the vilification of choice

the new homebirth "study" has media outlets and bloggers clamoring to stick it to those selfish homebirthers.

forget the study for a minute. forget all the studies, positive and negative. let's focus on choice.

let's start with the absolute basic. homebirth is a choice for most in the industrialized world. one can either choose to birth at home, either with or without an assistant of some sort, or one can choose to birth in a hospital setting. BOTH options carry their own set of risks and benefits. it is up to the person choosing to decide which set they are more comfortable with. this should not be up to ANYONE but the mother (as far as i'm concerned), or the mother and her family to make an informed decision about which choice they are more comfortable with.

what people don't seem to take into account is that whatever choice is made, the responsibility for that choice lies with them AND ONLY THEM. no one can guarantee you a perfect birth outcome. no one can guarantee you a live birth. no one can guarantee a trauma-free birth. no one can guarantee there won't be complications or injuries. NO ONE can make a guarantee. not OBs, not GPs, not midwives, not yourself. not god. not nature.

sure, there are ways to maximize your chances of a good outcome, and these usually include letting birth unfold naturally, without interference, with minimal monitoring. birth is designed to be largely hands-off, and the design itself is not flawed.

it's human thinking and emotion that complicate things and throw wrenches into the works. we get caught up in the idea that we should be guaranteed a perfect baby at the end of pregnancy, and when that doesn't happen, emotions run high. 'why did this happen? what can we do next time to avoid this outcome? what safety standards do we need to put in place to make sure babies are born safe, healthy, alive, perfect?'

what we fail to see is we're holding ourselves and nature to a ridiculously high standard. it simply cannnot be possible for every baby to be born alive and perfect. this is not the standard anywhere else in the animal kingdom. why do we expect we can defy those odds? it's unreasonable to put those kinds of expectations and that type of responsibility on ANYONE'S shoulders. yes, there are instances of malpractice, but many doctors and other care providers practice the way they do, with bells and whistles and surgery-at-the-ready, because they're being held to these standards in the form of lawsuits.

society simply isn't comfortable with the idea of a baby dying. for any reason. with the advent of medical technology, we have decided to eradicate this tragedy. we have set ourselves up for an impossible goal and put the responsibility for achieving that goal, not on ourselves as consumers making informed choices, but on our care providers. our human care providers. as much as they would love to control for every factor that might complicate a baby's arrival into the world, they can't. no one can.

to assume that going to the hospital with doctors and medical equipment will ensure the health and safety of your baby, or the homebirth midwife with oxygen and pitocin, or yourself alone with all the reading and researching and basic equipment you've gathered, is naive. sometimes, bad things happen, and no one can prevent them. no amount of medical knowledge or fancy equipment, natural methods, or instinct can fix it. it just is.

your choice is your own, but you need to own it. and to the daddy blogger i linked to above, don't count your chickens before they're hatched and call homebirthers selfish. think about it. you're being just as selfish in your decision. you're choosing hospital over homebirth because you believe this is what's best and will guarantee you the best outcome. families who choose homebirth have the same goals in mind. they're just looking at things from a different perspective. we all want the best for our families and our children, but do not vilify another family's choice simply because it's not what you would choose. i wish you all the best.

the perfection mafia

there's a pervasive idea prowling around the internet, in the crunchy circles. this idea that one has to be 'all-or-nothing' when it comes to attachment parenting/natural family living. one-upmanship (that's been present for years, but it's getting on my nerves). bullshit.

this is not some kind of club with a laundry list of requirements to be considered 'in'. gimme a fucking break. we don't all have to have the exact same views on parenting, politics, religion, life in general. we don't all have to check things off the list to qualify to be friends with someone who does. evolve already.

i have friends who run the gammut on breastfeeding. some go for years. some tried. some can't. i have friends who cosleep and friends that don't. i have friends that vax their kids. i have friends who use cloth diapers, some part-time, and others that use disposables. some homebirth, some don't. some homeschool. some don't. some are religious. some aren't. and all have varying political philosophies.

seeing a theme yet?

some buy all organic food, or go one step further and grow their own/co-op with farms/make the majority of their food from scratch. some go to the grocery store. some have eschewed conventional cosmetics and hygiene products and make their own. they even make their own household cleaners. again, some go to the grocery store. some are WOHMs, some are WAHMs, and some are SAHMs.

and yet i still call these people my friends. why?

because they're not ignorant. they're making informed choices and doing what they can within their means while trying to maintain their own mental and emotional well-being. i know if i tried to 'do it all' i'd have a nervous breakdown. some parents can and they make it work beautifully. i envy them, to be sure, but i know i'm not 'less than' simply because i can't make it work. i do what i can when i can. sometimes that means switching things up. buy conventional one week, make my own the next. use gDiapers for now, try cloth again later.

and sometimes we make mistakes. sometimes we make decisions without as much information as we could have. sometimes they're little things, other times they're big things. but we learn from those mistakes and keep plugging along. because it'll all be okay. nobody's perfect and nobody has a perfect life. and it's not about the damn laundry list. if you're defining your life with a list and insisting that others do similarly in order to do the right thing and have a happy life, you're peddling propaganda.

Educational method and the art of fluidity

how does an unschooler decide to send her child to public school?



CSJ will be 7 in less than a month (how the hell did that happen?!), and he has been unschooled up to this point. for this upcoming school year, we will be sending him to public school.



'but that's practically the other end of the learning spectrum! how can you justify going against your philosophies?'



believe it or not, i'm pro-education, whatever form it takes. i don't think a 'one-size-fits-all' approach is the best by any means. i know children who thrive in public school because it suits their lifestyle and their learning style, and i know children who are absolutely miserable and cannot thrive in that environment. same goes for homeschool. my philosophy with regards to education is 'do what works best for that child in order to get the best results.

i started unschooling with CSJ because, at the time, it suited his lifestyle and learning style. it was not a decision made in rebellion of the system. i did not choose homeschool/unschool because of religious beliefs. i did want to have some control over what he was exposed to, since at the time, i was concerned about how he would handle certain situations. but i never said 'homeschool or bust', and always kept an open mind about public school in the future.

well, the future is now. things have changed in our family. our lifestyle has changed and his learning style has changed. over the past year he's become less self-directed and more 'show me the way' in how he learns. given how busy things have become, it isn't easy for me to take time out and help guide him. recently, a neighbor of mine told me about a school she works at in our district that might fit him quite well. she was observing him playing with the other kids and asked if we were going to homeschool always or if we would ever consider public school. i told her that we were constantly assessing the situation and would change things if we felt it would work better (and i had actually been considering public school but wasn't comfortable with the options available). i think things happen for a reason, and i think this came at the right time.

we're looking at this as a trial, an opportunity. he wants to go to school. he wants to meet new people and experience the school setting. who am i to deny him that? if it works out, so much the better. if it doesn't, we can always return to the homeschooling life. no harm, no foul.



do i feel like an unschooling/homeschooling failure? no, not really. i don't feel like i'm failing my child if i'm responding to a situational change in an appropriate manner. don't get me wrong. i'm not sending my child into the system to let the system do all the work for me. not at all. i see it as an opportunity for us both. he will bring home lessons and homework and tell me about what he learned, and i will be able to help him with questions and expand on topics outside the classroom. while this will limit certain aspects of our lives, it will also open doors. i will be able to focus more on Izzy Jo, since she will be staying home this year. i will be able to accomplish things during the day with only two children at home that would have been more difficult to tackle with all three (i'm not supermom and have a hard time managing 2 very spirited individuals and a baby).

i don't see educational method as an all-or-nothing, 'it HAS to be this way or you're doing your child a disservice, make whatever sacrifices you have to' type of thing. there are so many methods, so many opportunities, i think it's reasonable to explore options.

if i've learned anything from parenting, it's that one has to be fluid.