What really happens in daycare?

For three years during college and two years after college, I worked in the child care industry. Both of the places I worked were top of the line in their niche. I worked with 3-9 year olds with the first job and mainly with infants in the second job. My experiences in child care, mostly the second position, caused me to make the firm decision that my children would never go to center based childcare if I could help it.

Let me first state, that I enjoy working with children. I love watching them learn and develop, I love their optimism and the way they view the world. Child development, especially the first five years is very interesting to me, especially now that I am a mother myself. Watching this small boy, who I first saw as a ball of cells with a dangerous blood clot threatening his very survival, grow to birth and change daily since, it's absolutely magical at times. It's not been all sweetness and light, there have been snags and heartache but it doesn't stop me from marveling at him daily. Before I love my son, I loved other people's children. 

My first childcare job was an accident. I applied for a part time job in a place that had a childcare center that I did not know existed. Overall it was a pleasant experience, my supervisor was amazing, the job was union so there were limits in place, breaks and lunches were guaranteed, as was sick time. Sticking to ratios was not an option, it was mandatory and because it was a drop in place, we could limit the number of children to ensure we stuck to our ratios. It did expose me to some of the harsh realities of child care, such as not being able to take breaks, even bathroom breaks when they were needed, you had to wait for someone else. I learned quickly that I was going to constantly be ill no matter how many times I washed my hands, the older workers assured me it was completely normal to be constantly sick for your first year in childcare but that it would lessen in subsequent years. I learned that if I had to call of sick, it was a catastrophe of epic proportions, so I worked through various contagious illnesses and if a parent noticed (which was very rare) I was instructed to tell them it was my allergies. 

I transferred colleges and left the first job. I went into various retail positions for a while until I found a place at a museum, I thought I had landed my dream job. I was working in a museum which was right in line with my degree in history. I again worked a lot with children, doing museum orientation, interacting with the kids on the floor, and helping out with the museum education program. Towards the end of my degree a curatorial position became open, I did the interviews, I was told that if I graduated that quarter, the job was mine. Unfortunately, I graduated right before 9/11 and that became a time of horrid budget cuts for the museum. Layoff after layoff happened, my potential job was frozen, it still is frozen all these years later. Economic necessity forced me to look for a new job in what was the beginning of this recession. 

I was offered a position in the premier childcare facility in the city, they paid more and had better benefits than any other center. The center was brand new and a showpiece for the company that had it incorporated into its brand new campus. The center only hired people with 4 year degrees. I was to be an infant teacher. It sounded wonderful, it really did. The company that the center served offered its employees 12 weeks of paid maternity leave and then 8 weeks of free childcare in the on site center. Additionally, every child of every employee was entitled to 20 free days of child care a year in our center. I was starting at $10 an hour, which was a substantial raise for me. It seemed too good to be true. It was.

The idea of having 12 infants in one room didn't seem that daunting at first. There were to be 3-4 teacher in the room at all times, so that made the ratio 1 teacher per 3 infants. Seems easy enough compared to the state ratios that most centers follow. In the State of Ohio, if there is one teacher in the room, there can be five infants, if there are two teachers, they can care for twelve infants. Let me say that again, twelve infants. For two teachers. They let me know right away that our ratios were much better than the average daycare center and it just didn't seem that bad to me. 

Fast forward about six months. I have now learned that the quiet babies get ignored. It's just a fact of daycare life. The noisy, fussy, and needy babies get most of the attention all day long and no matter how much you wish to spend equal time with each child, you just can't. Everyone has to be fed, everyone has to be changed. That alone takes up a good chunk of every day. I constantly felt guilty about not having enough time with the babies in my care.

I took a course in communicable disease that is required by the state of Ohio and our instructor told us that if we followed all the sanitation rules when changing the child, including leaving the bleach water on the table long enough for it to actually kill germs that in an 8 hour day we wouldn't even have enough time to change all the children. They know we have to cut corners, even at the state level they know, and no one cares. We propped bottles when we could, more often than not, we were feeding one or two children and bouncing another at our feet in a bouncy chair. If a child came in that required constant one on one care, which was quite regular, it took a caregiver out of the rest of the work, thus making the rest of the team take care of more babies. 

So how did these ratios affect the staff? We were constantly exhausted. We were supposed to have an hour lunch and two fifteen minute breaks a day. If we had to use the bathroom or otherwise leave the room for a moment, it was a major production that required shuffling all over the center. You learn quickly to hold it and hope you get your breaks. The rest of the staff consisted of veteran workers, most of whom had degrees in Early Childhood development. They were jaded by the industry and felt stuck, they felt overworked and underpaid, which honestly, they were. Our health insurance was expensive, and the job we did was both mentally and physically demanding. And ours was the best. 

In my time there, I often heard my coworkers make fun of the babies and their parents. Yes, make fun of babies, as in saying, "This one is a PITA (pain in the ass.)" or poke fun at the way the child looked. Not all of us did this, but of the six people who worked in the infant room during my time there, half of them did. We were connected to the toddler room and I heard similar out of that room.  There were many many comments made about the parents, and I have to admit that there were times that I engaged in this. It is very difficult to stop a child from biting other babies all day long and at the end of the day have the parent tell you that their child doesn't bite. 

Were there improprieties? Yes, sadly. The first head teacher of the room in which I worked was fired for smacking an infant, the child was her own daughter but corporal punishment is not allowed in child care, someone just walking by would have no way of knowing that the child she was smacking was her own. This woman held a degree in Early Childhood Development and had years of center experience. She was fired from the job in our center and promptly hired to direct another center in the city. One day I was changing the diaper of a 17 month old baby. She was bleeding vaginally and looked very swollen, almost torn. There aren't very many logical reasons that a 17 month old baby would be bleeding vaginally. While I was changing her diaper, her mother came down acting odd. She said she had hoped to get there before I changed her diaper as the child had an 'infection'. I've seen bleeding diaper rashes, I have seen infected diaper rashes and infant yeast infections, this was a copious amount of blood, it soaked into the diaper, it wasn't just a smear or two. I immediately alerted my center director because I intended to call Children's Services and report my suspicions. The director took the side of the mother and told me not to worry about it. I stared at her in horror. She suggested if it was still bothering me that I could call the mother and talk to her, perhaps find out what the doctor said but the director did not want the police showing up at her center. I swallowed, nodded at her, then walked back to the break room and called Children's Services. Then I vomited. I spent my entire lunch that day crying me eyes out and on the phone to my fiance trying to decide if I could even go back to that place. In the end, economic necessity won.

A flood destroyed our home, necessitating a move. We moved back to where our families were, two hours north of where we had lived previously. I applied for all sorts of jobs, the economy was Bush II so jobs were scarce. Two childcare centers interviewed me and offered me positions. Because of my experience and four year degree, they offered me a bit more in pay, one place offered me a nickel above minimum wage and the other center offered me a dime. A dime above minimum wage to raise other people's children.

This is what you pay for when you pay your daycare fees. Those who work in early childhood know that they are not going to get rich in this field. That's not what attracts them, they are, for the most part, bright, intelligent, good women (there are so few men in the field) who love children. Their reward is very little for the very hard work they do. 

Customer Dis-Service: Why do we have to take it?

Earlier today I said, "I wish that once, just once, I could call a place and not have to jump through twenty five minutes of computer menu just to talk to a person. Or better yet, go and see a person to get my problem handled immediately." Crazy, isn't it?

In our fast paced, profit driven world, it's hard to find a company that allows you to speak with an actual person without jumping through a series of hoops designed (in my opinion) to frustrate you until you hang up deciding that your issue isn't dire enough for the hassle. But what do you do when you have no choice? When the issue is with your bank card or your utilities?

Well, you have to call. You have to jump through the menu hoops. You have to speak with the customer service representative. You have to repeat all of the information you submitted in the menu hoops to the customer service representative plus whatever additional information they desire. You have to pray to all you hold dear that the person speaks a dialect of English that you understand. You have to pray that they have the listening and comprehension skills to deal efficiently with your problem. You have to hope they are having a good day, are not over worked and are adequately paid so that they do not resent your very call from the minute it clicks on their headset. That's a lot of hoping, I know. And you pay for this hope.

Sadly, you are usually rewarded with one of the aforementioned hopes falling so far off the charts that it takes everything you have not to hang up on the call. What kind of service is this exactly? Who is this serving?

Today I noted an unfamiliar pending transaction on my debit card account. I called the customer service number immediately. I explained that I did not know of the charge, answered all the requisite questions, including whether or not this was a child support account. The CSR went through asking me, "Are you sure no one had access to the account." Yes. "Are you sure your husband did not make the charge?" Hi, it's a child support account, therefore I do not have a husband. "Are you sure your boyfriend did not make the charge?" Uh, yes, nosy bitch. "Are you sure that no one you know made the charge?" ...yes. "Are you sure that you were not in Miami on the day the charge was made?" Um, on Thanksgiving? I am pretty sure I was in Ohio which is nowhere near Miami.

After being grilled as to whether the charge was *really* a charge I did not make, she went into crimestoppers mode, I guess. She informed me that she could see that the company was out of Miami, Florida and that the transaction was an internet transaction. "Have you made any internet purchases recently that you may have forgotten about?" Now, this lady has in front of her, my entire financial history from this month and all proceeding months. A quick scan would show her that I do not have enough money to go making purchases that I forget about. I know, asking for logic is just going too far.

"Well since a fraudulent purchases has been attempted on this account, we are going to have to cancel your card." Wait, a minute, hold the phones, I only have one way to access this account and my money, this card. I attempt to explain this to her and she repeats that my account has been compromised and that she has to cancel the card. I explain that I will not be able to get gas or groceries or take my child to doctor appointments without this card. She says the card should arrive in 5-10 business days. Do these people never jump off the script to think about what they are saying? 5-10 business days could take 2-3 weeks in real time. How many people do you know that could survive for 2-3 weeks without access to their money? I ask her this. Her suggestion? Borrow money from my family. She must have worked for the Romney campaign. If only it were that simple.

I'm getting upset by this point, I ask for a supervisor. She ignores the request and says that she can offer me expedited service that will cost me $18.  I ask how this is benefiting me and again ask for a supervisor. She says, "How do you want your card mailed, regular, or expedited?" I ask for a supervisor. She continues to badger me with this phrase no matter what I say until which point I am in tears and shaking and tell her I do not want to hear another syllable out of her mouth, I demand a supervisor. She puts me on hold...for forty-five minutes. And then hangs up.

I proceed to have an anxiety attack.

Trying to calm myself and listen to my partner who continuously tells me to call them back, I try to call back. Computer hoops. I put in my card number and the computer tells me that card is no longer active. Beautiful. I start crying harder. I put in a series of other personal things until it asks for my pin, when I put in my pin, I am told that pin belongs to a card that is no longer active and the menu restarts. Somehow I managed to get through it again and talk to a Customer Service Representative who at least showed some emotion, when I explained what happened, I heard her intake of breath. She said she would get a supervisor and if it took more than a few minutes, she would come back to me and tell me. She comes back to tell me that my card had indeed been cancelled and the call had been escalated to a supervisor the last time which is likely when it hung up. She told me she was transferring me to that department and I should immediately ask for a supervisor when someone picked up.

Hold music again. Being eaten by anxiety and overwhelmed, I handed the phone off to my partner while I broke down crying. When someone got on the line my partner explained what was wrong and tried to handle the situation for me. He was told by that CSR that he did not care what was wrong with me if I did not get on the phone immediately that he was disconnecting the call. So I took the phone.

This guy wasn't any better. He kept saying that this was no one's fault and that I just had to take the expedited ship because that was the best way to handle this situation to everyone's benefit. I asked how exactly this benefited me and he said, "Well you will get access to your funds." Oh, I didn't know that was a privilege now. It's child support to which I am entitled. And for this benefit, I would be paying $18 for shipping, but he would waive their $5 processing fee. Awesome. In the end, I was beaten, I have to be able to buy groceries and gas.

At some point in the conversation, I asked if I could ensure that the first CSR was disciplined for her disservice. The answer? "We have no way of knowing who that was or what center she was out of." And there in lies our problem.

There is no accountability. That person who is handling your sensitive information and treating you like dirt for calling in about services for which you pay, they can do as they wish. Sure some call centers have tracking information and IDs which are supposed to be given to the customer but more times than not, they are neglected or ignored. I have found that more and more frequently. No one knows with whom you spoke or how to find that person.

But what recourse do we have? Right now I am feeling pretty powerless. The State of Ohio chose this program, if I do not have a personal checking account, which I do not as I am recently divorced and still trying to handle such things, then I default into this card program. I can deal with banks--my last bank has twice been sued and settled lawsuits for fraudulently charging customers--or I can deal with them. Any way I go, I am at a disservice.

Fundie Fascination: The Duggars Dissected

My honest to goodness, first view of the Duggar family.

I have been interested in religions all of my life. Growing up, I read every fiction and non fiction religious book I could find. I was fascinated with religious people and their convictions. Perhaps it was because my family was so lax about religion and really only paid lip service to faith. Maybe it is because I am just naturally curious about how people live their lives, but I have gone through long periods where I studied various faiths and the people who live them.

I suppose it should come as no surprise then, that I have a somewhat secret fascination with the Duggars of Nineteen Kids and Counting fame. I have to admit, every since I first saw a picture of the Duggar family in those awful homemade dresses welcoming baby fourteen or so, I have been hooked. I watch every episode with this sort of amused fascination, perhaps I am just a skeptic but from day one, I felt that the family was far too good to be true. I've been waiting for the Duggar bomb to drop, teenage pregnant daughter, their two gay children (because I mean, come on, statistically if they have around twenty kids, aren't two of them bound to be gay?), the child who drops out of the family to become a Hare Krishna. Something has to give, with them.
But alas, the sugar sweet voice of Michelle tells us that all is well and we believe, right? The children are all decent looking, they appear mostly intelligent, and well behaved (at least in the early episodes) so what they are selling definitely has to be legitimate.

What fascinates me about the Duggars, is what we aren't seeing. Just like every other reality show on TLC, there are plenty of staged syrupy douche commercials mixed and severe meltdowns. Wait...what? No Duggar meltdowns? This is against the TLC formula. Brand Duggar doesn't rely on the same dramatics as other popular shows, you won't see Jim Bob and Michelle sniping at each other, but you will see plenty of wholesome kissing and hear a lot of Jesus loving. In order to find the Duggar grit, you have to look a bit closer.

One of the first things that enraged me about the Duggars was their buddy system. You will see plenty of their older daughters (the sons have better things to do, like pretending to go to work) tending to the young children, doing all of the nurturing, disciplining, homeschooling, while Queen Mommy gestates or nurses the newest spawn. I spent the entire second decade of my life caring for my younger siblings and cousins. When I saw the Duggar parental units gushing about how the older siblings just loooooved caring for their younger 'buddies,' I had to call bullshit. Yes, I loved every child in my care and still do to this day but there were many days and moments where I absolutely resented the role I had. Perhaps if my parents had home-schooled and sheltered me to the point where I could barely look upon strangers on the street without fearing for my spiritual well being, I would have been more joyful in the raising of my younger family members?

A second agitation that surfaced rather early with the Duggars was the babbling nonsense about discipline, self control, putting others first, and virtues of that nature being family goals. There is plenty of martyrdom in the Duggar camp to be sure and the phrase JOY--Thinking about Jesus, Others, then yourself, is bandied about with zeal. But look how Duggars as a whole treat others. Did I miss the part of the Bible where they talked about Jesus' constant tardiness and how he made large groups of people wait for him? Did Jesus go into other people's homes and insult their food, as we saw in the pub in England? (Real food, really? Were you fiending for some Ro-Tel and Tator Tots?) And I am sure I missed the portion of the definition of discipline where it mentioned letting your children quite literally climb up the walls while you blushed and giggled about the prospect of adding another to the horde.

And blanket training...it just makes me shudder. I worked as an infant teacher for a couple of years, we had a family bring their son to us who wished us to use blanket training and other methods of that ilk with their son. They were mystified as to why we couldn't smack their child while he was in our care or ignore his cries to teach him to be less self centered. The poor thing was six weeks old when we got him and thirteen weeks old when they hired a private nanny who better fit with their ideals for training their poor infant.

"Buy used, save the difference." It sounds like a wonderful mantra and when you have twenty plus members of your family buying new is really not practical in a lot of cases. But why does frugal living stop at thrift store shopping sprees? I must say, I would really love to find the thrift stores they are frequenting of late, Frumpy Consignments must have gone out of business.( I made that up, stop googling it.) Where is the Duggar garden on that massive expanse of barely used land? There are enough pieces of equipment about, no one bought a tractor at any point? Gardening is not only frugal but it is good for teaching as well. It is certainly greener than an endless supply of Styrofoam dishes and disposable diapers. Where does one buy used Styrofoam dishes?

So you are probably wondering why I am still fascinated with the Duggars and still DVR their episodes to watch when no one is looking? It's a strange slice of life that I will never see outside of my television. It gives me insight into a group of people I am not likely to be in contact with ever and a tad of understanding for the fundie-light life someone very close to me experienced. But most of all, I watch so that when the tell all book or movie comes out in ten years, I'll have a reference point.

Becoming Mama: My Journey into Motherhood.

I never thought I would become a mother. At age 19 a doctor talked to me gently about endometriosis and told me that I would likely never become pregnant. By the time I was twenty nine, I had been off of birth control for five years and had quite given up on the idea of ever having children of my own.

My family is full of children. I am the oldest of fourteen cousins on my mom’s side, there was always a baby on my hip from age nine on up. My brothers are eleven and sixteen years younger than me. I raised them as my own. When I started looking for work early in college, working with children was a natural choice for me and it was a path that I always seemed to fall into, whether I worked for a museum, a children’s clothing boutique, or childcare. I love children in all stages and my deepest and most buried hope was to have children of my own.

The pressure to have children is immense. People do not think when they ask you when you are going to start a family; it just seems to be a phrase that slips over the lips naturally. From the moment I graduated college it was a persistent question. The pressure got to be so much for me that I stopped attending family functions because I couldn’t bear to hear the question any longer or the clucking of the tongues and sympathetic shakes if I chose to tell someone we were having infertility issues. Worse were the people who reminded me that I was running out of time. My mother was relentless in her quest for grandchildren.

One day in late January or early February of 2008, my only sister called me, she seemed hesitant but she needed to speak with me. She told me she was pregnant. She had never wanted children and this wasn’t at all planned, they weren’t in a stable position to have a baby, but pregnant they were. I hung up the phone with her shaking. I looked around at my half empty home, rooms that were waiting to be filled with children, my husband who I had been with for ten years, and I just started crying. I raged and I cried; I was heartbroken. And yes, I was jealous. I couldn’t understand what I had done in my life to be so undeserving of motherhood. Why I had failed to do deliberately what so many women do everyday completely on accident.  I sunk into a very deep well of self pity. To make matters worse, the next day my mother called to talk to me about my sister’s pregnancy, she decided that it was time that I start looking into infertility treatment and assured me that the family would have preferred me being pregnant over my sister. To say the conversation was less than helpful is probably an overstatement.

Meanwhile, my husband and our very close friend at the time had been picking up on little things that I had been complaining about. My breasts hurt, I smelled things very strongly, I was emotional, I was nauseous, and my period was late. They were both afraid to say anything to me because of the depression I was in over my sister’s pregnancy. Eventually they teamed up and talked me into taking a pregnancy test. I went to the bathroom raging at them, telling them what idiots they were, and how I was glad I wasn’t wasting my own money on this. Two lines showed up on the test. I stared at it in disbelief and just sat there shaking. I checked the packaging even though I knew without a doubt that two lines meant pregnant. When my husband came in to check on me, I couldn’t speak, I just held the test up for him to see. He said, “You’re pregnant.” And I cried. It had been a week since I found out about my sister’s pregnancy.

In my despair and resolve, I had pushed the idea that I would ever become pregnant out of my mind. I missed all of the beginning symptoms of pregnancy because in my mind, it simply wasn’t an option. I was never going to be a mother and it was something that I had been struggling to accept for years. I enjoyed the experience of calling our families to tell them our news. My youngest brother was the first person from my family that I was able to tell and he exclaimed, “I’m going to be like…SUPER UNCLE!” The prospect of two babies was even exciting for a fifteen year old. Everyone was excited and because the news was so unexpected we had a hard time keeping it quiet. Everyone knew before twenty four hours had passed.

Several weeks later, I was having a normal Saturday, I went into the bedroom to speak with my husband and my thigh felt went, I looked down to see a lot of blood. My eyes went wide and I couldn't breathe. I don’t even remember getting to the ER but I remember sitting in the waiting room for four hours crying while I bled. 

It wasn't until another woman became angry and began berating the nursing staff for leaving a pregnant woman who was bleeding in the waiting room that they suddenly found a place for me. They did the ultrasounds and exams and the doctor came back to explain to me about blighted ovum and miscarriages, I was so numb and I don’t even remember looking at her face.  I felt like such a failure. The next evening I went to step into the shower and found that the bleeding had become even more severe, I panicked and we went to another ER this time. The doctor there looked at the results from the first ER and backed up their conclusion that I was having a miscarriage, he did remark that it was curious that my cervix was still nice and closed. I asked him, “Have you ever seen a pregnancy bleed this much and still progress?” He said, “I’m sorry, no.” All I could do was apologize to everyone, for getting their hopes up, for not being able to be a mother, for failing. I remember that night as one of the darkest of my life.

I had an appointment the next morning for the best high risk clinic around, it had been scheduled before the miscarriage, so I called them in the morning, explained that I had had a miscarriage and that there was no reason for me to come in. The receptionist argued with me and said I still needed to come in and get checked out, I wasn’t in any headspace to argue so I complied. I sat in the waiting room looking at all these other pregnant women and I hated everyone one of them. I hated them and I envied them. I thought about how cruel it was that I was sitting here having lost my baby and having to look at their big, healthy, bellies. When my name was called, I somehow managed to walk to the door.

I was grim as I climbed onto the ultrasound chair; the tech was an older woman with a soft but bright voice. I don’t remember anything she said previous to her voice chiming into my thoughts with, “Do you want to hear the heartbeat?” I stared at her uncomprehendingly and looked at my husband to verify that I had just heard correctly. The two of us began to stammer the story of what we had been through over the weekend. She shook her head and said, “I don’t know what they saw but there is the baby right there.” She turned a button and there was the heartbeat. She showed us that there was a blood clot in my uterus and that it was very near the baby. Later the doctor told me I would need to be on bed rest and until the clot was resolved, there would be a danger of losing the pregnancy. I didn’t care; I would have done anything they told me to do.

I would love to give a thrilling story about how wonderful the rest of the pregnancy went but that’s not my story. For the next seven weeks, I continued to bleed and each week when I went to the OB, I had to deal with the fear that I had lost my baby in the previous week. But each week, my baby was still there, heartbeat strong and growing with the charts. Finding out I had gestational diabetes early on was a blow, but I adjusted and controlled what I ate and my blood sugar levels with ferocity. It was something I could control, so I did. The office was very thorough and every week I saw my baby on ultrasound and earlier than I should have, I noticed something about him. I couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen weeks along when I burst at the ultrasound tech, “Is it too early to tell the sex?” She’d seen what I had and she grinned and asked if I wanted to know. I said, “I think it’s a boy.” She thought so too. As if on cue, my sister called me from her own OB appointment, she was a little further along and it was her appointment to find out the sex. She was having a girl.

A few weeks after finding out the sex, the office called me and told me one of the doctors wished to speak with me. My heart jumped into my throat, I knew it could not be good news if the doctor himself wished to speak with me. He gently told me that my baby had tested positive for possible neural tube defects and that he wanted me to come in as soon as possible for more testing and to speak with the geneticist. He asked if I would allow them to do an amniocentesis and I consented. Looking over the ultrasound, especially the spine, the doctor couldn’t find anything abnormal other than inexplicably the umbilical cord had two vessels instead of the normal three. That wasn’t anything to do with neural tube defects, just another oddity on my list of oddities. I spoke with the geneticist, did the amnio and after a week of holding my breath, found out that I had had a false positive.

For the first time in my pregnancy, I was able to relax a bit. I marveled in the experience, the good and the weird. I laughed about how many things people say about pregnancy and how actually experiencing it was an entirely different ballgame. I called the nurse line in a panic, worried about a feeling that didn’t hurt but it was odd and tickly, the nurse gently told me that it was my baby moving. I worried over every little thing but was constantly elated to still be pregnant. I progressed to being kicked in the ribs and not being able to sleep since nighttime was playtime.

Towards the end of my pregnancy, my blood pressure started rising. I have an anxiety disorder and had told my OB team that many times. Their constant worries and worst case scenarios had been stressful enough but this was also my first baby and I was adjusting to things. Eight months of rollercoaster emotions had caught up with me. I told them I was stressed, they worried that I had pre-eclampsia. I had to stay overnight for observation, it was my first time in a hospital and because I had a roommate, no one could stay with me. They did tests and watched me and concluded everything was fine. The next week, I went in and my blood pressure was up again. I explained to the doctor that I had been having anxiety attacks before every appointment since I had begun coming to that office. They hospitalized me again. My stress increased, I don’t sleep well away from home and I was worried about my baby. My perfect blood sugar numbers were ruined in the hospital and all of my routines were disrupted. My blood pressure didn’t go down this time.

After a long night, my doctor came in to see me. He gave me the option, since I was 37 weeks and 1 day, of being induced or waiting a couple of days to do steroid treatments for my baby’s lungs. We talked about what could happen in the waiting period and I decided I was ready to see my son. I wanted him here so that we could know the situation and stop speculating on what ifs. My doctor agreed. As soon as the decision was made, my blood pressure went back to normal and stayed there.

I’d love to tell the story of my textbook labor, how quick, painless and efficient it was, but that’s just not my story. I was induced on the 30^th of September. I was still iffy about drugs but my contractions were very hard and the labor and delivery nurse, Amy, who was amazing, talked me into getting an epidural. Her logic was that I had suffered with the pain of endometriosis all of my life, I had done my time. I agreed. During the epidural, my water broke and in my pregnant mind, I had done something wrong. I cried and apologized. When all was said and done, the epidural was only numbing half of my body. I got it into my head that someone, I am not even sure who, would be angry with me if they found out the epidural wasn’t working properly, so I resolved to fake it. The nurse would ask about my pain and I would gasp, “Two!” while my three birth coaches shook their heads and told her I was lying.

Eventually I gave in and allowed the epidural to be redone. I still remember the anesthesiologist’s name, Naser. Naser was my savior and I praised his name over and over in the coming hours. He popped the needle in with the comment, “I don’t know what their problem was earlier, she was easy.” When he came in to check on my pain level, I told him I hadn’t had a contraction since he had come and he laughed and said, “You are having one right now.” If only it had gone smooth sailing from there. I was progressing slowly and terrified of having a c-section. Every time they came in and my labor stalled, they would try to talk to me about a c-section and I would refuse. I would make a little progress and then stall out again. Seventy two hours after being initially induced, I could no longer pick my head up, I was exhausted and at the end of my rope. When the doctor said c-section, I said, “I just want to see my baby.”

I slept through most of the c-section, I woke up periodically to beg for the damp rag they were allowing me to suck, my mouth was so dry. I remember bits and pieces, snatches of conversation, and I woke up completely when my doctor said, “Here he is.” That first cry ran through my entire body, everything I had been through was worth it just to hear that strong cry. They showed him to me for a second then took him back to clean him up and weigh him. They handed him to my husband and we both cried. I kissed his head and whispered, “Asher.”

He was small, five pounds one ounce, eighteen inches long, but I never expected a big child, my family has small babies. They took him to the special care nursery for observation; he had a hard time regulating his body temperature but otherwise was just fine. After that perilous journey, I had given birth to a tiny miracle. I brought him home three days later and three days after that his status as the only grandchild was altered by the appearance of my niece.  

My journey to motherhood started well before January of 2008, I loved and cared for many from the time when I was just a child myself. I did all the work without having the title. Asher is three now and not that long ago he was confused about him calling me Mama and other people calling me Jessica. He asked, “When did you get Mama?” and I said, “When you came you made me Mama, thank you, baby.” 

Who needs healthcare anyhow?

The other day an old lady showed up at our door. She was collecting donations for a three year old boy who has a brain tumor and needs a ten thousand dollar operation that his parents can not afford. She had a permit from the government to canvas for donations and spent a second or two proving her legitimacy to us.  We have a three year old boy ourselves and despite money being tight for us right now, we scraped up ten dollars to donate. What kind of person could say no to that?

Obviously there are quite a lot of people who can say no to that as there is a constant outcry whenever the topic of healthcare reform is breached. What kind of monsters have we become that we will let three year old children live with brain tumors because they fall into the gap with their health insurance or heaven forbid, are uninsured?

I've run the full gamut myself, been uninsured, had the best insurance (once with a union job and once with a state affiliated job), and am once again in danger of joining the ranks of the uninsured. I can tell you from experience that the level of care one receives, even in the ER while they are uninsured versus insured is a vastly different thing. I have a chronic pain disorder and occasionally it flares up beyond my abilities to manage it, which necessitates trips the the ER. When I was uninsured, I was given pain meds and sent home with admonitions to follow up with someone. When I explained that I was uninsured and could not follow up with someone they basically told me they had done all they could. Insured ER trips meant tests and follow ups. They even found out that I had been suffering from something completely curable and that most of my pain trips were related to that and not my chronic issue. What a difference an insurance card makes.

Or does it? I know of people who have copays of $15, $20, and even $35 for routine doctor visits. For someone making $10 an hour, that's a half a day's work for one doctor visit. Thus getting sick is a luxury one can really not afford. Heaven forbid one needs to make multiple visits in one week or needs prescriptions...or more than one of your children have the audacity to get sick at the same time. Suddenly you can find yourself working just to pay for your healthcare and that doesn't include all the happy bills that arrive later with the percentages that your insurance didn't cover and the happy surprises where they refused to pay for something for some inane reason.

I know, I know, everyone is thinking, 'What about medicaid? It's there for the poor.' Is it? A married couple without children are not eligible for medicaid. Single people are not eligible for medicaid, even if they have disabilities. I know of several people personally who have serious disabilities, such as seizure disorders and Multiple Sclerosis who have been denied medicaid. Why? Because in order to get medicaid in the state of Ohio, you have to be declared disabled by Social Security. Being declared disabled by Social Security is a process that literally takes years, you have to not work during that time and not be able to work. They normally deny people and then the individual has to fight the decision. One has to have medical records backing up their disability and if they have been insured, guess where that leaves them?

Over and over I hear the cry that we have the best health care in the world. Perhaps we do, for those who can afford it. For the rest of us, we'd settle for even mediocre healthcare that we could afford.

Greeting the newborn sun...

I live in Northeast Ohio and for most of my life, I have lived here. We do not get a lot of sunny days up here. We get a lot of cloudy days, a lot of rainy days, a lot of snowy days, usually all three in one day. Our days of full sunshine are precious and fleeting. I have a severe Vitamin D deficiency, when it was discovered, various medical professionals assured me that most people who live where I do have at least a slight deficiency. We're a hardy folk up here but apparently we suffer from lack of sunlight. I remember an aunt telling me after she'd moved south that everyone was happier there, that moods always seemed lighter, and she attributed this phenomena to the difference in the amount of sunlight between the two places.

Even before I realized my spiritual leanings, I loved to be in nature, I loved to watch birds, especially hawks, I loved to walk in woods and find things. I loved to watch clouds and I loved the feel of the sun on my face. I remember being very young, not more than 8, it was spring,it was morning. I could smell the scent of lilacs in the warming day, I looked up at the sky and I closed my eyes relishing the light on my face. I thought about the sun and the things I had learned in science class about the sun. I was afraid that a day would come where there was no sun and then at the same moment that the thought surfaced, I quashed it with the counter thought that it was here now and I was going to enjoy it. It seems like such an insignificant memory from an outside perspective but its a very poignant memory in my mind. I like to revisit those moments of peace. Sunlight normally evokes peace in my memories, lazy days of summer, trips to parks, late nights, camping. All of those memories outlined by sunlight.

With Yule on the horizon, pagans in our hemisphere are looking forward to the longest night of the year and the return of the sun the next morning.  I look forward to greeting the newborn sun and giving thanks for his return. I will strive to be mindful of the gifts the sun brings, and savor every fleeting moment of unobstructed sunlight, partial sunlight, and peeks at the sun we are gifted here in Northeast Ohio.

Happy Yule!

What in the world?

I've been agonizing for an inane amount of time about what kind of layout and header to have for my blog. I've agonized so much, that I have not written a single word for this blog, despite the massive number of posts stuck in my head.

So why this picture? I wanted something artsy. I wanted something that included a soapbox to go along with the name of the blog. This picture is none of those things. What we have here is a picture of my cat Sebastian with his head stuck in a box. Sebastian was just wandering around acting like it was completely normal to have your head stuck in a box, he wasn't worried, he wasn't stressing. Right after I snapped the picture, he laid down to have a nap in his box.

What does this all have to do with this blog? Well, sometimes, instead of waiting for that perfect image you had in your mind, you work with what is presented to you. You use what you have and what makes you laugh.