself into an unventilated room and sat in there with wet paint for five hours.
• Sit down, lay down, or otherwise be inactive.
• No alcohol, even just a sip is terrible for the baby.
• Co-sleeping is dangerous.  You could suffocate/crush your baby.  Your baby could fall off the bed and die.
• Home birth is dangerous.  You could die.
• "I have so many baby clothes!  Let me know what you're having."  We're not finding out, sorry.
• Dangle your wedding band over your belly: if it goes in circles, your baby is a girl; side to side, your baby is a boy.
  I did this out of sheer amusement.  The ring did nothing, so does that mean our baby is undecided?

I think that's it.


In regards to my last post:
It's interesting to see the great divide between modern mothers and natural mothers.  There is little to no middle ground and there's no possible way of having a decent discussion about it with a lot of people.  It's an emotional topic, so people tend to react emotionally which generally shuts down rational thinking.
I see this a lot, working in the HCA corporate building.  There are a few people into living naturally, but most of them are convinced that hospital birth is the only way to go because home birth is apparently for heathens who don't value life.  I call these people hypocrites because it's very likely they're fine with abortion.

Contraceptives: a "Good" Idea...

Today I suppose I'll write about birth control.  Since it seems that everyone is writing about it (and for good reason I should say).

Having been on oral contraceptives on and off since 2006 or so, I'll start with the reasons women take them.  At least in my case.  And, to clarify, I've been off for over a year and a half now (ha, it sounds like I'm talking about some kind of addictive substance).

The largest reason that I took them was because I was involved with "progressive" douche-bags who encouraged it, and I thought it seemed like a good idea.  This is not to say every man I've dated to the point of meeting my fiance was a jerk, but a good percentage of them were (I'll touch on why I think that was later).  And I mean that in the nicest way possible; I'm not trying to say they were bad people, just misguided perhaps.
The second largest reason I took them was because I was uninformed.  I simply didn't think about it.  Yeah, when I was eighteen my doctor gave me the information packet with the pills and said, "read this," but I was eighteen; I wasn't going to read it.  At least not all of it.  The way my logic process functioned at this point in my life was as such: I read through the first quarter of the packet (just enough to read a couple of the potential side-effects) and got put-off, the side-effects were scary, so I stopped reading, but continued to take the pill.  Under what seemed to be the assumption that what I didn't know wouldn't hurt me.
This continued until I started being really serious about converting to Catholicism.
I had talked with my fiance (boyfriend at the time) about it on several occasions and that was when I really started to see what I had been blinding myself to.  It came very, very gradually, and it's still happening - to some extent - today.
A minor reason I took them was because prior to starting my periods were hell.  Debilitating cramps that made it hard to do anything but curl up and try to will the pain to pass, and I perceived my periods to be irregular (because my cycles are longer than 28 days).  It was nice to be able to predict when I was going to have my period, and while I was on them the cramps were less than half as bad, and my period was half as long.

Lessons Twelve, Thirteen, and Fourteen

Lesson Twelve
The Marks and Attributes of the Church
A. MARKS of the Church
155.  What are the chief marks of the Church?  The chief marks of the Church are four: It is one, holy, catholic or universal, and apostolic.
B. ATTRIBUTES (or Qualities) of the Church
161.  What are the chief attribute of the Church?  ...authority, infallibility, and indefectibility.  They are attributes because they are qualities perfecting the nature of the Church.
Blogger's spell check doesn't recognize indefectibility.  Apparently it's a made up word.  I find it amusing that a good portion of the results are related to the Catholic Church.  We make our own words, damnit!  (That was a joke)
166. Are all obliged to belong to the Catholic Church in order to be saved?
My instructor eased my mind about this particular statement by amending it in a way.  He stated that people who belong to other faiths can know God better than someone who belongs to Catholicism.  I can't recall exactly what he said on the subject but the point was (basically) that people could belong to the Catholic Church without realizing it.
I'm not sure how I feel about this.  It seems elitist, but I can't surmise if it truly is.  At this point I will say it is not, the logic behind the statement is sound: we should seek truth, Catholicism is true, we should be Catholic.  That's an extremely simplified version, but I think you get the idea.
What I can take away from lesson twelve is this; I have a problem with anything that hints at superiority.  In my mind, I am superior to no one and no one is superior to me.  As people we are all loved by God and to even hint that one group is more cherished feels wrong to me.  Yes, there are good people and bad people, but no one is better than anyone else.  Making better choices does not make you superior.

Lesson Thirteen
The Communion of Saints and Forgiveness of Sins
A short lesson on the connection between the blessed in heaven, the souls in purgatory, and the faithful on earth.  What we can do to help each other and to help the souls in purgatory.  It's much similar to what I talked about in my most recent post in that we help through prayer, charity, and penance.

Lesson Fourteen
The Resurrection and Life Everlasting
 This lesson covers the second coming, purgatory, hell, and heaven (in that order).

~~~

Things I used to be (and what changed my mind):

• Pro-Choice.  Watch this and you'll understand the reasoning behind my switch.  Even though my views changed before watching this, it raises some good points.
• On Birth Control:  This was a case of being uninformed.  What eighteen year old girl is going to actually read the packet full of warnings they give you with drugs?  Not me, apparently.  I made the decision to stop taking the pill some time ago.  It's just not worth it.  Besides, there are perfectly natural forms of 'birth control' out there that no one tells you about.
• Anti-Organized Religion:  What I really am is anti-bigoted religion.  All it took was to experience first hand exactly how religion is practiced right.  Attending mass daily is really a joy.  It's unfortunate that my work schedule doesn't allow for it currently.
• Pro-Sex Before Marriage: I'm still a little bit on the fence about this one.  I used to say things like, "you wouldn't buy a cow without milking it, would you?"  But sex has never been an all-encompassing thing for me.  It seems to be that society is obsessed with hyper-sexuality.  The rate of women who disapprove of having a child outside of wedlock is declining, fairly steadily. 
  However, if you really love someone, and you know - absolutely know, without a doubt - that you are going to spend the rest of your lives together, the worst that could happen is you can get pregnant.  And even then, that's not so bad right?  Particularly if you're already engaged.  I do think that you should wait until marriage to have a child, and to have sex.  But I'm not sure it's such a terrible thing if you don't. 

Lessons Six, Seven, and Eight

I was reading the paper yesterday and I came across an article about Planned Parenthood's new text program marketed to teens in which you can send them a text asking a question about sex and within 24 hours you'll get a response with an answer.  The article said the answers would encourage teens to ask a health professional after giving a brief answer, and that Planned Parenthood was not trying to usurp this job from parents.  Not that most parents teach about sex in the first place...  The point is, at the very end was a statement from the president of Denver-based Personhood USA Keith Mason:

"We're aware of it...It's just another extension of their abortion-marketing plan.  Just like restaurants use texts to give out coupons, this is their way of driving young people to Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion chain in America. "

This kind of statement is irritating in the implications.  First, it implies that Personhood is against sex education; second, that Planned Parenthood - clearly - only offers abortion as a service.
First, why is sex education bad?  Knowledge is power, so the information should be available, and taught, so that people don't make stupid mistakes.  Yes, this should be done by parents, but it is not in the majority of cases.
Second, Planned Parenthood does a lot more than abortion, and not even every clinic offers it.  I'm not condoning anything here, but some of the services they offer are good.
These kind of statements hurt the Pro-Life movement more than they help in my eyes.  It gives the impression of emotional, rather than logical, debate.  Yes, abortion is wrong, but you shouldn't go around talking crazy about it.  Speaking of which; have you ever seen someone with a "Pro-Life" bumper sticker not driving with flippant disregard for life?  Because I've nearly been killed or injured several times by someone sporting a "Pro-Life" sticker driving like a complete mad-man.  Ironic, eh?
Note: I'm talking about the bumper stickers that just say "Pro-Life" on them.  There are plenty of drivers out there with Pro-Life stickers that don't drive like crazies, but their stickers usually say stuff about adoption as an alternative, or "abortion is wrong" or something of the sort.

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Lesson Six:
Actual Sin
A. Mortal Sin
B. Venial Sin
C. Capital Sins
74.  What are the chief sources of actual sin?  The chief sources of actual sin are:  pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth...
D. Occasions of Sin
Well, this lesson is rather straightforward.  It was helpful (as was this entire book, really) in understanding the basics.  Everyone has this impression of Catholicism that is - again - less than 100% accurate; a grievance with all of the rules and the guilt the Church lays on a person daily.  I'm not sure I can speak to this one directly, having not been raised Catholic, but I haven't found an occasion in which I have felt guilty without cause to feel so.
A coworker said to me that Catholicism "messes people up" in reference to the extreme guilt the Church imposes on your life.  He used guilt about sex as an example.  His argument was that people shouldn't feel guilty about having sex because sex is natural.  To some extent he's right: sex is natural and, naturally, sex produces children.  So, to use this argument and then turn around to advocate hormonal birth control is a little hypocritical.
At any rate, I haven't found the 'extreme guilt' he was referring to yet, and I will be surprised if I manage to find it among practicing Catholics.

Lesson Seven:
The Incarnation
This lesson focuses on exactly what the title says.  It reiterates the differences between a nature and a person.
Having gone through confirmation in the U.C.C. church, this lesson was a review more than a learning experience.

Lesson Eight:
The Redemption
This was more review.

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Huzzah!  Two hundred views!  Thank you all for reading!

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Question Five:
If a new medicine were developed that would cure arthritis but cause a fatal reaction in one percent of those who took it, would you want it to be released to the public?