Response to Chris's comment:
Thanks for the comment! I completely agree with what you said. I think I should have explained my thoughts on the ideas I explored in my project and also done some research. I just didn't want to explain everything that happened so much because then there would be no point of watching the videos. I also think we should work together on another project but figure out something that is actually possible to do with the time we have because I think our projects are more creative than everyone just doing their own thing individually.
Response to my Mom's comment:
Thanks for the comment! I agree with everything you said also. I saw a big difference from when I was interviewing you compared to a lot of other women. Like you said a lot of women seem very unsure and have little knowledge on birth. And I think it is very important to have more knowledge and to be mentally and physically prepared. I should have told you about this project so you could have helped me out with getting to a hospital/or your midwife that you told me you could have got me to meet. I'll let you know about my next projects.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
HW 44
My comments !! :
Casey: Damnnnnnnnnnn.... You're experience with Dr. Moritz was very interesting. I liked how you were EXTREMELY detailed in the post and explained your thoughts throughout the whole experience also. This matters to me because you were so detailed it feels like I was actually there and it made me feel like I've had first hand experiences with birth. Great job buuuuuuuuddy!
John: Johnnnnn you talked about the “love hormone” and bonding between the mother and baby and how it can be disturbed by interventions. I like how you brought in the breastfeeding part because we didn’t talk about breastfeeding and the importance of it during the unit and I was actually unaware of the importance of it. Your project matters to me because it taught me about the bonding process between a mother and a child and you talked about the negative affects if there is no bonding.
Sophia: Sophia you're project went into reasons why people in the U.S. decide to have and not have children. I like how you explore so many reasons to have or not have children and you use statistics and surveys for evidence. This is important to me because I was also very curious about the reasons for having children because it seems like something almost everyone wants at some point in their life.
Chris: Christ great post sounds like you're group project was the best in the whole class... You're project was supposed to be about procedures conducted in hospitals during births. But after you and this Jasper guy were rejected you found people outside to interview about their views on birth and you also interviewed a very knowledgable pediatrician. I like how you still went into what you originally wanted to do the project on and gave some statistics. I also like how you talked to regular people outside but then got knowledgeable source also that you could ask some questions to. This project matters to me because it's the same thing I did and I think it's important to know what the society thinks not just the people you know! P.S. you make us seem very stupid in your post. And me more than you..
Casey: Damnnnnnnnnnn.... You're experience with Dr. Moritz was very interesting. I liked how you were EXTREMELY detailed in the post and explained your thoughts throughout the whole experience also. This matters to me because you were so detailed it feels like I was actually there and it made me feel like I've had first hand experiences with birth. Great job buuuuuuuuddy!
John: Johnnnnn you talked about the “love hormone” and bonding between the mother and baby and how it can be disturbed by interventions. I like how you brought in the breastfeeding part because we didn’t talk about breastfeeding and the importance of it during the unit and I was actually unaware of the importance of it. Your project matters to me because it taught me about the bonding process between a mother and a child and you talked about the negative affects if there is no bonding.
Sophia: Sophia you're project went into reasons why people in the U.S. decide to have and not have children. I like how you explore so many reasons to have or not have children and you use statistics and surveys for evidence. This is important to me because I was also very curious about the reasons for having children because it seems like something almost everyone wants at some point in their life.
Chris: Christ great post sounds like you're group project was the best in the whole class... You're project was supposed to be about procedures conducted in hospitals during births. But after you and this Jasper guy were rejected you found people outside to interview about their views on birth and you also interviewed a very knowledgable pediatrician. I like how you still went into what you originally wanted to do the project on and gave some statistics. I also like how you talked to regular people outside but then got knowledgeable source also that you could ask some questions to. This project matters to me because it's the same thing I did and I think it's important to know what the society thinks not just the people you know! P.S. you make us seem very stupid in your post. And me more than you..
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
HW 42
For the project Chris, Kevin and I wanted to go to a hospital and record what it's like in the hospital where they have births. I thought that this was a good idea because during the unit we watched the movie that showed us almost all home births and everything was biast leaning towards the more "natural" way and making the hospital seem horrible. We tried to get into 3 hospitals to do this project but we were rejected from 2 and didn't have enough time to get a letter from our school for the third one. So here we were on tuesday afternoon with nothing. Our plan didn't work out. So instead we put together a list of questions to ask a pediatrician that Chris and I know. She obviously isn't directly related to birth but we figured she has more knowledge then your average person and we can get a pro hospital point of view. Then we hit the streets with a video camera and tried to interview as many people as we could. We had heard the views of our classmates and our parents but I wanted to see what the rest of the society thinks. We went through a lot trying to get people to talk to us. We got chased out of Babies 'R us, and turned down by a bunch of people. Some people just didn't bother responding when we tried to get their attention and some said that they didn't feel comfortable talking about it, and some people just straight up sucked at answering questions. The fact that it was hard for us to interview people made me think about how birth is separated from our society. This one woman seemed sooooo uncomfortable when we asked her about it and I was thinking why? One person we interviewed just didn't want to go deep into their answers at all just like 2 word answers. I also noticed that the women we talked to didn't seem to even know as much as us. They didn't have birth plans, they wanted to take drugs so they didn't feel the pain. Butttt I don't want to just explain the videos because there will be no point of the videos.. So overall I would say everyone seems so into birth and they want to have kids but it seems like they're not sure about anything they just want to have a baby. The whole area between being pregnant and having a baby in your arms seems like a fog...
Some of the interviews:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGqNiRWj_4k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKeEqRq9KX8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMJndw620lk
Q and A with pediatrician:
Some of the interviews:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGqNiRWj_4k
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKeEqRq9KX8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMJndw620lk
Q and A with pediatrician:
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
HW 40
Jasper: Hey Tina Cassidy thanks for writing the book Birth! Your main idea about how pregnancy and birth has changed and came to what it is today moved me and made me rethink pregnancy and birth.
Tina: Oh Really, which parts were most effective or important for you?
Jasper: Well, since I just finished the book I'll talk about the last third of the book. You focused on the position of the father during pregnancy and birth and after the baby is born, which added another angle to how birth has changed over time because you went into things like what the fathers role has been in birth over time and what it is now, so this further developed ideas in the first 2/3rds of the book. But let me be more specific. For example on page 207 you wrote: "At the end of the 1960s, only 15 percent of men were attending the births of their children. By the late 1970s, a majority of men were participating right up until the cord cutting. They had to. It was now their duty." This quote presents how you show the change over time. On page 209 you wrote: "A 1992 study asked fathers in the San Francisco area who were present for birth: Were they coaches, teammates, or witnesses? Most men said they ended up being witnesses. Being anything more, at a time of so much turmoil, was too much to ask". This quote shows what this aspect of birth is like today and brings up problems we have with birth now. Something new that I was exposed to towards the end of the book was the things that people do with placentas. I had no idea that placentas were eaten. "They considered the placenta to be sacred, and, of course, because the organ gave life and nothing was killed to put it on the table, it was considered an honor to consume it", (page 218). Before I thought that the placenta was just thrown away after birth, but I learned that the placenta could be used for many reasons, and not just eating, it is used for medicinal purposes in other places too. Overall I got many insights about pregnancy and birth and learned a lot of new things that I had no idea about before reading the book.
Tina: But what could I have done to make this a better book - that would more effectively fulfill its mission?
Jasper: Well, let's be clear, your text sought to provide narratives, historical analysis, journalistic analysis, policy analysis from the perspective of a woman for the book-reading-public to better understand pregnancy & birth in our culture. Given that aim, and your book, the best advice I would give for a 2nd edition of the text would be, to figure out the typical reasons women decide to give birth in a hospital and then confront those ideas and prove them wrong that way women won't fear giving birth at home, or in a birthing center. But I don't want you to feel like I'm criticizing. I appreciate the immense amount of labor you dedicated to this important issue and particularly for making me think about all the different aspects of pregnancy and birth and how they got to be the way they are. In fact, I'm likely to tell other's about the things I learned about in your book so maybe I can one day help someone out that is going through the pregnancy and birth process!
Tina: Thanks! Talking to you gives me hope about our future as a society!
Tina: Oh Really, which parts were most effective or important for you?
Jasper: Well, since I just finished the book I'll talk about the last third of the book. You focused on the position of the father during pregnancy and birth and after the baby is born, which added another angle to how birth has changed over time because you went into things like what the fathers role has been in birth over time and what it is now, so this further developed ideas in the first 2/3rds of the book. But let me be more specific. For example on page 207 you wrote: "At the end of the 1960s, only 15 percent of men were attending the births of their children. By the late 1970s, a majority of men were participating right up until the cord cutting. They had to. It was now their duty." This quote presents how you show the change over time. On page 209 you wrote: "A 1992 study asked fathers in the San Francisco area who were present for birth: Were they coaches, teammates, or witnesses? Most men said they ended up being witnesses. Being anything more, at a time of so much turmoil, was too much to ask". This quote shows what this aspect of birth is like today and brings up problems we have with birth now. Something new that I was exposed to towards the end of the book was the things that people do with placentas. I had no idea that placentas were eaten. "They considered the placenta to be sacred, and, of course, because the organ gave life and nothing was killed to put it on the table, it was considered an honor to consume it", (page 218). Before I thought that the placenta was just thrown away after birth, but I learned that the placenta could be used for many reasons, and not just eating, it is used for medicinal purposes in other places too. Overall I got many insights about pregnancy and birth and learned a lot of new things that I had no idea about before reading the book.
Tina: But what could I have done to make this a better book - that would more effectively fulfill its mission?
Jasper: Well, let's be clear, your text sought to provide narratives, historical analysis, journalistic analysis, policy analysis from the perspective of a woman for the book-reading-public to better understand pregnancy & birth in our culture. Given that aim, and your book, the best advice I would give for a 2nd edition of the text would be, to figure out the typical reasons women decide to give birth in a hospital and then confront those ideas and prove them wrong that way women won't fear giving birth at home, or in a birthing center. But I don't want you to feel like I'm criticizing. I appreciate the immense amount of labor you dedicated to this important issue and particularly for making me think about all the different aspects of pregnancy and birth and how they got to be the way they are. In fact, I'm likely to tell other's about the things I learned about in your book so maybe I can one day help someone out that is going through the pregnancy and birth process!
Tina: Thanks! Talking to you gives me hope about our future as a society!
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
HW 39
Cassidy, Tina. Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born. New York: Grove Press, 2006.
Topics the book has taught me about are: cesarean sections, the role of doctors in birth over time, and tools and procedures of getting babies out.
A major insight the book tries to communicate in the second 100 pages I think is how over time birth has became more of a medical procedure, it is like a surgery now opposed to how it used to be more natural. I definitely agree with this, I understand why it has become this medical procedure because of complications it is good to have help from doctors if needed. I think that people should be allowed to have more control over how they want to have their birth when they're in hospitals. The hospital should not push drugs on the woman giving birth or force them into anything they don't want. I think people should be allowed to do their own birth their own way in the hospital so that way they don't feel pressured and they know there is help from doctors only if they need it.
Some interesting aspects of pregnancy and birth discussed in the second hundred pages that I agree deserve wider attention are the roles of doctors in birth, and what the mother wants to do. I feel like the doctors have taken over the process of birth they are deciding what the woman should do and pressuring women into doing things they don't want to. I think the mother should be able to decide how she wants to give birth and do it that way and then if there are any problems the doctor can come in and help opposed to going to the hospital and the doctors try to give you drugs and trying to make you do an epidural. Also the procedures in hospitals should be looked further into for example shaving a woman right before birth is supposed to be more "clean" but in the book it says the statistics really show that there is a higher chance of an infection.
"Doctors are likely to induce mother who are past their forty week 'due date' out of concern that the baby might get too big for an uncomplicated delivery. But statistics show that half of all healthy first-time mothers have pregnancies that last longer than forty-one weeks, and their births are fine", (Page 178). This was a quote that also applies to what I said earlier about how statistics contradict some of the things that the doctors do. I looked this up and could not find that exact statistic but I found: "the average length of a pregnancy was about 40 weeks + 8 days for first time mothers," (http://www.birth.com.au/Induction-for-being-overdue/When-is-my-baby-due) this shows that average pregnancy length of is already longer than 41 weeks yet doctors want to induce women who pass 40 weeks.
Topics the book has taught me about are: cesarean sections, the role of doctors in birth over time, and tools and procedures of getting babies out.
A major insight the book tries to communicate in the second 100 pages I think is how over time birth has became more of a medical procedure, it is like a surgery now opposed to how it used to be more natural. I definitely agree with this, I understand why it has become this medical procedure because of complications it is good to have help from doctors if needed. I think that people should be allowed to have more control over how they want to have their birth when they're in hospitals. The hospital should not push drugs on the woman giving birth or force them into anything they don't want. I think people should be allowed to do their own birth their own way in the hospital so that way they don't feel pressured and they know there is help from doctors only if they need it.
Some interesting aspects of pregnancy and birth discussed in the second hundred pages that I agree deserve wider attention are the roles of doctors in birth, and what the mother wants to do. I feel like the doctors have taken over the process of birth they are deciding what the woman should do and pressuring women into doing things they don't want to. I think the mother should be able to decide how she wants to give birth and do it that way and then if there are any problems the doctor can come in and help opposed to going to the hospital and the doctors try to give you drugs and trying to make you do an epidural. Also the procedures in hospitals should be looked further into for example shaving a woman right before birth is supposed to be more "clean" but in the book it says the statistics really show that there is a higher chance of an infection.
"Doctors are likely to induce mother who are past their forty week 'due date' out of concern that the baby might get too big for an uncomplicated delivery. But statistics show that half of all healthy first-time mothers have pregnancies that last longer than forty-one weeks, and their births are fine", (Page 178). This was a quote that also applies to what I said earlier about how statistics contradict some of the things that the doctors do. I looked this up and could not find that exact statistic but I found: "the average length of a pregnancy was about 40 weeks + 8 days for first time mothers," (http://www.birth.com.au/Induction-for-being-overdue/When-is-my-baby-due) this shows that average pregnancy length of is already longer than 41 weeks yet doctors want to induce women who pass 40 weeks.
Monday, March 14, 2011
HW 38
Book: Birth by Tina Cassidy
The book is organized with a mixture of Tina Cassidy's own experience with birth and the history of birth so far. She talks about how birth used to be and what it is like in other cultures. She also goes into the physical things about birth like how humans evolved to have wider pelvises. The major question that the book tries to answer is how birth was in the past and how has it changed over time and why? Also: How can we find a way for women to have birth in a safe and joyful way? I think these are really good questions to explore but I wouldn't really know anything about the answer. I think for starters women shouldn't be rushed in a hospital while having birth and they shouldn't be pushed to take drugs and get epidurals etc etc.. I think it should be more of a natural thing and not like a surgery. The major insight the book tries to communicate in the first 100 pages is how midwives' roles has changed through time and it is different in different places. The author talks about how births go better when there is even a midwife just there to comfort the mother. I think that this makes sense and is interesting. But a question that keeps coming up in my head is if there are all the facts and ways that seem to work better than our system how come we don't change? I feel like our country is stubborn sometimes and we don't want to change anything. Some interesting aspects of pregnancy and birth that the author and I agree deserve public attention are: the hospitals should take into consideration how the mother wants to have the birth instead of trying to make them take drugs and do all this stuff that they didn't originally do. Women shouldn't be forced into these multiple interventions. Epidurals have replaced natural things that can help like massaging and breathing exercises. I think overall women should be shown more alternatives for how to have a more joyful birth and a natural birth that is less painful because there are many ways out there. I think the author uses evidence very well. I am convinced by everything the author is writing. Although the book is definitely bias, it only shows one side. The author uses many facts from surveys and some ancient stories. But I think the numbers convince me the most. I can open up to a random page and it'll usually have some type of statistic for example page 14: "Babies born late at night have as much as 16 percent greater change of dying than babies born between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., a 2005 study found." I think it's good because there is all kind of evidence from surveys, studies, her own/friends experiences, old stories, doctors so you get all these different evidences. Overall, I think the book is very convincing.
The book is organized with a mixture of Tina Cassidy's own experience with birth and the history of birth so far. She talks about how birth used to be and what it is like in other cultures. She also goes into the physical things about birth like how humans evolved to have wider pelvises. The major question that the book tries to answer is how birth was in the past and how has it changed over time and why? Also: How can we find a way for women to have birth in a safe and joyful way? I think these are really good questions to explore but I wouldn't really know anything about the answer. I think for starters women shouldn't be rushed in a hospital while having birth and they shouldn't be pushed to take drugs and get epidurals etc etc.. I think it should be more of a natural thing and not like a surgery. The major insight the book tries to communicate in the first 100 pages is how midwives' roles has changed through time and it is different in different places. The author talks about how births go better when there is even a midwife just there to comfort the mother. I think that this makes sense and is interesting. But a question that keeps coming up in my head is if there are all the facts and ways that seem to work better than our system how come we don't change? I feel like our country is stubborn sometimes and we don't want to change anything. Some interesting aspects of pregnancy and birth that the author and I agree deserve public attention are: the hospitals should take into consideration how the mother wants to have the birth instead of trying to make them take drugs and do all this stuff that they didn't originally do. Women shouldn't be forced into these multiple interventions. Epidurals have replaced natural things that can help like massaging and breathing exercises. I think overall women should be shown more alternatives for how to have a more joyful birth and a natural birth that is less painful because there are many ways out there. I think the author uses evidence very well. I am convinced by everything the author is writing. Although the book is definitely bias, it only shows one side. The author uses many facts from surveys and some ancient stories. But I think the numbers convince me the most. I can open up to a random page and it'll usually have some type of statistic for example page 14: "Babies born late at night have as much as 16 percent greater change of dying than babies born between 7:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m., a 2005 study found." I think it's good because there is all kind of evidence from surveys, studies, her own/friends experiences, old stories, doctors so you get all these different evidences. Overall, I think the book is very convincing.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
HW 37
Comments I made:
Chris,
I like how you had a specific topic about birth that you wanted to look into opposed to just asking about their experiences. My favorite part was: "While the father is usually expected to be there for morale support and to make sure the baby will have a place to live and be happy, in her case the father was more hands on then she wanted and as a result to that it is kind of like he was also taking care of the baby for nine months. ". I thought this was interesting I had never heard of someone getting too much attention from a male during birth. I wonder why this was a problem for her.. Overall I thought it was a good post and I thought you did well explaining your thoughts about the male role during pregnancy and birth and you were able to get good examples that were different from each other.
Amanda:
I like how you chose people with all different views and explored what the woman's knowledge of the pregnancy and birth giving process mattered. This is kind of off topic but my favorite part was: "but it did scare her because she had never felt another life insider her before." This idea of having another life inside of you made me think about how that must affect the way a female feels about being pregnant. I thought you did well on showing your own opinions for each of the views right after you talked about what they people being interviewed thought.
Javon:
I thought this was really good I like how you listed out the key ideas in each interview and then went deeper into them after. My favorite part was: "In this interview the mother was concerned about the father's point of view about the pregnancy. I will like to do further research on how significant the mother believes the father's opinion is on the pregnancy. Also how important the father believes his opinion is on the pregnancy." This was interesting to me because it made me think about how both the mother and the fathers opinions on the pregnancy are important. The mother could want to keep the baby and the father doesn't want to (vise versa) but how will it affect the child and how will they feel about it? So it is interesting to think about who's decision is more important.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments on my post:
Chris:
I think you did a good job in this post with showing a lot of the actual birth stories. The first paragraph is actually really engaging and i think this is because you didn't over analyze things at the beginning you just left it how the actual story was and that made me want to read more. I think you could have gone into more depth about that though to make your post stronger. I think you have some good analysis too but the best part of your post as the actual stories because they are your view of what your mom told you and its interesting to here about what you think. Your best line was "She feels like the way birth is viewed in America is very bad, she feels like it is viewed as scary and everyone wants to be drugged up so they don't feel the pain. She was not yelling while giving birth she was very calm and said it was not that bad" you talk a lot about what she thinks though and not enough about what you think! Thats how I think you can improve.
Mom's comment: I like that you described that a person may think of childbirth in different ways. "different people take pregnancy and giving birth more seriously than others. For example I saw how my mom read a lot of books and tried to understand the process as much as she could, she changed her diet, and she didn't drink alcohol at all while she was pregnant, just in general she seemed to really care a lot and want to do as much as she could to have a healthy birth." I think this is a great idea that you can further expanded upon. Today there is so much more knowledge about how to train your body/mind to prepare for an extreme physical challenge and about how to treat a newborn baby the first hours after birth etc. I also liked that you picked up on how different it is for female vs. male during the pregnancy.
"there was one more thing that she told me about. She said that it is hard for the male (my dad) to get interested until the baby is actually there and they are far into their pregnancy, so it has to be concrete, the baby actually has to be there and they have to feel the baby for them to be interested. But in the females case it is very different." I believe this is a topic that really needs some studying. How can a male get more engaged and feel part of the whole experience? I think you can develop more interesting aspects of child birth by expanding both these topics.
(The others didn't comment on my post yet.)
Chris,
I like how you had a specific topic about birth that you wanted to look into opposed to just asking about their experiences. My favorite part was: "While the father is usually expected to be there for morale support and to make sure the baby will have a place to live and be happy, in her case the father was more hands on then she wanted and as a result to that it is kind of like he was also taking care of the baby for nine months. ". I thought this was interesting I had never heard of someone getting too much attention from a male during birth. I wonder why this was a problem for her.. Overall I thought it was a good post and I thought you did well explaining your thoughts about the male role during pregnancy and birth and you were able to get good examples that were different from each other.
Amanda:
I like how you chose people with all different views and explored what the woman's knowledge of the pregnancy and birth giving process mattered. This is kind of off topic but my favorite part was: "but it did scare her because she had never felt another life insider her before." This idea of having another life inside of you made me think about how that must affect the way a female feels about being pregnant. I thought you did well on showing your own opinions for each of the views right after you talked about what they people being interviewed thought.
Javon:
I thought this was really good I like how you listed out the key ideas in each interview and then went deeper into them after. My favorite part was: "In this interview the mother was concerned about the father's point of view about the pregnancy. I will like to do further research on how significant the mother believes the father's opinion is on the pregnancy. Also how important the father believes his opinion is on the pregnancy." This was interesting to me because it made me think about how both the mother and the fathers opinions on the pregnancy are important. The mother could want to keep the baby and the father doesn't want to (vise versa) but how will it affect the child and how will they feel about it? So it is interesting to think about who's decision is more important.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments on my post:
Chris:
I think you did a good job in this post with showing a lot of the actual birth stories. The first paragraph is actually really engaging and i think this is because you didn't over analyze things at the beginning you just left it how the actual story was and that made me want to read more. I think you could have gone into more depth about that though to make your post stronger. I think you have some good analysis too but the best part of your post as the actual stories because they are your view of what your mom told you and its interesting to here about what you think. Your best line was "She feels like the way birth is viewed in America is very bad, she feels like it is viewed as scary and everyone wants to be drugged up so they don't feel the pain. She was not yelling while giving birth she was very calm and said it was not that bad" you talk a lot about what she thinks though and not enough about what you think! Thats how I think you can improve.
Mom's comment: I like that you described that a person may think of childbirth in different ways. "different people take pregnancy and giving birth more seriously than others. For example I saw how my mom read a lot of books and tried to understand the process as much as she could, she changed her diet, and she didn't drink alcohol at all while she was pregnant, just in general she seemed to really care a lot and want to do as much as she could to have a healthy birth." I think this is a great idea that you can further expanded upon. Today there is so much more knowledge about how to train your body/mind to prepare for an extreme physical challenge and about how to treat a newborn baby the first hours after birth etc. I also liked that you picked up on how different it is for female vs. male during the pregnancy.
"there was one more thing that she told me about. She said that it is hard for the male (my dad) to get interested until the baby is actually there and they are far into their pregnancy, so it has to be concrete, the baby actually has to be there and they have to feel the baby for them to be interested. But in the females case it is very different." I believe this is a topic that really needs some studying. How can a male get more engaged and feel part of the whole experience? I think you can develop more interesting aspects of child birth by expanding both these topics.
(The others didn't comment on my post yet.)
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