Joanna shares some feelings ...

There’s a lot more to this than I feel comfortable sharing at the moment, but here’s the basic idea: having a baby who was in the NICU for so long, and who can’t really go out in public too much yet, has not served to decrease my natural introversion, solitary inclinations or anti-social tendencies. I generally keep to myself anyway, but now there is an additional distance from the other parents we know, parents our age who have kids Simon and David’s ages. Simon and I were in a big group of them on Saturday, and both the parents and the kids are wonderful/nice/friendly/everything, but I don’t really feel that I belong with them anymore. I didn’t talk to any of them very much, just kind of hung out with Simon (who is having his own socialization issues at school). …

Perhaps I am making too much of this, and/or it will be a feeling that will be stronger at some times than at others, but right now it’s pretty strong. There is sort of a feeling that it is Matt and me (or perhaps just me, he tends to get along with people better) against the world, you know? That no one else will ever understand what our family is like. … When it’s just David and me, I simply enjoy playing with him and watching him grow and develop, and I don’t worry about much. But when I’m in a big group like that, all I can think is, “I am the parent of a child with a developmental disability. None of these other parents, even if their baby was in the NICU for awhile, or has some health problems, knows what that is like.” And I know that’s not fair, especially since I don’t even know what it’s like, much, yet. And for the most part, so far, it’s pretty much like taking care of any other baby with medical issues – meds, nebulizer, special formula, etc. But there is that extra (mental retardation) part that (for me, for now) creates that extra space between me and the next parent in line. That’s the distance, that’s the space – the gap between the words “mental” and “retardation.”

Preferences Shmeferences

(I may be getting ready to step on some toes. But this is my journal. Feel free to disagree, but get your own blog).

Matt’s latest issue of Sojourners features several articles discussing current efforts to “reclaim childbirth.” Not remotely surprised to learn these movements are mostly spearheaded by college-educated white women. It sounds like something we would do. ( The emphasis of the movement is to get back to the basics of viewing pregnancy and birth as a natural process, not an illness or an event to be managed. There was a lot of discussion of doulas and birth plans and whatnot. The more scientific parts of the articles discussed that despite the higher rate of interventions (epidurals, episiotomies, and c-sections) that the US is still behind other industrialized nations in infant and maternal mortality rates. The statistics are an interesting piece of info, and I would like to know more (like why exceeding the WHO’s recommendation of 15% c-section rate is a problem), but most of the articles focus on something I am altogether convinced is kind of silly – the mother’s birth experience. I’m sure that’s an odd thing to say, and obviously it’s important to some people, but I just really do not care about it, at all. From reading these articles, you would think that across the board, women are being tied down to beds to labor on their backs and then forced to have a c-section without their consent. Keep reading ...