Over the last 7 years of being a parent I have become passionate about many things. Becoming a mother or father will change you in ways you never knew possible. You grow and mature in ways you couldn’t before. It’s beautiful and difficult at the same time. With this change comes hands-on experience and lessons you never realized were coming your way.
All of a sudden you are faced with decisions you never faced before. Even from conception you realize you have to start making choices for you and your child. How to birth, where, and what interventions you are or are not OK with. Or maybe you go along with what you are told and have a not-so-great experience and that starts you on a self education journey of healing and enlightenment. You have a baby boy and, right away, are faced with a life altering decision to circumcise or not. Someone tells you they don’t vaccinate and your whole world of what you think you ‘have’ to do gets turned inside-out and upside-down. You start to question everything!
With all this comes passion. If you ever want to see how passionate and defensive parents can be about their choices, get on Facebook and ask a question about vaccines, circumcision, breastfeeding or birth. I am not kidding, it can get really ugly. I myself have been a part of this…a lot. Over the last few months though, I’ve backed off. I’ve reflected on my choices and how others feel about their choices. I have come to a new realization. Yes, I am very passionate about my choices. I educated myself and do what I feel is best for my children. However, it’s not about where I birth or where you birth. It’s not about whether or not I vaccinate and you delay vaccinating. It’s about EDUCATING OURSELVES and HAVING A CHOICE!
With money and advertising, comes deceit and lies. I’m not trying to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but greed, money and power take over and become more important than morals. We have to be responsible at this point for ourselves and our children. No longer can you just do something because your doctors says it’s OK. Look at Dr. Lisa Masterson on The Doctors (which I would never watch). She actually said she thinks epidurals are good for babies and you don’t get a gold star for going natural in birth. That is what we are being fed through media. Turn off your TV’s. Start researching for yourself. Ask questions. Make a decision. Be strong and stand firm, but always be willing to listen to more information with an open heart and mind. We can always change our minds. That’s our choice!
If a mom wants to birth in a hospital or at home, breastfeed or bottle feed, work or stay home is all a personal decision. We all have different personalities with different needs and wants. Each family has to find their ebb and flow and no two families will ever be identical in this. What’s important is that we have a choice! If mom wants to birth with an OB in a hospital or at home, it should be HER choice. If she wants interventions or not, it should be HER choice. If dad wants to vaccinate his children and his wife agrees, it is important that they have that choice. If a mom and dad choose to take advantage of chiropractic for their child when he gets ear infections, instead of using antibiotics they are entitled to that choice as well. It is important we keep this freedom to choose!
When we blindly believe others without educating ourselves or our rights are taken away, that is when there is a problem. Yes, I am very passionate about my choices, but I have stepped back enough to see that the bigger issue is making sure we all keep the right to CHOOSE to do things the way we feel best. I have seen people rip each other apart on both sides of issues and it is not right no matter which side of the fence you stand. If we share information, then back off and respect other’s choices, there would be less defensiveness, anger, CPS taking children away because of homebirths, moms would breastfeed more, and on and on. The changes would be positive and too many to count. Supporting, educating, having a choice, and not judging are the answer to helping ourselves and others on our journeys. It may not be easy, but it is doable. I respect your choices even if I do not agree with them. I know that you love your family as much as I love mine.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Great article! I completely agree that it is about consciously choosing through education and exploration of all options. I think you hit on a key point here and I’d like to elaborate on it a bit more. So many choices are driven by fear and that is what we must address if we are going to change the way pregnancy, birth and parenting are experienced in our culture. This is not an easy thing to do since, as you stated, we are bombarded with media images that portray fear and trauma as the norm. Our institutions and the providers in them treat normal births as emergencies waiting to happen and something we and our babies need to be rescued from. They are trained to look for the problems rather than see birth as a normal, healthy life experience. That is another huge part of the problem.
So yes I agree wholeheartedly with your article and want to point out that education and non-judgment are just the tip of the iceberg. Let’s get the facts, understand all our options, take responsibility for our choices, and stop being influenced by mass media and the predominant way of viewing pregnancy and birth as an illness and medical event. Let’s shift the paradigm from fear to trust. It’s going to take all of us to accomplish this!
Great post! This quote sums it up nicely “It’s about EDUCATING OURSELVES and HAVING A CHOICE!” Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
Brilliant post January and thank you for sharing. What I have noticed in life is that people who make unpopular choices are those who have read, researched and inquired to exhaustion about the issue!
Very cute photo of you and babe by the way!
Great article! Thank you for your great work! Will post to our website and share.
Kelly and Erica
Innate Motherhood
http://www.innatemotherhood.com
Thanks January, You are right about choice especially when looking at the big picture. Having children also exposes our boundless capacity to love. Raising our children in Love is humanity’s saving grace.