homebirthing - unassisted?

this article from today's wpost discusses "free birth," meaning giving birth at home without the assistance of any trained professionals - just you and your hubby and other kids.
my first reaction is - hey, even in days of yore they had midwives...
(musa is standing on the ottoman which he has just recently learned to climb and giving nobody in particular a lecture, which involves a lot of gesturing toward the plant i told him he couldn't touch)(ha! i've outsmarted him(for now) by turning the ottoman on its short side so it's too tall for him to climb... now he's gone off to climb the windowsill instead)
anyway! so, i have two friends who had midwife-assisted homebirths, which seemed to have been the successful and empowering experiences they were hoping for. i am thinking of using a midwife instead of a doctor next time (no, i'm not pregnant) inshallah - at a birthing center though, at least! - even though my experience with doctor and hospital last time was not such a bad thing. sure, i got the attitude that i was crazy for not getting an epidural, etc., but i also got a lot of support from the nurses through pushing, etc., which i did while squatting. i did have an episiotomy, which i don't regret (thankfully it healed well) but i think it was a medical decision that was probably not entirely necessary (the doc was basically like, you should have delivered by now... and i probably would have torn otherwise... but there is a perspective that would answer - why is that? is there a specific time bracket in which any given woman "should have delivered"? again - not that i am upset i didn't have to push any longer...)
i can completely understand the sentiment behind free birth - it's the same that makes me shy away from the medicalization of most childbirth, the quickness to induce, the pressure for epidurals, the overuse of c-section, and then the intrusive, restraining monitoring during labor, etc... but... to me the hospital, or at least the proximity of a medical professional, is a precaution at least. sure, it's not necessary most of the time, especially for healthy young mothers, and sure babies and mothers die in hospitals, too, but generally that's because the docs have done whatever they can and nothing else can be done... why risk not even having that option? yes, women have done it by themselves - often with the herblore and experience of midwives - for centuries, but mother and infant mortality was also sky-high for those centuries. the absorption of childbirth into the medical world helped to drastically reduce those mortality rates. perhaps it went too far, in making childbirth a medical procedure when it is in fact a completely natural physical process, but that's no reason to turn your back on it completely at the risk of endangering yourself or your baby. i'd prefer to use it as much as i need to, and claim the rest of the experience for my own...

hp hype (no spoilers, don't fret)

you know... there's so much of it (the hype that is), that i feel like even after two reads i can't truly say whether or not it was a "good book." i mean, i HAD to read it and find out what happened to the characters, there were parts that made me chuckle aloud and others where i teared up, etc... but it's like the plot and explanations were so important (because millions of people were waiting to find out how the story ends) that the storytelling itself seems almost marginalized... of course, i've said from book 4 on that her writing has improved and developed tremendously since book one - this is no LOTR, it's not meant to be, but it's the very best kind of child fantasy (who wouldn't like to wake up one day and find something utterly magical has transformed your miserable existence into something fraught with high adventure and uplifted by truest friendship?) AND it's what they call a rollicking good read... i felt the same way about the chronicles of narnia, despite its flaws - that scene with lucy walking into the wardrobe and coming out of the wardrobe, ha ha, into this magical, snow-covered, spellbound land - what kid doesn't want to discover a magical country with a secret entrance? (i dunno, maybe a kid who would rather have dinner to eat every day and shoes on their feet. i realize even as i write that i'm speaking from the midst of privilege and comfort, and the luxury to escape the mundane into imagination, although i would argue that frances hodgson burnett's sara crewe might beg to differ, but then, she was one of a kind, wasn't she?)...
my leg, on which rests my sleeping, nursing baby, is asleep too, though not nursing...

on books i'm reading

*** HARRY POTTER SPOILERS AT THE END OF THE POST!!!!***

not quite here, but toward the end of the post. i'll put another warning banner in before i type them, i promise!
anyway, out of my last batch of books, the ones i most enjoyed were morgan llywelyn's 1921 and 1949. i have not read all of her ancient ireland books, and have yet to read the ones about brian boru, etc., but i've read a few and enjoyed them greatly, and the irish century novels top them all. even i didn't think i'd be more captivated by recent irish history than ancient, yet these were practically spellbinding, for someone with a totally irrational love of ireland. placing her fictional characters into history and telling their story so well is one thing, but the passion and detail with which she portrays the irish yearning and fight for freedom - for the right to be fully who they are or who they could become - is even more compelling. and it's just the icing on the cake to follow the character of henry mooney, a journalist bent on truth-telling and objectivity despite his own desires for freedom...

what else... oh, i finally got a copy of pamela dean's tam lin, part of terri windling's fairy tale series (of old fairy-tales retold in various ways). this is the second pamela dean book i've read, and i'm trying oh i really truly am, and i do think she writes beautifully, but... maybe i'm just too stupid for her? i was halfway through tam lin before i realized i was still waiting for the story to really start, for the fairy tale, really, and then i realized it wasn't like that at all, it's a beautifully told story of a bunch of slightly strange artsy college students out in the midwest... and that's all, even though the cover painting of a tall, russet-haired, otherworldly woman draped in flowing folds indicates something else entirely... i enjoy the occasionally oblique references to literature but many of them just leave me feeling dumb, like i ought to redo my english major (and master's!), though the tolkien references are liberally sprinkled in too... btw, i started this after i finished HP on sunday morning, but i stopped 3/4 of the way through to reread HP a second time, which i am almost finished doing...

i read john mcwhorter's doing our own thing: the degradation of language and music and why we should, like, care, because i am interested in the english language and i do respect it, but it was a little disappointing. the first third of the book or so i was moderately amused - he's certainly a witty writer - but i got tired of the repeated idea that if one were to use truly proper, eloquent english in, say, an email, one would be disowned by one's friends, or deported to a psychiatric facility, or taken for a martian, by way of attempting to describe just how outlandish the use of written-style, articulate english has become, in favor of conversational. i mean, i know i'm an oddity, but i wrote those kinds of emails all the time in college... and i actually did admire a couple of professors of mine for just how beautifully they used the english language... sure, i've been joshed (can that word be used that way?) for using big or archaic words here and there, but to be honest, it's been a while, and if you go and read my brother's blog (even though he's a lame-o loser and barely ever blogs) you'll see that i can't even match his articulation anymore, as my hubby so kindly pointed out to me last night :) even i remember, in middle school, the thrill of using freestyle versus formal, particularly in poetry classes, where i wrote unbridled nonsensical and very poetic free verse in lieu of bound because i didn't like strictures on my writing... wish i could do it now! so, i guess i can sort of see what he means by the change in americans' perception of authority (and by extension or association, formality) in the late 60's, what with the truths about vietnam being revealed, and other cultural changes going on, etc., but it doesn't resound like epiphany or anything. one thing i do completely agree with, however - if you don't use it, you lose it. i'm a living, languishing example...

and finally, ***ON TO THE HARRY POTTER SPOILERS!!!***
well, to my thoughts, which will include some spoilers.

so don't look below this if you haven't finished yet!

you have been warned!!

i like that snape's undying love for lily proves what dumbledore said from day one: that love is stronger than any other power. i like that harry's ultimate test of courage is one of allowing something to happen, rather than doing something. on my second reading, i almost couldn't wait to get to reread snape's ending, and harry going forth to meet voldemort, and then his final conversation with dumbledore...
i did think the whole dursley situation in the beginning was sort of abrupt - particularly dudley's "change of heart" - and especially with the tantalizing bits we hear about petunia later, in snape's memory, i would have liked for something more to be resolved with her, though i guess it wasn't that important to the story.
i felt like the trio's apparating treks through the countryside dragged on a little - never sure where they were or why - and it was a little disorienting to be shifting so much between episodes of great detail (godric's hollow, for instance) and sections in which entire weeks passed by within a paragraph or two. but i felt this less the second time around.
i think this will make a great movie... but i imagine they would like to show a little more of what is happening in hogwarts during the story, rather than only at the end. i did miss hogwarts while reading this book, though i didn't realize it until neville tottered out of that painting in the hog's head.
i am almost finished with my second reading, but i am still confused as to how harry was still alive after V hit him with the killing curse for the second time - unless it was just that he volunteered for the sacrifice? did voldemort only succeed in killing that part of himself that was inside harry - was that the snivelling, maimed child-figure that harry saw? i'm thinking that the prophecy meant harry had to "die" in order for voldemort to be able to die...
other things... i was sort of surprised that harry used two of the unforgivable curses - obviously not avada kedavra - though i realize the stakes were high and it probably saved the lives of the people around him as well as his own. i could understand his trying to use the cruciatus curse on bellatrix right after she killed sirius, but when he used it on alecto in the ravenclaw common room and mcgonagall said it was "gallant" of him... anyone else think that was a little weird? not a message i would want any kids reading it to take lightly...
anyway, i have other things to do, like write an article and change a poopy diaper, so, more on HP later!!! (yes, when i see or type HP, i do think of brown sauce before i think of harry...)

update: okay, finished second reread. two things: one, that child-being harry saw after he "died" was not the part of V that was inside him - it WAS voldemort, who also sort of temporarily "died" - when harry came to minutes later, he became aware of voldemort being tended to be his death eaters, and then getting up from the ground. and later he tells V - "i've seen what you'll become". remember the creature wormtail used to return V to a body at the end of Goblet of Fire? that raw-skinned, snake-faced, helpless, child-like creature? that is voldemort. and that is how he would - will - spend eternity, in what they're calling the Potterverse...
the other thing: anyone else out there feel like they wanted to know what harry would "be" when he grew up? he had wanted to be an auror, but i guess that field died out. i always thought he might end up taking dumbledore's place, but that didn't seem to happen either. i suppose it's enough to know he's happily married into the weasley family, but still... he's got to do SOMETHING with the rest of his life, and why not hogwarts?

musa is sleeping, my article was due two hours ago and i still haven't interviewed anyone (i tried starting tuesday and people kept telling me they would be there the next day and they weren't), i have to leave for dinner at someone's house at 4:30, which is just over two hours away, and before i do that i have to make potato salad and a dessert, and before i do THAT i have to go get some groceries... or maybe i'll just make do with what i've got??

deathly hallows

finished at 3:22 a.m. today! just a couple of things i must mention - i KNEW that for some reason, dumbledore had wanted snape to kill him, and i was right! and i figured snape's ultimate secret had something to do with some twist with harry's family, though i didn't have it exactly figured out.
i can't tell you if it was really a good book, because i read it so fast just to figure out what happened, so i'll have to go back to it.
anyway!

sippy cups, etc

is it possible at all for someone to develop a sippy cup or straw cup for learning toddlers that 1) actually does not leak, 2) has a valve that is easily removable AND cleanable and easily put-back-in-able, 3) will not develop unremovable gunk if a drink stays in there as long as it actually takes for the child to finish the drink?
like all of those things, not just one of them.
argh!

just got the "nuby" straw cup, and the whole valve combination thingy is so irritating to take out and put in - i need extra tools just to get it right, because if i don't get it just right it leaks. it's great when it's put together just right though, but i gotta get this kid on a proper cup fast, because i only started using the nuby yesterday and i am already sick of cleaning it... meanwhile i had to throw out one of the gerber handled sippy cups i had, and yes folks, i did clean it regularly, but the milk he drank left this weird hard, rash-like residue in the inside corners of the soft sippy spout part which are literally impossible to clean...

random stuff

reading snow by orhan pamuk. last of the most recent list, for which, scroll down somewhat. enjoying it! oh what a terrible word. enjoy. i ought to erase it from my vocabulary. but... as a novel it breaks some rules: lots of narrator intrusion in the first person, lots of telling instead of showing, but still it's good. i'm not too far along yet... eager to see how this treatment of "the battle within" islam (as a recent CNN segment on those fulminating mullahs and rows of swaying boys in madrassas titled it) plays out... i love the snow of it. but. i'm not so sure about the main character, ka, yet. i feel like i don't know him well enough to believe he can meet up with terrorists and let friends (whom he doesn't like) get pummeled by police with such equanimity (or maybe i don't know him well enough to sense his non-equanimity). blarg blarg.

interesting (another word to erase from the vocab) argument brought up by one of the characters: i'm used to the argument - if God really exists, then how can he allow all this poverty and suffering in the world? well, this character asks the opposite: if God doesn't exist, how do you explain all the poverty and suffering in the world? if there's no God, there's no heaven, and what's the point of all this suffering if it's not going to be eased in a next life?

in some sections i get the strange feeling that pamuk is trying to make some characters look stupid and i'm not getting it, for some reason.... maybe me stoopid too!

what else. just got back from a semi-relaxing (minus a wedding) trip to the parents' place in NC. so happy to see the grandparents happy with the grandchildren. so much fun to see my son and nephew together! good to see old friends again. nice to not have to clean my house.

cousin koonj is back from pakistan!! my dear friend taiyyaba is back from syria and pakistan all married and everything. i got to see tibs but i dunno when i'll see koonj :(

must go get things done...