Attitudes towards Child Birth

I've been experiencing a bit of culture shock over the differing attitudes towards child birth here in the deep south. Back in NE, there is a trend towards natural child birth - no interventions or medications unless medically necessary. This trend has been going on since my mother was pregnant with me! Here in the deep south, attitudes are definitely a good 30-40 years behind! C-section rates are close to 70%, episiotomy (which in NE will only be performed IF medically necessary) is common and why wouldn't you want to be induced? I actually had one woman that I barely know tell me to schedule a C-section rather than go through labor. She couldn't fathom why I wouldn't want major surgery. Hmmm....pain for a few hours/days or pain for a few WEEKS? Thankfully, my doctor supports all of my choices. She fully understands that I will leave the hospital if staff isn't listening to me. Now I just have to find a good birthing class online or on DVD. See, we don't have any of those within a 3 hour driving distance. Well, we have 1 "Christian birthing class" taught by some local minister. From what I've heard, pain management in that class is "offering your suffering up to the Lord" and praying. Yeah, because I could totally make it through THAT class without making the instructor cry. Anyone have any recommendations for a good online class or DVD on natural childbirth?

Packaging

DH has some very important meetings this week, so we went to purchase him some new dress shirts. For some reason, every time he wears a dress shirt, he ends up in lab and the dress shirt either ends up with a hole or a stain. So after what seemed like 6 hours of shopping, he had 4 dress shirts. When we got home, I went to put the dress shirts in the wash, only to discover that the packaging on men's dress shirts is a total pain in the ass. There were 3 plastic tag things to cut off, 2-3 stickers, a plastic collar thingy on one side and a cardboard collar thingy on the other side, a cardboard piece the shirt was folded around, a piece of tissue paper and 12 pins. Seriously, what gives? This can't be an environmentally friendly way of packaging the shirts. Why are shirts packaged this way anyways? Doesn't it make it hard to try the shirt on?

Maternity shorts

Yes, it is official, I'm pregnant. Having a short torso and really long legs, I'm already having issues finding maternity clothes. For the most part, maternity tops just don't come in petite. This isn't a really big deal as I am compensating by wearing tank tops underneath so that when the maternity top inevitably slides off my shoulder, at least I'm not baring my entire shoulder and chest! Obviously, some styles just work better than others. I've also managed to find jeans, which is good because I live in jeans when I'm in the lab. The piece of clothing I'm having issues with is maternity shorts. In lovely Mississippi, the only maternity shorts I can find are Daisy Dukes. Really? Who thought THAT was a good idea? Then again, most of the pregnant women I've met around here are a good 10-15 years younger than me (Mississippi has a HUGE teenage pregnancy problem, probably due to the fact that they outlawed sex ed in schools). So maybe Daisy Duke maternity shorts make sense to the teenage crowd? In any case, I've been able to order a single pair of mid-length shorts online (only had one pair in my size). So it looks like I'll be wearing those and an old pair of DH's workout shorts from the Navy this summer....

HHS Edict Controversy

I have been inundated with friends and relatives posting on Facebook about how it is illegal for the US government to force Catholic institutions to "provide abortions and contraceptives" as it is a violation of the First Amendment. My reaction is that 90% of these people need to go back to school and relearn reading comprehension and civics. I have 3 main issues with these Facebook posts.

First issue: The HHS Edict States that Health Insurance Plans HAVE to offer coverage for contraceptives and abortions under preventive care. This means that the big Catholic Universities, Hospitals and Schools (ie businesses) must offer coverage for contraceptives and abortions. This does not mean that anyone is decreeing that people who object to these services HAVE to utilize them. The only must be included in the health insurance plan by law. Direct employees of the Catholic Church (think priests, nuns, rectory employees, groundskeepers, etc) are exempt from this requirement because the funding for their paychecks comes directly from a religious organization. Why are the Catholic Universities, Hospitals and Schools required to offer them? Well, because most of them accept at least some form of money from our government: research grants, Medicare payments, education subsidies, etc. If they don't want to offer contraceptives and abortion coverage then they do NOT have to. All they have to do is stop accepting government money for ANYTHING. Yet they are Businesses, so they don't want to do that.

Second Issue: I'm not sure WHERE people are getting this, but they seem to think that the Government is going to require Catholic Hospitals to offer contraceptives and abortions. In any case, my argument is the same as above- as long as they take Medicare, they have to have a contract with the Government. If the Government wants to stipulate that in order to get Medicare payments, they must offer certain services, well guess what, they can! This is called contract negotiation and it is part of the foundation of free commerce. Once again, the Catholic Church is under no obligation to enter this contract. However, without the Medicare contract, the Catholic Church has only two options. One is that they will have to turn patients away - thereby losing their status as Emergency and Trauma Centers as in order to earn these designations, you have to accept all patients regardless of insurance or ability to pay. The other options is that the church will have to shell out a LOT of extra money to finance the care of patients with Medicare. Either way, this hurts their profit margins.

Third Issue: The US Government is "attacking Catholicism." This isn't something "singling Catholics out." Catholics are just the only religion making themselves look like uneducated asses over it.

OK, end of my rant. Feel free to disagree - I do enjoy debating!