I’m a big fan of reading the Best of Craiglist because it is such a fascinating, hilarious and gross sampling of humanity’s highs and lows. It’s also fun trying to guess which of the posts are written sincerely and which ones are total fabrications that are purposely meant to be jaw-dropping. One such “Is this real or not?” Craigslist post a reader sent me was this one:
I am due in June. I have read a lot about how great for your health it is to eat your placenta (after all, most mammals, even vegetarians, do this). Unfortunately I don’t have a strong enough stomach to just eat it, so it was recommended to me that I dry it out in a food dehydrator, put it in a coffee grinder, and put it in capsules to take daily. Again, I just don’t have the stomach (and may not have the energy after birth to do this.) What I need is someone who is reliable…someone who has given birth or watched a birth, knows what a placenta looks/smells like/etc, who is 100% comfortable handling something like this. I have read that it can take up to 10 hours of work. Please e-mail me why you would be willing to do this and how much you would charge.
There’s something about this ad that is really beautiful (that mythical quality of ingesting the power of the placenta) and sweet (OMG, dude, after giving birth, you’re happy to eat just about ANYTHING that someone else has cooked for you). But there’s also something about it, too, that points to the growing list of things that perfect mothers are supposed to do. You can’t just squeeze the watermelon out from between your legs in a beautiful, orgasmic, fast-but-not-too-fast, doula and midwife-assisted home birth while wearing a white nightgown in a candlelit room (and that’s just the birth! Forget about actually raising the kid!). You’ve got to worry about processing the placenta into a palatable form; otherwise, you’re wasting the power of mother nature. Seriously, after living through birth, I’d had just about enough of mother nature, thankyouverymuch.
That’s why I’m wondering: does anyone actually know anyone who actually ate the placenta? Or does this exist strictly at the level of urban myth?
Tagged as:
birth,
Health,
placenta
What with the whole swine flu is-it-or-isn’t-it-a-pandemic thing, Canadians have been seeing a lot of Minister Leona Aglukkaq on the tee-vee lately. I hate to admit it, but I was surprised to find that our health minister was a woman, and that we actually had an Inuit person in cabinet (really, how did I miss this?)
As it turns out, our health minister is actually the first Inuk to become a federal cabinet minister. Prior to becoming an MP, Alukkaq was an MLA in Nunavut. She served on the Executive Council (I’m assuming this is the territorial equivalent of a provincial cabinet) as finance minister and house leader, and then health minister and minister for the status of women. All that, plus she’s a mom to an 8-month old kidlet.
I’m not the only one to have been impressed with Aglukkaq during the swine flu outbreak. She seems to be completely devoid of the bullshit air that most politicians have floating around them; rather, she seems to be a steady, to-the-point, non-ego-driven kind of person who just wants to get shit done. She’s even phoned opposition health critic Carolyn Bennett to keep her apprised of the swine flu sitch (and maybe she’ll be coordinating efforts with her brand-new American counterpart, Kathleen Sebelius). Now, that’s a little bit of an Obama-style maneuvre that I really respect.
Tagged as:
Health,
Politics,
women
Did you have sex as a teen? Well, according to a new book, that might be the reason you’re so messed up when it comes to relationships. Your brain may have been damaged!
That’s what Dr. Freda Bush and Dr. Joe McIlhaney, the authors of Hooked: New Science on How Casual Sex is Affecting Our Children, would like us to believe, according to a recent CanWest News Service story:
“When we are involved in sexual relations, the brain is actually flooded with neurochemicals that cause us to attach to each other, emotional bonding and also a powerful desire to repeat the behaviour,” says Bush in a telephone interview from her home in Jackson, Miss.
“These chemicals can imprint the brain and can cause addictive behaviour with lifelong consequences.”
But wait! It gets worse:
Both sexes also experience a dopamine rush — dopamine is a hormone that makes you feel good and rewards you for exciting behaviour.
Bush says that when two people are in a committed relationship, that addictive hormone is a good thing, as it ensures a strong union.
However, for young people whose brains are susceptible to pattern-forming behaviours, that may set them up for a lifetime of seeking the thrill and reward from sex, and make it hard for them to attach themselves long-term to a partner later in life.
And worse still:
Bush and McIlhaney also point to research which shows that the younger a person has sex, the more partners he or she is likely to have.
“Because they are imprinted so early with the sexual behaviour and because of the multiple partners, they can mould or gel the brain to eventually accept that pattern as normal,” says Bush. “And when they are ready to have a long-term relationship, it interferes with their ability to develop it, because those neurological circuits have been weakened in the ability to attach, and the dopamine rush rewarding you for the behaviour has taken precedence.”
The good doctors, who incidently worked on some of Bush II’s abstinence-only initiatives, (surprise, surprise) recommend no sexual activity until one’s mid-twenties (and a committed relationship), certainly a realistic, not to mention appealing, option for most people. Good luck.
Over at Bahamas Blog, Dr. Marty Klein offers a detailed indictment of the book’s claims. Check it out while you think about what you’ve done.
Tagged as:
creepy,
feelings,
Health,
windbags
How sadly timely that we here at Confabulous have been discussing opinions on state funding of gender reassignment surgery: to save $700,000/year, the Alberta Government has now cut the procedure from its list of funded services. The estimated savings amount to about 19 cents per Albertan.
The decision may have dire consequences, highlights a Calgary Herald article:
“Ignorance is fuelling the decision,” said Kris Wells, a researcher at the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services based at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.
“This is a case of sacrificing people’s lives. … These medical transitions end up saving people’s lives. This is a community that has higher rates of suicide, depression, drug and alcohol abuse because there is so little understanding.
Opponents of the change plan to file a human rights complaint. For updates and to lend your support, check out the “Reinstate Gender Reassignment Surgery Funding in Alberta” Facebook group.
Tagged as:
Health,
Politics,
trans
You know that feeling when you’re reading the paper and you come across a story that makes you think, “Some researcher got funded to study the obvious? And then come up with findings that are…obvious?” That’s the feeling I had when I stumbled across this story from last Friday’s Globe and Mail. “A nosh during labour not ‘a bad thing,’” reads the headline, referring to the shitty advice old adage advising women against eating during the labour process, ’cause if you have to have a C-section, and if you have to have general anesthetic during a C-section, then you might barf and breathe in the barf and die.
*sigh*
Then there is common sense: being in labour is akin to sprinting as hard and fast as you can for a minute at a time, every few minutes, for many hours or days. The ol’ bod just might need some sustenance to get through that process.
But thank goodness the science people have come on side with what birth mothers and midwives already know!
British researchers conducted a large trial involving 2,426 women having their first child. Half of them were told to eat a small amount of food such as bread, biscuits, fruits, non-fat yogurt, isotonic drinks and fruit juice. The others were advised to drink only water and chew on ice chips. The results, published in the British Medical Journal, revealed that the rate of vomiting was almost identical in both groups – about 35 per cent.
The only thing that’s really surprising here is that only 35% of women barfed in labour. To me, hurling while trying to squeeze out my daughter seemed pretty routine. Here’s the oh-so-shocking closer:
“So, over all, we basically found eating wasn’t a bad thing,” said senior researcher Andrew Shennan, a professor of obstetrics at King’s College London. [...] He added that the study participants who were given the option to eat “felt more in control and certainly liked it.”
Gee, you think?
I’m happy this research was conducted because it might actually change obstetrical practices for the better. And yes, hospitals, parents and birth attendants need and want the best-quality information about how to make births safe. But come on! You do not need an empirical study to know that having the option to eat during labour makes life a teensy bit better for the labouring woman (and therefore the expectant baby) and does not make the process any less safe. Intuition, basic biological facts (I’m hungry = I need to eat) and anecdotal evidence should suffice.
Tagged as:
birth,
Health,
mothering,
research
Between pregnancy preparation, pregnancy and breastfeeding, I have been taking a pre-natal vitamin for, like, almost two years now. My husband takes a multi-vitamin, too. One thing that’s always bugged me about the particular brand recommended to me by a doctor is this:
That’s right. Guess which one is the vit that I pop in the morning, and which one is my husband’s? The thing that I find galling is not just that mine is the pink one (and I addressed how I feel about pink marketing in an earlier post). It’s that the one my husband takes is physically larger–which is weird, since the pre-natal one is meant to support two people. On top of that, the pretty pink vitamin contains less vitamin A, C, B1, B2, B6, B12, niacin and magnesium than the manly green one. It has more calcium, folic acid and iron, which is great. And I understand it’s dangerous for a pregnant woman to ingest too much vitamin A, but why the shortage of Bs? And goddamn it, already, what is with making everything for women pink?
Tagged as:
Health,
pink,
vitamins,
women
In my ongoing quest to find smart, politically- savvy content aimed at Canadian women (leave your nominations in the comments section!), I came across divine.ca, dubbed as “Canada’s Online Women’s Magazine.” Doubting its smart and politically-savvy credentials, I clicked on it with some reservation.
What you get is not exactly Ms. Magazine. Divine is easily comparable to Cosmospolitan, complete with a BMI calculator, a spa finder and even a Cosmo-style “What’s Your Chick Flick IQ?” The completely heterosexist “Pleasure Poses” database (yes, database) of sex positions features a laugh-worthy “degree of difficulty” scale. The “How to Tell He’s Into You” article (a few months late, no?) is full of advice like,
He flaunts his crotch. Like any man, he may, ahem, want to show you all he has to offer. If he’s sitting before you, body language experts say that he may spread his legs wide, hoping to subtly direct your attention to his package.
R-i-i-i-g-h-t. This is great news, because I’m really into neanderthals!
Then there was the handy tip about keeping your sex toys clean n’ tidy and I knew I had veered much too far into Cosmo territory. So I still want to know: where are the magazines and sites where the smart and savvy Canadian chicks go?
Tagged as:
Health,
sex toys,
women
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