October 2nd, 2009

Day Tripping With Some Sexy Bitches

I'm going to write two separate posts about my trip to Philadelphia to visit the GlaxoSmithKline vaccination production facility.  The first post will be about my personal experience with meeting other bloggers for the first time, and the second post will go into greater detail about what I learned at GSK.

I have never met any other blogger, twitterer, or cyber friend in real life before.  For the most part, the idea makes me a bit uncomfortable.  I generally provide full disclosure here, and also write some very opinionated, polarizing statements that I know other people fucking hate me for.  Online, I can simply hit "delete" or "unfollow" if I don't like the 'tude I'm getting from somebody.  In person, I'm forced to be my most diplomatic self.  We (me, my husband, my friends) call it "The Gina Show."  It's not that it's a fake persona, it's just me on my best behavior.  I think we all do this.  When you're a fucking asshole like I (sometimes) am, that can be soooo exhausting.  I also tend to take things pretty personally, and where others can fight with someone one minute and be shaking their hand the next, I don't operate like that.  Yeah, yeah.  I know.  I'm an immature little snot.  Tell me something I don't know.

I certainly had my diplomacy work cut out for me on this trip because I wasn't meeting any bloggers who share my interests, or rant irately about cesareans and breastfeeding the way I do.  I wasn't even meeting anyone whose blog I'd ever read (aside from Kristen, who was present for the tour only, but not at the hotel, so we hardly saw her.)  If I were meeting Melodie from Breastfeeding Moms Unite, or Amber from Strocel.com, or my Cyber BFF from Unnecessarean (or a bunch of others) I'm sure we would have gushed about all the same topics and been brushing each other's hair by the end of the day.  That's not to say we all have the same exact opinions on things, but we are certainly very, very passionate about some of the same things, and that provides a lot of common ground to stand on.  Also, by sheer virtue of having read each other's blogs on many occasions, we all (I think) feel a certain warmth and respect for each other that would facilitate conversation, empathy, support, and instant bonding in real life.  Well, I could be totally projecting my feelings onto those three particular bloggers, but I would be very surprised if they'd disagree with me on that sentiment.

But this was very different.  I had never read any of these other bloggers, and they run in a very different "scene" than I do.  Here's the list of women I met:

Steph at CreatureBug

Cecily at Uppercase Woman (thanks to her for the lovely picture of us all in the GSK parking lot)

Kristen from Motherhood Uncensored (who is 8 feet tall and 10 times hotter in person. Rowr.)

Devra and Aviva from Parentopia

Sarah from Sarah and the Goon Squad

Lori from Avacado8 (who didn't come on the tour, only to dinner, she lives in Philly.)

I was nervous enough about the whole trip, but I was trying to put me crazy-ass social anxiety aside and try to make the best of it.  I was off to a great start too.  As soon as I landed I got a text from Steph at Creature Bug asking where people were meeting.  We agreed to meet at the shuttle and travel to the hotel together.  She was quite friendly, I think we hit it off right away and we had a good 90 minutes of getting to know each other before we got to the hotel.  She had also never been to an event like this, so I didn't feel like I was the only person who didn't know anybody.  I was starting to feel a little more relaxed.  As soon as we checked in, we had to meet the other women for dinner right away.  All the other women we met knew each other very well, and had either been friends for years and years, or were at least very regular readers of each other's blogs and had met at previous blogging events.  They were also seasoned "monetizers" (a word I learned on the trip) meaning that this whole blogging thing was paying some bills for them.  That alone made me start to feel a little out of my league.

We sat down to dinner and before most people had their menus open Devra from Parentopia and I started talking about the GSK tour.  She made a comment about Big Pharma being "evil" (which, in retrospect, I think may have been sarcasm) but also mentioned that they can sometimes save some lives as well.  So I said that I felt the same way about cesareans; I love them when they're necessary and don't so much love them when they aren't.  Oh Gina.  Why don't you just keep your fucking pie-hole shut. (<-rhetorical question.)  So from across the table, Lori says "What was that?" and I am forced to repeat myself, knowing what was coming next.  She immediately stops the table and says "Okay, raise your hand if you have had a cesarean" and everyone except one person at the table raises their hand. 

(hint: If everyone at your table has had a cesarean, and you're NOT at an ICAN meeting, your cesarean-awareness-self is about to be hella uncomfortable.) 

And then of course the table broke into the "but-mine-was-really-necessary" stories and I felt like the Town A-Hole again.  This is where I shut the fuck up.  This is where I know I am not among my audience, and the kind of thing I write about (live, eat, breath, sleep, study, will-practice-law-someday-soon-for) is not going to be welcome conversation here.  Man, it's gonna be a looooooong night.

So I spent the next 15 minutes or so coming down from my social anxiety attack, and found a way to work myself back into the conversation (Gina, don't say shit about crunchy living.)  We ended up talking, joking, and discussing the world until nearly 11 pm, and it was a pretty good time.  I managed to blame my cesarean and formula feeding for my distance with my first son, a non-popular opinion again, but there was no spectacle made of it.

The next day we all boarded into a van and made the 2 hour trip up to Marietta PA for the GSK tour.  We had a lot of time to talk and joke about everything under the sun, and I was feeling more and more comfortable.  Perhaps I fit in after all.  I mean, these are moms, I'm a mom, we all have at least that in common, right? 

Well, don't worry, I put myself right back outside the circle when the GSK hosts asked us if we had any questions.  I asked about whether they had tested the vaccinations in groups, and if so, where could I find the results of that testing.  I asked about Thimerosal, why it was included in the Influenza and H1N1 vaccines.  I asked if they were aware of the study recently published that showed some devastating effects of Thimerosal, and I asked if they had been made aware of the recent findings by the Canadian Government that the flu shot was making people more susceptible to acquiring H1N1.  Of course GSK wasn't super jazzed about those questions, and I believe nobody else seemed to share my concern on those points.  (Oh Gina, you're such a trouble-maker.)  That line of questioning was talked about on the long 3 hour van ride back to Philly, and I was made even more aware that I was the only person in the vehicle who was still quite skeptical.  I was also the only person who felt that, if there was a real risk for autism, that should be enough to change the way vaccinations are made and/or administered.  The general consensus that I felt was that vaccinations save lives and there was no need to question the science.  Of course, being the advocate and analytic mind that I am, I say question everything.

Now, we all know I vaccinate my kids.  They've never missed one.  I do believe they have saved millions of lives and that vaccinations are a matter of public health.  But, I am also a die-hard believer in informed consent, and am sensitive to the reasons why some people don't vaccinate.  I would never suggest to one of my very best friends that it was okay her kid got autism as long as a bunch of other kids' lives were saved.  I think one case of vaccine-induced autism is too many.  I have a deep empathy for those who are raising special needs children, and I want to keep examining the science behind this until we know why this is happening to children, and we have stopped the epidemic.  So I spent a lot of time feeling like the only dickhead in the car who was beating up on those poor nice GSK folks (they were very nice, and I'll talk more about that in my next post.)

In summary, my first experience with meeting other bloggers was certainly a very interesting one.  I learned that I can participate in hours of conversation with mothers who are nothing like me, and I will not die of a panic-attack-induced stroke in the process.  I learned that until I know if everyone at the table has had a cesarean, maybe I should hold my cards closer to my chest while I test the water on that topic.  Not everyone can (or wants to) rattle off cesarean and infant mortality statistics the way I can.  And finally, I discovered a whole new subculture of this female/mother blogger community that I didn't even know existed, and in doing so, my awareness has been expanded.

So a big thanks to David Wescott for hooking me up with these women.  And stay tuned for the next post where I will put my head on a directly on the chopping block by talking about vaccinations.  As if people didn't have enough reasons to leave me nasty comments already, I'm gonna go and open that can 'o worms.

Duht-Duhnt-Duuuuuuhhhhnt.

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(and so you now, GlaxoSmithKline paid every dollar of this trip for me, so thanks again GSK)

September 24th, 2009

It’s Possible That I’m Being Punk’d

So I’ve been invited to fly out to Philadelphia next week, courtesy of GlaxoSmithKline, to tour their vaccination facility. The trip is unbelievably terrible timing seeing as I have 5 (yes FIVE) cakes due the day after I come back, and two classes that will need to be skipped, making my professors none too happy.

Going could not be any more inconvenient or impossible.  But I’m trying to make it possible.  I think it will be hugely educational (how often does one get to visit a major pharmaceutical facility anyway?) and the fact that it’s fully paid for by them means I have no real financial excuse to skip it.

Plus, some of the cool kids will be there. 

They’ve invited a small group of “influential” mom bloggers (don’t ask me how I’m included in that), which means I’ll finally get to meet some of these gals you see banging around the interwebs.  It looks like Pundit Mom is making an appearance, as well as Kristen Chase.  Kristen is the person that inspired me to take The Feminist Breeder to the streets after I discovered her through a Podcast wayyyyy back in 2007.  I’m pretty sure she hates me ever since I called her white (oh, wait until she sees how white I am! The husband says I glow in the dark!) but maybe she’ll forgive me if I bring her a pair of high-heeled Crocs.  Isn't the gift of Crocs the universal way of saying "Sorry I was being a cunt that day"?

They haven’t sent me the plane tickets yet so we’ll see if this thing really pans out.  I’ll be skeptical until I’m actually sitting on the runway.  It almost feels like all the head cheerleaders devised a plan to invite me to the prom, only to have me show up at an empty warehouse while they lay waiting in the bushes, filming the whole thing as a YouTube prank.

Oh, there goes my self-loathing narcissism again.  I doubt the head cheerleaders even care enough about me to play a prank.

Anyhoo, if there really is a vaccination facility in Pennsylvania, and I'm really on the guest list, then I’ll write all about the experience – don’t you worry.

September 20th, 2009

Mothers are like Vampires…

No…really.  Think about it.

Mothers are nocturnal.

Mothers can sense when their loved ones are in danger, even if they're not in the same room.

Mothers can move faster than the speed of sound to snatch a falling child out of mid-air just seconds before they hit the ground.

Just like Vampires.

And today, I decided there's a new trait.  After trying, and failing miserably, to refresh my appearance, I've decided it's not even possible.  In the same way that vampires cannot change their hair, neither can I.

I went in to the stylist today and asked for my punk rock hair back.  I used to be cute.  Before people came out of my vagina, I looked like a rocker.  I looked on the outside what I felt like on the inside.  You could tell by being in the same room with me what I was about.  You could tell by looking at me that I played in a band and lived an exciting life.

But not anymore. No matter who I get to cut my hair, I cannot look like anything but a mother.  It's impossible.  Look at that haircut.  Could I LOOK anymore like a soccer mom?  I asked her for Punk Rock/Joan Jett in 1978 —- DOES THAT LOOK ANYTHING LIKE JOAN JETT IN 1978?!?!!?!?!?  I would insert many, many expletives here, but I know some Christians read my blog so I'll spare y'all the blasphemy.

Apparently I will have the "Mom Bob" for the rest of my natural life now.  It's inevitable.  People will never again look at me and think "oh, I bet she plays guitar" or "oh look, it's that girl who played in those cool bands!"  Nope.  They will look at me and think "I wonder how many kids she has" or "yeah, she clearly never did anything even remotely cool in her entire life."

And with that, I will leave you with this video. It is hilariously, painfully true.  There is no avoiding it. Time to mix up some oxycotin and Jack Daniels, then drink away the pain
of assimilation.  I'm a mom, and there ain't nuthin' cool about it.

August 27th, 2009

The Storm Before The Calm

Jesus.

Shit is crazy.

Work is nuts.
School is nuts.
Cakes are nuts.
Kids are nuts.
And I have a bad cold this week.

If I make it through this week without maiming someone, it will be by the grace of God-the-Mystical-Sky-Fairy.

This is what it looks like when you cut off a chicken’s head, and its body keeps running around the barnyard.  I’m beyond overwhelmed.  Besides all the stuff I HAVE to do, I really WANT to finish the ICAN of DuPage startup materials so I can get that out of the gate before our September 14th meeting. 

And then there’s this blog.  Oh poor blog, you have been neglected so.  No, of course I don’t have to write, but if I don’t write for a few days, it nags at me – like the feeling of having to go pee, but being too busy to do it.  If you go too long, you’ll end up with a bladder infection.  In my case, it’s a “too-many-words-in-my-head” infection, and the catharsis of this blog is often my only relief.

So, like I said, I started school again last week, and these are certainly the two hardest class I’ve had so far.  One is a political philosophy course with a 101 year old teacher whose rules are the bible and who, I can tell already, will be very hard pressed to give anyone in the class anything higher than a C because that’s how hardcore, old-school philosophy professors operate.

This oughtta be fun.

The second class is an ECON 201 course (Microeconomics) and (let me put this in big, bold letters so you understand I’m very serious) – I SUCK AT MATH.

I know the math teachers of the world are gasping in horror now, but those are the facts.  I’ve gotten through my whole life without ever learning how to multiply a fraction, or plot a grid.  But now, if I want to pass this class, I’m going to have to learn how to do both of those things, and a lot more, in the next 7 short weeks.  I had to buy graph paper for the first time in my life last week.  I found it in the “back to school” section, next to the crayons and glue sticks.  Is this what my life has come to?  Shouldn’t I be buying these things for my own children?  Aren’t I beyond this?

Apparently not.

If I don’t get a break soon, I might lose it.  I really might.  I wrote many, many expletives in an email yesterday to my fucking boss, and only had the good sense to delete them about 3 milliseconds before I hit the Send button.  The Husband took me out to eat last night to calm my nerves, and before we left I overheard him begging the 3 yr old to please be on his best behavior because mommy is not feeling well and she might get all screamy if certain people couldn't act right in the restaurant. Sad.

But tonight I won’t get home from work/class until 11:30 pm, at which time I have to decorate 4 dozen cupcakes in the theme of “Ralph’s World” for an order due tomorrow morning.

And then there's more class. And more cakes due. And these kids won't give me a break.

Have I mentioned that I haven’t slept in a couple of years?

September 15th.  Please, please September 15th, come as fast as you can.

***now where did I stash that few-year old bottle of Zoloft?***

July 17th, 2009

Trust ME Twitter Friend, You Don’t Need That Cesarean

I think many of us walk a fine line between wanting to know what’s going on in the world, and being sorry we ever asked.  Thanks to the power of Twitter, I have been able to cyber-witness mothers everyday in hospitals all over this country being rolled off to the OR for their cesareans – all Tweeted live by the expectant father.  It’s not hard to tell by a quick glance at the blinkies on the side of my blog that I am no fan of cesarean deliveries, and I’m not one to hide my feelings on the matter either. Science and evidence are on my side, and I know it.  I realize this means I’m putting myself in a challenging position by exposing myself to certain Tweets in Twitterland.

Oh, they just make it too easy.  If you have a nifty application like TweetDeck or Seesmic, you can perform a quick search on any word, and it will open a column that is continuously populated with tweets that contain that searched word.  Right now I have a column open for the term “BFing” (or breastfeeding) and one for the term “cesarean.”

Almost every day I see a tweet or two come in from a dad in a delivery room somewhere in America’s heartland, saying something to the effect of “labor’s a bust, we’re going with the cesarean.”  And of course, being who I am, my heart drops just a little.  I can’t not say something (more on this later).  So here is the transcript from yesterday’s encounter:

TheDad: Thank god for the epidural. She's in labor getting close! Exciting!
TheDad: Doing cesarean in bout half an hour after no progress from baby with 2 hours of pushing

(Here's where I come in)

Me: Get rid of the epidural, and she probably won't need the cesarean (they r bad news). Seriously. That's what worked for me.

TheDad: it's only bad whentoo strong to feel anything. Babies head toobig nothing to do with epidural

Me: it's bad when she can't move to reposition the baby. If she was able to move, baby's head is likely to fit. Avoid cesarean.
Me: and btw, "big baby" and "big head" are good excuses for docs to cut, and 90% of the time they are wrong about size.

TheDad: of course she can move to reposition the baby. Epi doesn't mean handicapped. It's not rocket science. Some heads are too

TheDad: big and some hip bones are too small and don't move.

Me: i'm a small woman who birthed a 10 lb baby after the doctors said I never could. Doctors love cesareans. Very sad.

TheDad: great for you. Unfortunatelynot all womens bones cooperate

Me: we always blame the woman's body. Our bodies are not a lemon. Good luck with baby, I wish Mom a speedy recovery. Ican-online.org

Now, I realize that it seems completely ludicrous that I would expect some stranger to take my advice over Twitter.  I am under no delusion that this man is going to turn to his wife whilst she’s being prepped for the OR and say “Honey, unplug the spinal, this woman on Twitter says you shouldn’t have a cesarean.”  And I’d surely die of shock if she actually turned to him and said “Really?  A stranger on Twitter said so? Okay, unhook me Doc! I’m delivering this baby through my vagina instead.”

No, no, it’s not like I really think that’s going to happen. So why do I bother?  Why do I upset myself, and undoubtedly upset this expecting dad on the most important day of his whole life?  I promise this is not nearly as selfish as it sounds.  Or at least I hope not. 

Yes, I understand that I don’t know any of the details about this couple’s unique situation.  Maybe there was a really, really good reason why she needed a surgical delivery.  The issue is, though, this situation is hardly “unique.”  If people only knew how their cesareans played out like scripted screenplays, they might feel cheated and lied to.  The Business of Being Born did an excellent job of creating a cartoon out of this all-too-common situation.    Everyone thinks their cesarean was “necessary” and an “emergency” when in reality so few of them really are.  I want people to know this. I want to help them avoid this.  I want them to avoid the pain and trauma my cesarean caused me. 

My intentions are pure – but you know what they say about Intentions and that Paved Road to Hell…  The truth is, I can’t help it.  I have always felt some unshakeable urge to convince others of my argument, especially that which I am passionate about, even if it may not be the appropriate time or place for such an exchange.

Ten years ago I wrote and recorded a song called “The Joke’s On You” in which I announced to a (then) unrequited* love that:

I have two things
A big mouth, and bad timing
But I have something
You can’t admit that you need
Oh, oh, oh, the joke’s on you.

It seems not a lot has changed in the last ten years.  I’m a different person, arguing about different things, but my need to be right, and/or save people from certain doom (whether that be a major surgery, or the sin of not loving me back) hasn’t shifted much.  And now that I think about it, I may have been like this since I was a child.

I once held a sleepover in 7th grade.  You know, the kind that you invite all the popular girls to in an effort to improve your social status.  For some reason these sleepovers always consisted of a crying session, in which girls would sit in a circle and take turns telling some tear-jerking tale. We would all sob and hug each other – the general purpose being that all this emotion-sharing would bond us, like, 4-ever.

I remember at this particular party, one girl, let’s call her “Lydia”, used her turn to tell the story of her uncle who was dying from cancer.  Very sad indeed.  Everybody loaded onto the Sympathy Train and listened intently to Lydia’s sad story.  She came to a point where she told us all that she visited her uncle in the hospital, and he had lost all his hair.  Lydia informed us that the cancer had made him bald.

I looked at Lydia with the typical level of care and concern that an 11 yr old girl is capable of, and proceeded to correct her.  “No Lydia,” I said, “the cancer itself didn’t make your uncle lose his hair, it was the chemotherapy – the treatment for the cancer that did that.”  Big Mouth.  Bad Timing.  Even at 11 yrs old.

Lydia screws up her face and shouts back at me “No! It was the cancer! He said so!” and wails a little harder.  All the other girls rush in to hug her, glancing over their shoulders at me with daggers in their eyes, like I’m the biggest dickhead in the whole world.  They think to themselves, “Ughgh, there goes Gina again, being an argumentative ass. It’s no wonder none of us really likes her.  We only came to this sleepover because she promised that there was an old liter of vodka stashed in the back of her grandparents cupboard.” 

What?  I was right about the Chemo.  But I guess that’s no excuse for saying so.

I don’t know.  Perhaps I am a dickhead.  Perhaps my habitual urge to explain the truth to others indicates that I harbor some clinical form of narcissism that could benefit from a little old-fashioned shock therapy.

I prefer to believe that I am a Defender of The Truth.  I think this is what will make me a great lawyer.  If I wasn’t willing to take one for the team, how could I ever help anybody?  I suppose it is my destiny in life to be a little bit hated by some, but appreciated by those souls I can actually get through to.  I may not have saved that woman from her cesarean, but maybe I planted a seed?  I hope, very very hard, that’s what happened.

Though most days I think I ought to delete the columns from Tweetdeck, and surgically remove the part of my soul that aches from these un-truths. 

It is just so much simpler not to care.

~TFB

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*We went on to date for two years, and are still very good friends.  That relationship remains one of the most important relationships either one of us has had to date. See?  I was right.