Thursday, April 30, 2009

Weekend at the Pocono's (Not Bernie's)

Again, it's been a while since I blogged. Once the document review project ended, I went right back into deps. And last weekend, we went to the Poconos Mountains in Pennsylvania for my Aunt Marcia's 50th Birthday party. All she wanted was her family and friends at the cabin for a party, and that's what she got! My grandparents were there at their cabin, my cousin Kim (Aunt Marcia's daughter) and her husband and baby were there, my uncle Marty, aunt Margaret and cousins Emma and Nolan came, and Aunt Holli and Cory and Kayla came. Uncle Mark couldn't go for work reasons. My parents are the only ones who didn't go from our side of the family, and people were pretty disappointed with them as they really didn't have a good excuse. (I can say that without starting stuff in the family because they don't read this.)

We flew out on Friday, and ended up getting delayed out of Detroit for 2 hours. We finally left at 2:30 and landed in Newark, New Jersey, right during rush hour. Of course, just our luck. A 2 hour drive turned into 3. We finally made it to the mountains at 7 o'clock. She and my uncle, and my grandparents own cabins in a small mountain development in Greentown, Pennsylvania. Well, my grandparents place is a trailer, as are many of the places in this development. My aunt and uncle's place is a real cabin, and my uncle has done a ton of work on it. It's pretty sweet.

I must say, we were lucky this weekend that we flew. Because of that, we were unable to bring pillows and air mattresses like many other people did, so we scored a real bed at Grandpa and Grandmas. However, that bed is the WORST bed I've ever slept on (not to sound ungrateful). But it is super hard and super uncomfortable. Not that Brian was in the bed with me that much! Friday, he was up with my cousin's husband and other dudes until about 2 am, and we were up at 7. Saturday was the day of the party, and it was rocking. This side of my family are my "drinking" relatives, and my cousin Kayla was in awe at the amount of alcohol. The party itself was in the pole barn of friends of my aunt and uncle, and it worked out really well, except for there being no bathroom. You had to hike up and down a big old hill to get to the nearest bathroom! Let's just say the guys didn't bother with the hike! The party was great and went on and on, and I gave it up at about 10 because I was tired from not getting a ton of sleep the night before, but Brian didn't come to bed until 3 am.

We were both utterly exhausted the next day going home, and felt like crap. We ended up stopping at a Wendy's in New Jersey about 45 minutes out of Newark, and it was a great idea. We felt SO much better afterward, and made it home without incident, thank god. And then Brian left Monday, came home Tuesday, and left again Wednesday! And he's gone for a week, even over the weekend. And that's what going on with us the last few weeks!

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Little Me


The reason I haven't blogged in almost two weeks is that I have been super busy working again. This is very good--money is nice. The assignment I'm on right now is a document review project at a firm in Bloomfield Hills, so the drive is long. The hours are also kind of long, so by the time I've been getting home at night, I've been pretty damn tired. Thus, no blogging.

However, our work got canceled this weekend due to the illness of the lead attorney, so I actually find myself with a few moments to do an entry I've been wanting to do. When Brian and I went to my parents' for Easter, my grandmother came in the house and said that she'd been going through some boxes of stuff that had belonged to her mom, my great grandmother, Grandma Anderson. Grandma Anderson died in the spring of my last year in college. Grandma Anderson was famous for two things: her prolific smoking habit, and the handmade sweaters she made EVERYBODY for Christmas EVERY SINGLE year. Now, as a kid, I hated sweaters, and didn't really appreciate the gifts she made me. However, if she were alive today, I would want about 20 of those things. I do have the last thing she ever made me, which was a hand knit toiletry bag. I use it every single time I go somewhere.

So, anyway, Grandma Sharon was going through the boxes and ran across a picture. It's the picture shown above. On the back, in Grandma Anderson's very recognizable old fashioned handwriting, it says "1983." That would make me 4 years old in this photo. However, I have a feeling its really from 1984, because this is clearly a school picture, and I never went to preschool. So, I strongly feel like this is my Kindergarten school picture. Look at little me! I'm so cute, although I wish my pigtails were neater in this photo!

I have to say its really nice to have a picture of myself from when I was little. When my parents got divorced, my father was a total asshole (big shock) and destroyed all the pictures and photo albums my mom had of me and my older brother. So, there are no pictures of me left that I'm aware of me as a baby or small child. So, it's really nice to have this one. Also, I have to say I distinctly remember the sweater I'm wearing in this picture. I remember being little and looking down at myself and seeing the flowers that are all over it. I remember not liking wearing the sweater, because, as I said, I hated sweaters, but also because it was, in particular, a turtleneck (which I still hate). However, I'd give anything to have one of those sweaters now. And also, a few more pics of myself as a little kid.


Tuesday, April 7, 2009

"The Business of Being Born"

I have to tell everyone that yesterday Candace and I watched this movie called "The Business of Being Born." It is a documentary made by Ricki Lake (yes, that Ricki Lake) after having her first son in the hospital and having what she calls a "dissatisfying" experience. After having her first son, she got really into this natural, homebirth thing, and in this movie, it actually shows her giving birth to her second son at home, in a bath tub.

I was nervous to watch this movie, as I thought the birth scenes would freak me out. In reality, the birth scenes were not as freaky as I thought it would be. The issue I have with this movie is that it clearly is made from one point of view--the anti-OB, anti-hospital birth point of view. It makes out EVERY hospital to be bad and every OB out like they just want to do C-sections all the time, etc. It also makes it seem like all women's experiences with birth in the hospital as bad or traumatic for them somehow, and presents home birth as the ONLY way to solve this problem. I mean, the scenes showing actual births in homes were depicted as almost orgasmic when the child was coming out. Seriously, the sounds the women were making sounded like porn. Good for those women that they can do that without drugs, but I simply don't think its realistic for many women. I know the argument is that all women used to give birth at home with no intervention, and my response to that is, "Yeah, that's when women used to die in labor and delivery."

Candace and I discussed this after, and we agreed that the movie makes valid points about the state of maternal health care in this country. For example, I do think hospitals and OBs, in general, do too many interventions. They are too quick to give Pitocin if things aren't moving along, they are quick to do C-sections if there is any distress (and fetal distress during a birth is common and not necessarily alarming). Hospitals want you in and out as soon as possible. Further, its an excellent point that the "laying on your back" position they make you do in the hospital is the WORST one for giving birth--you should theoretically be up and letting gravity help. However, you cannot do this if you do get an epidural, which I strongly believe should be kept widely available. Finally, the cost argument was a good one--a normal vaginal delivery in a hospital can cost $13,000. A home birth with a midwife, about $4,000. C sections cost even more, and now 1 in 3 women have a C-section. That is twice what is medically necessary, and it seems that docs down play the risk of complication from C section. It is real and it's scary, particularly with every repeat C section you have. However, this doesn't mean that 90% of women should give birth at home, or would even want to. For example, if I'm laboring at home and something bad happens--it would take a good 20-25 minutes for me to get to the hospital. In that time, something very bad could happen to me or my baby (if I ever have one). That is scary to me. And Candace stated the she doesn't consider her birth of Oliver in the hospital to have been traumatic, and I think neither do any of the women I know, so that shoots one of their arguments in the foot.

Candace and I agreed that we wished there could be some middle ground between the two sides of this debate. Like truly changing the mind set of OBs and patients that we will do as few interventions as possible and let a woman labor a long time if necessary. The problem is that OBs think midwives are crazy and midwives hate OBs, typically. So, I do think some good can come from this movie. I will say that last week I read an article in the New York Tomes online that sort of followed up this movie (I read the article before I saw the movie). It talks to some VERY dissatisfied patients of this midwife named Kara who is featured prominently in the film. She has had some very bad results that are not discussed in the film, and when things go wrong, she pretty much just dumps people at the hospital with no explanation to the medical staff there. Hospitals in the area of New York where she practices do not like her. So, that was interesting.

Anyway, I would recommend that if you watch the movie, keep in mind its from one point of view. Watch it, and form your own opinions. It was actually pretty interesting.