Pregnancy Pain Quotes

No, I'm the human here. I'm the life at stake. I'm the one with fingernails, who feels pain. Me.

A mother who undergoes a nine-month pregnancy is likely to feel that the product of all that pain and discomfort 'belongs' to her.

As I was wheeled into the operating room I pleaded with God for one more day, one more week, one more month with her.

There are days worth living still, worth the pain of this life and the pain of their deaths. I guess I'm just asking you a favor, in the end: Don't give up before the future comes around that was meant for you, okay?

Her body accepted my brutal seed and took it to swell within, just as the patient earth accepts a falling fruit into its tender soil to cradle and nourish it to grow. Came a time, just springtime last, our infant child pushed through the fragile barrier of her womb. Her legs branched out, just as the wood branches out from these eternal trees around us; but she was not hardy as they. My wife groaned with blood and ceased to breathe. Aye!, a scornful eve that bred the kind of pain only a god can withstand.

[The Spartans] ordered the maidens to exercise themselves with wrestling, running, throwing the quoit, and casting the dart, to the end that the fruit they conceived might, in strong and healthy bodies, take firmer root and find better growth, and withal that they, with this greater vigour, might be the more able to undergo the pains of childbearing.

Every birth comes out of labour pains. The most difficult task is not about being pregnant with visions; it’s about delivering an impact that inspires lives.

Well, my dear sisters, the gospel is the good news that can free us from guilt. We know that Jesus experienced the totality of mortal existence in Gethsemane. It's our faith that he experienced everything- absolutely everything. Sometimes we don't think through the implications of that belief. We talk in great generalities about the sins of all humankind, about the suffering of the entire human family. But we don't experience pain in generalities. We experience it individually. That means he knows what it felt like when your mother died of cancer- how it was for your mother, how it still is for you. He knows what it felt like to lose the student body election. He knows that moment when the brakes locked and the car started to skid. He experienced the slave ship sailing from Ghana toward Virginia. He experienced the gas chambers at Dachau. He experienced Napalm in Vietnam. He knows about drug addiction and alcoholism. Let me go further. There is nothing you have experienced as a woman that he does not also know and recognize. On a profound level, he understands the hunger to hold your baby that sustains you through pregnancy. He understands both the physical pain of giving birth and the immense joy. He knows about PMS and cramps and menopause. He understands about rape and infertility and abortion. His last recorded words to his disciples were, "And, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world." (Matthew 28:20) He understands your mother-pain when your five-year-old leaves for kindergarten, when a bully picks on your fifth-grader, when your daughter calls to say that the new baby has Down syndrome. He knows your mother-rage when a trusted babysitter sexually abuses your two-year-old, when someone gives your thirteen-year-old drugs, when someone seduces your seventeen-year-old. He knows the pain you live with when you come home to a quiet apartment where the only children are visitors, when you hear that your former husband and his new wife were sealed in the temple last week, when your fiftieth wedding anniversary rolls around and your husband has been dead for two years. He knows all that. He's been there. He's been lower than all that. He's not waiting for us to be perfect. Perfect people don't need a Savior. He came to save his people in their imperfections. He is the Lord of the living, and the living make mistakes. He's not embarrassed by us, angry at us, or shocked. He wants us in our brokenness, in our unhappiness, in our guilt and our grief. You know that people who live above a certain latitude and experience very long winter nights can become depressed and even suicidal, because something in our bodies requires whole spectrum light for a certain number of hours a day. Our spiritual requirement for light is just as desperate and as deep as our physical need for light. Jesus is the light of the world. We know that this world is a dark place sometimes, but we need not walk in darkness. The people who sit in darkness have seen a great light, and the people who walk in darkness can have a bright companion. We need him, and He is ready to come to us, if we'll open the door and let him.

Embrace the pain

This is why mothers have more babies. We forget about the pain and discomfort and wild inconvenience of pregnancy and childbirth so we can feel that heavenly feeling of holding a warm baby snuggled and content against our chests again. It's like nothing else in this world.

Each twinge, each murmur of slight pain, ripples of sloughed-off matter, swellings and diminishings of tissue, the droolings of the flesh, these are signs, these are the things I need to know about. Each month I watch for blood, fearfully, for when it comes it means failure. I have failed once again to fulfill the expectations of others, which have become my own.

Today, what's normal is being redefined: from vaginal birth to surgical birth; from 'My water broke,' to 'Let's break your water;' from 'It's time' to 'It's time for the induction.' As medical anthropologist Robbie Davis-Floyd writes, 'in the early twenty-first century, we do not know what normal birth is.' Most practicing obstetricians have never witnessed an unplugged birth that wasn't an accident. Women are even beginning to deny normal birth to themselves: if 'normal' means being induced, immobilized by wires and tubes, sped up with drugs, all the while knowing that there's a good chance of surgery, well, might as well just cut to the chase, so to speak. 'Just give me a cesarean,' some are saying. And who can blame them? They want to avoid what they think of as normal birth.

The vast majority of protesters were men, and it made perfect sense to Louie—the male of the species felt threatened by the biology of women. Even in the Bible, normal female biological functions were made pathological: You were unclean when you had your menses. Childbirth had to occur in pain. And there was the questionable nature of those who bled regularly—but did not die. There was, of course, the history, too. Women had been property. Their chastity had always belonged to a man, until abortion and contraception put control of women’s sexuality in the women’s hands. If women could have sex without the fear of unwanted pregnancy, then suddenly the man’s role had shrunk to a level somewhere between unnecessary and vestigial. So instead, men vilified women who had abortions. They created the stigma: good women want to be mothers, bad women don’t.

I emphasize this because some of my colleagues, for whose academic attainments I have great respect, argue" 'You assume too much; this is not proved; this is not strictly scientific. We disagree with your neurology and your psychiatry is misleading, therefore you must be wrong.' My reply has been, with all humility: 'Yes, of course,' and I have returned to the labor ward to be greeted by happy women with their newborn babies in their arms: 'How right you are, Doctor, it is so much easier that way.' That is what really matters to the clinician. He should use the method that gives the best and safest result from all points of view until something better is discovered.

Nick and the Candlestick I am a miner. The light burns blue. Waxy stalactites Drip and thicken, tears The earthen womb Exudes from its dead boredom. Black bat airs Wrap me, raggy shawls, Cold homicides. They weld to me like plums. Old cave of calcium Icicles, old echoer. Even the newts are white, Those holy Joes. And the fish, the fish ---- Christ! they are panes of ice, A vice of knives, A piranha Religion, drinking Its first communion out of my live toes. The candle Gulps and recovers its small altitude, Its yellows hearten. O love, how did you get here? O embryo Remembering, even in sleep, Your crossed position. The blood blooms clean In you, ruby. The pain You wake to is not yours. Love, love, I have hung our cave with roses, With soft rugs ---- The last of Victoriana. Let the stars Plummet to their dark address, Let the mercuric Atoms that cripple drip Into the terrible well, You are the one Solid the spaces lean on, envious. You are the baby in the barn.

There’s a reason they call childbirth labor. Making a healthy baby takes effort: It requires foresight and self-denial and courage. It’s expensive and demanding and tiring. You have to learn new things, change many habits, possibly deal with complicated medical situations, make difficult decisions, and undergo stressful ordeals. I had a wisdom tooth pulled without Novocaine while I was pregnant—it hurt a lot and seemed to go on forever. The kindness of the very young dental assistant, holding back my hair as I spat blood into a bowl, will stay with me for the rest of my life. Pregnant women do such things, and much harder things, all the time. For example, they give birth, which is somewhere on the scale between painful and excruciating. Or they have a cesarean, as I did, which is major surgery. None of this is without risk of death or damage or trauma, including psychological trauma. To force girls and women to undergo all this against their will is to annihilate their humanity. When they undertake it by choice, we should all be grateful.

The child's heart beat: but she was growing in the wrong place inside her extraordinary mother, south of safe...she and her mother were rushed to the hospital, where her mother was operated on by a brisk cheerful diminutive surgeon who told me after the surgery that my wife had been perhaps an hour from death from the pressure of the child growing outside the womb, the mother from the child growing, and the child from growing awry; and so my wife did not die, but our mysterious child did...Not uncommon, an ectopic pregnancy, said the surgeon...Sometimes, continued the surgeon, sometimes people who lose children before they are born continue to imagine the child who has died, and talk about her or him, it's such an utterly human thing to do, it helps deal with the pain, it's healthy within reason, and yes, people say to their other children that they actually do, in a sense, have a sister or brother, or did have a sister or brother, and she or he is elsewhere, has gone ahead, whatever the language of your belief or faith tradition. You could do that. People do that, yes. I have patients who do that, yes... One summer morning, as I wandered by a river, I remembered an Irish word I learned long ago, and now whenever I think of the daughter I have to wait to meet, I find that word in my mouth: dunnog, little dark one, the shyest and quietest and tiniest of sparrows, the one you never see but sometimes you sense, a flash in the corner of your eye, a sweet sharp note already fading by the time it catches your ear.

Wherever you find yourself today, I hope that God will meet you in your place of pain. That he will sit in your brokenness with you as only another bereaved parent can.

The main goal of Bellydance for birth within the framework of actual labour is to fully allow the labouring woman to help nature by moving with and not against the contractions she welcomes. Instead of tensing her muscles and mind with fear and apprehension toward pain, she accepts and surrenders actively, consciously and as best she can to each contractile wave she experiences.

arnica for pains and bruises, mandrake for sleeplessness, and pennyroyal, a flowering mint, for unwanted pregnancy. For dysentery, egg whites and boiled milk. For fainting spells, a tablespoon

On Rachel's show for November 7, 2012: Ohio really did go to President Obama last night. and he really did win. And he really was born in Hawaii. And he really is legitimately President of the United States, again. And the Bureau of Labor statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month. And the congressional research service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy. And the polls were not screwed to over-sample Democrats. And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad; Nate Silver was doing math. And climate change is real. And rape really does cause pregnancy, sometimes. And evolution is a thing. And Benghazi was an attack on us, it was not a scandal by us. And nobody is taking away anyone's guns. And taxes have not gone up. And the deficit is dropping, actually. And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. And the moon landing was real. And FEMA is not building concentration camps. And you and election observers are not taking over Texas. And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in this country are not the same thing as communism. Listen, last night was a good night for liberals and for democrats for very obvious reasons, but it was also, possibly, a good night for this country as a whole. Because in this country, we have a two-party system in government. And the idea is supposed to be that the two sides both come up with ways to confront and fix the real problems facing our country. They both propose possible solutions to our real problems. And we debate between those possible solutions. And by the process of debate, we pick the best idea. That competition between good ideas from both sides about real problems in the real country should result in our country having better choices, better options, than if only one side is really working on the hard stuff. And if the Republican Party and the conservative movement and the conservative media is stuck in a vacuum-sealed door-locked spin cycle of telling each other what makes them feel good and denying the factual, lived truth of the world, then we are all deprived as a nation of the constructive debate about competing feasible ideas about real problems. Last night the Republicans got shellacked, and they had no idea it was coming. And we saw them in real time, in real humiliating time, not believe it, even as it was happening to them. And unless they are going to secede, they are going to have to pop the factual bubble they have been so happy living inside if they do not want to get shellacked again, and that will be a painful process for them, but it will be good for the whole country, left, right, and center. You guys, we're counting on you. Wake up. There are real problems in the world. There are real, knowable facts in the world. Let's accept those and talk about how we might approach our problems differently. Let's move on from there. If the Republican Party and the conservative movement and conservative media are forced to do that by the humiliation they were dealt last night, we will all be better off as a nation. And in that spirit, congratulations, everyone!

When you found yourself carrying another life inside you, and you were only a child yourself, you’d automatically forget all about the grunts and pains of labour. What had truly conquered your whole thoughts then were the shock, shame and panic.

No matter what joy your past choices have brought you, you can still have this experience – it’s not greedy to ask for it. And no matter what pain, sorrow or loss your past has brought you, you can still choose to be a mother – you’re not being punished.

When fear overwhelms truth and love, we call it pain. Our spirit as women has all the knowledge and power we need to give birth and to nurture our babies. It is in our genetic coding. It has been there since the beginning of time. You can trust its wisdom.

Three generations--the expectant parent, the fetus, and the eggs in that fetus's ovaries--can be genetically altered by stressors during pregnancy. By understanding this, you can see that both cultural and family legacy burdens are not just beliefs; they're also physically expressed.

For all children, mothers are their first love, their first acquaintance with intimacy, touch, warmth, tenderness, sustenance. Infancy is a conspiracy between mothers and their babies, a bond that fathers can only helplessly witness, denied the profound pleasure and pain of giving birth.

A lot of men think they are doing women a favour by asking for her hand in marriage, but lets think about this : She changes her name, changes her home, leaves her family, moves in with you, builds a home with you, gets pregnant for you, pregnancy changes her body, she gets fat, almost gives up in the labour room due to the unbearable pains of child birth, even the kids she delivers bear your name. .. Till the day she dies... Everything she does, (cooking, cleaning your house, taking care of your parents, bringing up your children, earning, advising you, ensuring you can be relaxed, maintaining all family relations, everything that benefit you..... Sometimes at the cost of her own health, hobbies and beauty. .. So who is really doing whom a favor? Dear men appreciate the women in your lives always, because it is not easy to be a woman. *Being a woman is priceless *

I concluded from this later on that there is another thing as noisy as pain, namely pleasure, especially when there is added to it—in the absence of the fear of pregnancy which could not be the case here, despite the hardly convincing example in the Golden Legend—an immediate concern about cleanliness.

My wife is a thief... She takes the last cookie Takes forever to get ready She takes her time in the shower Takes all of the hot water She takes my favorite seat on the couch Takes the high road when I lose control My wife is a thief... She took my last name Took the time to get to know me, love me She took the back seat and let me lead Took on motherhood and the emotional toll that it brings She took care of me the many times that I've gotten sick Took on the pain of pregnancy so that the Jackson legacy would live on My wife takes, and takes, and takes... I'm so proud of my perpetual thief who stole my heart and won't give it back.

There appears no assurance that in the times of our own grandchildren the world will contain viable populations of wild African Lions, Tigers, Polar Bears, Emperor Penguins, gorillas, or coral reefs. These are the animals expectant parents pain on nursery room walls. Their implied wish: to welcome precious new life in to a world endowed with the magnificence and delight and fright of companions we have traveled with since the beginning. Some people debate the “rights of the unborn” as though a human life begins at conception but we don’t need to concern ourselves with its prospects after birth. Raging over the divine sanctity of anyone else’s pregnancy is a little overwrought and a little too easy when nature itself terminates one out of four by the sixth week. There are much bigger, more compassionate pro-life fish to fry. Passing along a world that can allow real children to flourish and the cavalcade of generations to unfold, and the least to live in modest dignity would be the biggest pro-life enterprise we could undertake.

They say women are blessed with the ability to forget the pain of childbirth so they will be able to have more children later. I often wonder whether the same principle applies to the challenges of writing a book of this magnitude. Had another author warned me about what a monumental task it would be, I'm not sure I would have been so insane as to pursue the dream.

This change of perspective makes it apparent that the ‘Pro Life’ or ‘Right to Life’ movement is misnamed. Those who protest against abortion but dine regularly on the bodies of chickens, pigs and calves can hardly claim to have concern for ‘life’ as such. Their concern about embryos and fetuses suggests only a biased concern for the lives of members of our own species. On any fair comparison of morally relevant characteristics, like rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, autonomy, pleasure and pain and so on, the calf, the pig and the much derided chicken come out well ahead of the fetus at any stage of pregnancy – whereas if we make the comparison with an embryo, or a fetus of less than three months, a fish shows much more awareness.

When I wasn’t in the barn garden, helping out, sorting seeds or checking hoses I’d spend time alone, usually in the bathroom adjacent to Joel’s room, staring into the shattered mirror as my hand gently caressed my baby bump. More often than not I would cry. Not because my pregnancy upset me, or that my hormones were getting the better of me, but because I missed Joel, my baby’s father. That the baby would grow up without a dad made me anxious. Then again, if he had survived, what irreparable damage would he have suffered and how would his pain translate to his child? Jesus, I was studying myself in the very mirror he’d smashed the night he chose to take his own life. The bump had grown slowly in the last couple of months. With these limited resources, I didn’t have the privilege of eating whatever I craved. Had that been the case, I was sure I would have been bigger by now. Still, I tried to eat as well and as often as I could and the size of my belly had proven that my attempts at proper nutrition were at least growing something in there. Nothing made me happier than feeling my baby move. It was a constant source of relief for me. In our present circumstances, with no vitamins and barely any meat products save the recent stash of jerky Earl had found in an abandoned trailer, my diet consisted of berries, lettuce, and canned beans for the most part. Feeling the baby move inside me was an experience I often enjoyed alone. I would think of Joel then as well. Imagining his hand on my belly, with mine guiding his to the kicks and punches.

There is always a storm before a calm. There is always a darkness before daylight. There is always turbulence before quietness. There is always sacrifices before a great victory. There is always awaiting before a breakthrough. There is always prayer before an answer. There is always pain before joy. There is always failure before success. There is always pregnancy before the birth of new born baby.

Her eyes widened and a strangled sound escaped her throat as she sought to process the sudden wash of conflicting sensations that bombarded her from every angle. He was deep. Impossibly deep. She surrounded him. He surrounded her. Their hips were flush against each other. His body covered hers possessively. There was a burning ache deep inside her, and she couldn’t discern whether it was pleasure or pain.

In retrospect, it is evident that highlighting abortion rather than reproductive rights as a whole reflected the class biases of the women who were at the forefront of the movement. While the issue of abortion was and remains relevant to all women, there were other reproductive issues that were just as vital which needed attention and might have served to galvanize masses. These issues ranged from basic sex education, prenatal care, preventive health care that would help females understand how their bodies worked, to forced sterilization, unnecessary cesareans and/or hysterectomies, and the medical complications left in their wake. Of all these issues individual white women with class privilege identified most intimately with the pain of unwanted pregnancy. And they highlighted the abortion issue. They were not by any means the only group in need of access to safe, legal abortions. As already stated, they were far more likely to have the means the to acquire an abortion than poor and working-class women. In those days poor women, black women included, often sought illegal abortions. The right to have an abortion was not a white-women-only issue; it was simply not the only or even most important reproductive concern for masses of American women.

What is it about the relationship of a mother that can heal or hurt us? Her womb is the first landscape we inhabit. It is here we learn to respond - to move, to listen, to be nourished and grow. In her body we grow to be human as our tails disappear and our gills turn to lungs. Our maternal environment is perfectly safe - dark, warm, and wet. It is a residency inside the Feminine. When we outgrow our mother's body, our cramps become her own. We move. She labors. Our body turns upside down in hers as we journey through the birth canal. She pushes in pain. We emerge, a head. She pushes one more time, and we slide out like a fish. Slapped on the back by the doctor, we breath. The umbilical cord is cut - not at our request. Separation is immediate. A mother reclaims her body, for her own life. Not ours. Minutes old, our first death is our own birth.

WHAT EES ALL DEES STUFF? IN AFRICA WE DOAN HAVE ALL DEES STUFF!! WE HAVE DEE BABEE!!!" His message was simple. It goes to the heart of what we in HypnoBirthing frequently puzzle over: Why has all the "stuff" that denies the normalcy of birth and portrays it as an inevitably risky and dangerous medical event become a routine part of most childbirth education classes? Why are couples in a low- or no-risk category being prepared for circumstances that only rarely occur? Even more puzzling, why do parents accept the negative premise that birth is a dangerous, painful ordeal at best or a medical calamity at worst? Why do they blindly accept the "one-size-fits-all" approach?" If what couples are hearing in childbirth classes is far removed from what they want their birthing experiences to be, why do they spend so much time entertaining negative outcomes that can color and shape their birth expectations and ultimately affect their birth experience? In other words, if it's not what they're wanting, why would they "go there"? In HypnoBirthing, we doan have all dees stuff, and deliberately so." HypnoBirthing helps you to frame a positive expectation and to prepare for birth by developing a trust and belief in your birthing body and in nature's undeniable orchestration of birthing. By teaching you the basic physiology of birth and explaining the adverse effect that fear has upon the chemical and physiological responses of your body we help you to learn simple, self-conditioning techniques that will easily bring you into the optimal state of relaxation you will use during birthing. This will allow your birthing muscles to fully relax. In other words, we will help you prepare for the birth your plan and want for yourselves and your baby, rather than the birth that someone else directs. We will help you look forward to your pregnancy and birthing with joy and love, rather than fear and anxiety.

Inside, the midwife was trying to get Socorro to open her mouth wide and let the pain come out. "Open your mouth," said Angelina, massaging Socorro's neck and shoulders, "and let out what you feel. Don't keep it in, querida, let it out." Socorro cried softly at first, but little by little she loosened up and she began to let out long, ear-piercing screams. "Good," said the midwife, "now breathe deeply, deeply, and then cry out again, letting all the pain go out of your body.

It began with her thoughts on pregnancy, how the very same process in any other context would be the stuff of gothic novels: a woman of sound mind had to watch her belly swell to grotesque proportions, knowing that if all went well, it would merely end in pain. Meanwhile, everyone told the beleaguered woman to be overjoyed. There was a wrongness to this, and a passivity which confirmed for all the world to see that at their most uniquely female activity, women truly were just vessels, to be filled and stretched out by the needs of others.

Jacob, is something wrong? Is Isabella okay?” “Probably. She is not well today. It could be a normal thing for a human female, but since she is usually as resistant to common ailments now as we are, she is nervous. I figured Gideon could ease her mind.” Noah missed the wince that crossed his friend’s face that would have given away the indignant argument flying through the Enforcer’s thoughts. Jacob’s female counterpart huffily took umbrage to his claims of exactly who it was that was nervous and who had insisted on seeking Gideon, because it certainly had not been her. “Tell her I hope she feels better,” Noah said, his fondness for Bella quite clear in his tone. “Bear with her, old friend. She’s breaking new ground. It can be pretty frightening to play Eve for an entire race.” “Do not worry. When it comes to my Bella, I would do anything to see to her happiness. That includes making others do anything to see to her happiness,” Jacob said. He meant the words, of course, but he was hoping they’d help sooth someone’s bristling pride. “I’m sure Gideon is going to love that,” Noah laughed. Jacob grinned, altering gravity so that he began to float up from the floor. “If you see Gideon before I do, will you tell him to come to Bella?” “Of course. Tell her I said to start behaving like a real Druid or I—” Noah was cut off by a sharp hand motion and a warning expression from the Enforcer. It came a little too late, however, if Jacob’s pained expression was anything to judge by. “There goes your invitation for our wedding,” Jacob muttered. “And I think I am close behind you.” “I would believe that if I were not the one who is supposed to perform it and if you were not the father of her otherwise illegitimate child,” Noah countered loudly, clearly talking to the person beyond his immediate perception. “Ow! Damn it, Noah!” Jacob grumbled, rubbing his temples as Bella’s scream of frustration echoed through him. “Do you remember I am the one who has to go home to her, would you?” “Sorry, my friend,” Noah chuckled, not looking at all repentant. “Now get out of here, Enforcer. Find Gideon and tend to your beautiful and charming mate. Be sure to mention to her that I said she looks ravishing and that her pregnancy has made her shine like a precious jewel.” “Noah, if you were not my King, I would kill you for this.” “Yes, well, as your King I would have you arrested for treason just for saying that. Luckily for you, Jacob, you are the man who would arrest you, and the woman who also has the power to do so is sure to punish you far better than I can when you get home.” “You are all heart, my liege,” Jacob said wryly. “Thank you. Now leave, before I begin to expound on the disrespect that this mouthy little female of yours seems to have engendered my formerly loyal subjects.

What happened to me? Why does it feel like this? Why can’t I seem to get it together and be the mama I want to be? It’s not your fault. It’s ours. Society, the community we live in, has failed us. Failed to tell us that what we are feeling is real and legitimate. Failed to acknowledge our pain, our tears and the anxiety that keeps us awake at 3am, wondering how we’re ever going to manage it all. And failed to tell us that what we’re feeling is real. For success-driven, modern women, pregnancy is often the very first time we’ve had to accept that we are not totally in control of our own lives.

Animals arrive at slaughter exhausted, thirsty, hungry, and terrified. Every year 100,000 factory farmed cattle arrive at slaughter injured, or too dispirited to walk; undercover investigators have repeatedly documented downed animals who are kicked, beaten, pushed with bulldozers, and dragged from transport trucks with ropes or a chain, though they are fully conscious, in pain, and bellowing pitifully. Cows exploited in the dairy industry, because they are older and their bodies have been exhausted by perpetual pregnancy, birthing, and milking, are among the most pathetic when they arrive at slaughter.

I was pregnable once,” Merill thought to contribute. She remembered how troublesome it made getting around, having a ripe belly. Couldn’t roll properly, couldn’t hop properly, couldn’t romp or flop properly. There were the cravings for roasted cabbage—she loathed cabbage, with its leaves and growing in rows. And labor! Merill passed out during childbirth. She’d endured burns, lacerations, rips, serrated teeth, nails, hooks and a trove of unmentionable harm-inflictors. Labor trounced them all and wriggled gleefully in the spray of blood and gore. “Being pregnable is no good. No good at all. Like growing a bitter melon in your belly.

Having a dream is like a pregnant woman waiting to have her baby delivered; everyone can see clearly that's got a baby inside of her womb;sometimes her close relations might wish to help out in carrying the pregnancy but no avail;even her husband feels to help her deliver the baby when he see's her honnie in pain the day of delivery. But after delivery everyone carries the baby for her Yeah;that's what it is peeps; someone out there is wailing to help carry out that your precious dream;but you need to deliver to them so they can see and help support. And I tell you;the world will carry what you deliver to them; cuz its called talent and its a gift from God.

His eyes burned. His throat swelled and knotted. For the first time in his life he was faced with a situation where he had no idea what to do. She had every right to hate him. She put a hand to her head and rubbed. She swayed and then bent over as if she was about to fall. “Kelly!” He went forward, but she jerked upright again and thrust out a hand to ward him off. “Just stay away,” she said in a low, desperate voice. “Kelly, please.” It was his turn to beg. And God, he would. He’d do anything to make her stay long enough that he could make it up to her. “I love you. I never stopped loving you.” She lifted her gaze again, her eyes drenched with tears—and pain. “Love isn’t supposed to hurt this much. Love isn’t this. Love is trust.” He moved forward again, so desperate to hold her, to offer the comfort he had denied her when she’d needed him most. Anger and sorrow vied for control. Grief welled in his chest until he thought he might explode. Rage surged through his veins like acid. She put her hand to her head again and started to walk past him. He caught at her elbow, anything to stop her, because he knew in his heart she was going to walk away. He didn’t deserve a second chance. He didn’t deserve for her to stay. He didn’t deserve her love. But he wanted it. He wanted it more than he wanted to live. “Please don’t go.

That Boston show was when I began to see your mother through the eyes of her fans and realized her stage presence was more than the sum of its jokes. She was speaking to people's truths and making them laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. This was what our ayahuasca ceremonies were about: sourcing the most potent parts of ourselves and letting go of the rest. Your mother, I saw, had done just that. She was embodying experiences lie pregnancy and childbirth that are sacred to us as individuals, and celebrating these acts in a fresh new light. Asian cultures often teach us to be silent about our sexuality and filled with shame. Your mother breaks that up and transmutes pain and shame into power, like a mystical priestess.

[God] tells the woman that she will now bring forth children in sorrow, and desire an unworthy, sometimes resentful man, who will in consequence lord her biological fate over her, permanently. What might this mean? It could just mean that God is a patriarchal tyrant, as politically motivated interpretations of the ancient story insist. I think it’s—merely descriptive. Merely. And here is why: As human beings evolved, the brains that eventually gave rise to self-consciousness expanded tremendously. This produced an evolutionary arms race between fetal head and female pelvis.56 The female graciously widened her hips, almost to the point where running would no longer be possible. The baby, for his part, allowed himself to be born more than a year early, compared to other mammals of his size, and evolved a semi-collapsible head.57 This was and is a painful adjustment for both. The essentially fetal baby is almost completely dependent on his mother for everything during that first year. The programmability of his massive brain means that he must be trained until he is eighteen (or thirty) before being pushed out of the nest. This is to say nothing of the woman’s consequential pain in childbirth, and high risk of death for mother and infant alike. This all means that women pay a high price for pregnancy and child-rearing, particularly in the early stages, and that one of the inevitable consequences is increased dependence upon the sometimes unreliable and always problematic good graces of men.

Why don't you think of him as the coming one, who has been at hand since eternity, the future one, the final fruit of a tree, with us as its leaves? What is keeping you from hurling his birth into evolving times and from living your life as though it were one painful beautiful day in the history of a great pregnancy? ... By extracting the most possible sweetness out of everything, just as the bees gather honey, we thus build him. With any insignificant thing, even with the very smallest thing -- if only it is done out of love -- we begin, with work, with a time of rest following, with keeping silent or with a small lonely joy, with everything that we do alone, without participants or supporters, we begin him: the one whom we shall not experience in this lifetime, even as our ancestors could not experience us.

After making sure I have everything, I waddle over to the sidewalk, my flip-flops slapping loudly against the pavement. Seeing Sway in the window has me lifting my arm and waving wildly. The second I go to put my arm down, I feel this tremendous pain in my stomach. Sway cocks his head at me, clearly puzzled with my actions. I look down from his eyes and try to figure out what just happened. Sway bursts through the door to his salon about the same time that I realize that my water just broke. Of all places to have my water break, it’s the damn golden sidewalk. I love this sidewalk. Now all I’m going to think about is my pregnancy water leaking out of my vagina. “Sway! My vagina broke the happiness!” I cry when he runs over. He grabs the food and my purse before helping me walk the few steps left to take me inside Corps Security. “Sway!” I pant. “Are you listening to me? My vagina broke it!

To the Greeks, the symbol of sex was the most venerated of symbols, the really deep significance of all the piety of antiquity. All the details of the act of procreation, pregnancy and birth gave rise to the loftiest and most solemn feelings. In the doctrine of mysteries, pain was pronounced holy: the “pains of childbirth” sanctify pain in general, — all becoming and all growth, everything that guarantees the future involves pain .... In order that there may be eternal joy in creating, in order that the will to life may say Yea to itself in all eternity, the “pains of childbirth” must also be eternal. All this is what the word Dionysus signifies: I know of no higher symbolism than this Greek symbolism, this symbolism of the Dionysian phenomenon. In it the profoundest instinct of life, the instinct that guarantees the future of life and life eternal, is understood religiously, — the road to life itself, procreation, is pronounced holy ...

The instinctive attraction of the daughters of high society to noble ideals was probably reinforced by an idea that, in dedicating themselves to the Church, they could escape the sometimes grim realities of marriage. It was not only the problem of volatile husbands raised in a society that prized aggressive masculinity and constant pregnancy; there was also the painful fact that only a few of the numerous babies would survive to adulthood. Against these harsh realities, the new monastic communities offered an appealing alternative, a rigid but somehow delicious atmosphere similar to that of a girls' boarding school. To a virgin, this must have seemed attractive, and to a teenage Roman widow weighing the dangers of a second marriage, it must have seemed positively utopian. And, of course, there was the chance to do good work. We should not underestimate the delight that these women found in being able to pool their resources in trying to better the lot of the city's poor.

Please don’t go,” Mom said to him. She was generally too proud to ask anyone for anything, including her own husband for support. But she pleaded. “I can’t do this alone.” There were houses to build, though. My uncle was outside honking the horn, and Dad left—believing, to some extent, that it was his job to provide and her job to take care of the kids. There was no paid leave for him either in such a moment. Once Dad was gone, Mom lay in their bed trying to sleep through her pain as Matt cried from his crib. I crawled up a chest of drawers in her bedroom and tipped it over. The dresser crushed me against the carpet. Mom ran from her bed and somehow lifted the chest off me, straining so hard she tore her stitches. Blood ran down her thighs. I don’t think we went back to the hospital. When she told me the story, it was about a day she barely survived because of my dad’s absence. I see it now as a day she barely survived because society valued productivity and autonomy more than it valued women and children. Pregnancy slows you down, so pregnant women lost their jobs; mothers were alone in their nuclear households while fathers worked extra hours to make up the difference.

After the Fall It will not be an easy journey. Adam is condemned to a life of ‘painful toil’ with the brutal reminder ‘dust you are and to dust you will return’. According to Christian theology, their Fall is the original sin with which we are all burdened, even – indeed, especially – newborn babies, who arrive in this world as kicking, screaming proof of Eve’s curse, not to mention the very fact that their existence is the inevitable evidence of parental intercourse. Birth itself was shameful. (It was only in the 1950s that pregnancy was mentioned openly in polite society. Before that, euphemisms, such as being in ‘an interesting condition’ applied, and even then some blushes were expected.) However, in the biblical account, there is no mention that the snake is the Devil, Satan or Lucifer. He is simply a snake, apparently doing what snakes do best – tempting women. The sexual connotations may be cringingly obvious to the post-Freudian world, but they were not necessarily so blatant to our Bible-quoting ancestors. However, it is not much of a leap from the story of the wicked snake to the notion of its being instructed or even possessed by the personification of evil, whoever or whatever that might be: Milton makes the point clear in his description of ‘. . . the serpent, or rather Satan in the serpent.’30 (The identification

up with work I found meaningful. As a young person, I’d explored exactly nothing. Barack’s maturity, I realized, came in part from the years he’d logged as a community organizer and even, prior to that, a decidedly unfulfilling year he’d spent as a researcher at a Manhattan business consulting firm immediately after college. He’d tried out some things, gotten to know all sorts of people, and learned his own priorities along the way. I, meanwhile, had been so afraid of floundering, so eager for respectability and a way to pay the bills, that I’d marched myself unthinkingly into the law. In the span of a year, I’d gained Barack and lost Suzanne, and the power of those two things together had left me spinning. Suzanne’s sudden death had awakened me to the idea that I wanted more joy and meaning in my life. I couldn’t continue to live with my own complacency. I both credited and blamed Barack for the confusion. “If there were not a man in my life constantly questioning me about what drives me and what pains me,” I wrote in my journal, “would I be doing it on my own?” I mused about what I might do, what skills I might possibly have. Could I be a teacher? A college administrator? Could I run some sort of after-school program, a professionalized version of what I’d done for Czerny at Princeton? I was interested in possibly working for a foundation or a nonprofit. I was interested in helping underprivileged kids. I wondered if I could find a job that engaged my mind and still left me enough time to do volunteer work, or appreciate art, or have children. I wanted a life, basically. I wanted to feel whole. I made a list of issues that interested me: education, teen pregnancy, black self-esteem. A more virtuous

His eyes burned. His throat swelled and knotted. For the first time in his life he was faced with a situation where he had no idea what to do. She had every right to hate him. She put a hand to her head and rubbed. She swayed and then bent over as if she was about to fall. “Kelly!” He went forward, but she jerked upright again and thrust out a hand to ward him off. “Just stay away,” she said in a low, desperate voice. “Kelly, please.” It was his turn to beg. And God, he would. He’d do anything to make her stay long enough that he could make it up to her. “I love you. I never stopped loving you.” She lifted her gaze again, her eyes drenched with tears—and pain. “Love isn’t supposed to hurt this much. Love isn’t this. Love is trust.” He moved forward again, so desperate to hold her, to offer the comfort he had denied her when she’d needed him most. Anger and sorrow vied for control. Grief welled in his chest until he thought he might explode. Rage surged through his veins like acid. She put her hand to her head again and started to walk past him. He caught at her elbow, anything to stop her, because he knew in his heart she was going to walk away. He didn’t deserve a second chance. He didn’t deserve for her to stay. He didn’t deserve her love. But he wanted it. He wanted it more than he wanted to live. “Please don’t go.” She turned back to him, sadness so deep in her gaze that it hurt him to look at her. “Don’t you see, Ryan? It can never work for us. You don’t trust me. Your family and friends hate me. What kind of life will that be for me? I deserve more than that. It’s taken me long enough to figure that out. I settled again, when I swore I’d never do it. I agreed to marry you. Again. Because I was so in love with you and I believed that we could move forward. But I was a fool. Some obstacles are insurmountable.

We had planned to spend Christmas morning with my family, and then head over to Phil and Kay’s for Christmas night. The whole family was there, including all the grandkids. Bella, Willie and Korie’s daughter, was the youngest and still an infant. We opened presents, ate dinner, and the whole evening felt surreal. Tomorrow morning I’ll have a baby in this world, I thought. When Jep and I left that night, I said, “I’m gonna go have a baby. See you all later!” For all the worry and concern and tears and prayers we’d spent on our unborn baby, when it came to her birth, she was no trouble at all. I went to the hospital, got prepped for the C-section, and within thirty minutes she was out. Lily was beautiful and healthy. I was overwhelmed with happiness and joy. I felt God had blessed me. He’d created life inside of me--a real, beautiful, breathing little human being--and brought her into this world through me. It was an unbelievable miracle. And the best part? Jep was in the delivery room. Unlike his dad, he wanted to be there, and he shared it all with me. I’ll never forget the sight of Jep decked out in blue scrubs, with the blue head cover, holding his baby girl for the first time. I’ll never forget how she nestled down in the crook of his arm, his hand wrapped up and around, gently holding her. He stared down at her, and I could see a smile behind his white surgical mask. He was already in love--I knew that look. After we admired the baby together, I fell asleep, and Jep took his newborn daughter out to meet the family. He told me later he bawled like a baby. Later, when she went to the hospital nursery, Jep kept going over there to stare at her. I think he was in shock and overwhelmed and excited. Lily had a light creamy complexion and little pink rosebud lips, and she was born December 26, 2002. Despite the rough pregnancy, she was perfect. God answered our prayers, and now we were a family of three. We’d been married just a little over a year.

When he reached the doorman, he stopped. “Did you see Miss Christian come in a few minutes ago?” The doorman nodded. “Yes, sir. She got here just before you arrived.” Relief staggered him. He bolted for the elevator. A few moments later, he strode into the apartment. “Kelly? Kelly, honey, where are you?” Not waiting for an answer, he hurried into the bedroom to see her sitting on the edge of the bed, her face pale and drawn in pain. When she heard him, she looked up and he winced at the dullness in her eyes. She’d been crying. “I thought I could do it,” she said in a raw voice, before he could beg her forgiveness. “I thought I could just go on and forget and that I could accept others thinking the worst of me as long as you and I were okay again. I did myself a huge disservice.” “Kelly…” Something in her look silenced him and he stood several feet away, a feeling of helplessness gripping him as he watched her try to compose herself. “I sat there tonight while your friends and your mother looked at me in disgust, while they looked at you with a mixture of pity and disbelief in their eyes. All because you took me back. The tramp who betrayed you in the worst possible manner. And I thought to myself I don’t deserve this. I’ve never deserved it. I deserve better.” She raised her eyes to his and he flinched at the horrible pain he saw reflected there. Then she laughed. A raw, terrible sound that grated across his ears. “And earlier tonight you forgave me. You stood there and told me it no longer mattered what happened in the past because you forgave me and you wanted to move forward.” She curled her fingers into tight balls and rage flared in her eyes. She stood and stared him down even as tears ran in endless streams down her cheeks. “Well, I don’t forgive you. Nor can I forget that you betrayed me in the worst way a man can betray the woman he’s supposed to love and be sworn to protect.” He took a step back, reeling from the fury in her voice. His eyes narrowed. “You don’t forgive me?” “I told you the truth that day,” she said hoarsely, her voice cracking under the weight of her tears. “I begged you to believe me. I got down on my knees and begged you. And what did you do? You wrote me a damn check and told me to get out.” He took another step back, his hand going to his hair. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. So much of that day was a blur. He remembered her on her knees, her tear-stained face, how she put her hand on his leg and whispered, “Please don’t do this.” It made him sick. He never wanted to go back to the way he felt that day, but somehow this was worse because there was something terribly wrong in her eyes and in her voice. “Your brother assaulted me. He forced himself on me. I didn’t invite his attentions. I wore the bruises from his attack for two weeks. Two weeks. I was so stunned by what he’d done that all I could think about was getting to you. I knew you’d fix it. You’d protect me. You’d take care of me. I knew you’d make it right. All I could think about was running to you. And, oh God, I did and you looked right through me.” The sick knot in his stomach grew and his chest tightened so much he couldn’t breathe. “You wouldn’t listen,” she said tearfully. “You wouldn’t listen to anything I had to say. You’d already made your mind up.” He swallowed and closed the distance between them, worried that she’d fall if he didn’t make her sit. But she shook him off and turned her back, her shoulders heaving as her quiet sobs fell over the room. “I’m listening now, Kelly,” he forced out. “Tell me what happened. I’ll believe you. I swear.” But he knew. He already knew. So much of that day was replaying over and over in his head and suddenly he was able to see so clearly what he’d refused to see before. And it was killing him. His brother had lied to him after all. Not just lied but he’d carefully orchestrated the truth and twisted it so cleverly that Ryan had been completely deceived.

I need to check your vitals, hon,” she explained. It had been several hours since I’d given birth. I guess this was the routine. She felt my pulse, palpated my legs, asked if I had pain anywhere, and lightly pressed on my abdomen, the whole while making sure I wasn’t showing signs of a blockage or a blood clot, a fever or a hemorrhage. I stared dreamily at Marlboro Man, who gave me a wink or two. I hoped he would, in time, be able to see past the vomit. The nurse then began a battery of questions. “So, no pain?” “Nope. I feel fine now.” “No chills?” “Not at all.” “Have you been able to pass gas in the past few hours?” *Insert awkward ten-second pause* I couldn’t have heard her right. “What?” I asked, staring at her. “Have you been able to pass gas lightly?” *Another awkward pause* What kind of question is this? “Wait…,” I asked. “What?” “Sweetie, have you been able to pass gas today?” I stared at her blankly. “I don’t…” “…Pass gas? You? Today?” She was unrelenting. I continued my blank, desperate stare, completely incapable of registering her question. Throughout the entire course of my pregnancy, I’d gone to great lengths to maintain a certain level of glamour and vanity. Even during labor, I’d attempted to remain the ever-fresh and vibrant new wife, going so far as to reapply tinted lip balm before the epidural so I wouldn’t look pale. I’d also restrained myself during the pushing stage, afraid I’d lose control of my bowels, which would have been the kiss of death upon my pride and my marriage; I would have had to just divorce my husband and start fresh with someone else. I had never once so much as passed gas in front of Marlboro Man. As far as he was concerned, my body lacked this function altogether. So why was I being forced to answer these questions now? I hadn’t done anything wrong. “I’m sorry…,” I stammered. “I don’t understand the question…” The nurse began again, seemingly unconcerned with my lack of comprehension skills. “Have you…” Marlboro Man, lovingly holding our baby and patiently listening all this time from across the room, couldn’t take it anymore. “Honey! She wants to know if you’ve been able to fart today!” The nurse giggled. “Okay, well maybe that’s a little more clear.” I pulled the covers over my head. I was not having this discussion.

He squeezed his eyes shut tight and let out a groan of his own. Birthing kit. Just add that to the growing list of banned words. Okay. He took a deep breath and let it out. Someone had to take control of the situation, and obviously she was too exhausted to do so. Someone had to man up and set her straight. There was no one else. “Then stop. Right now. Just stop.” “Stop?” she echoed in a near shriek. “Look, Rose.” He used his most soothing, reasonable tone. “Doing this now would just be illogical. The baby isn’t quite ready, and we’re too far from help. Just think about something else. You’re upset and worried and you need to rest.” Her mouth opened and closed twice. She looked at him as if he’d grown two heads. “Are you kidding me?” she demanded. “Because this isn’t the time to be joking around.” She looked as if she was contemplating ripping his belly open with a knife and proving something to him. He took a cautionary step back and held up a hand to placate her. It was clear to him that pregnancy made women insane. “I’m trying to help you, Rose. These—these ...” Hell. He wasn’t going to use the word contractions ; that would make it too real. “These pains you’re experiencing, maybe they’re something else. The fall from the car could have caused them.” And that was more than a reasonable assumption. “They started before the jump from the car.” His stomach tightened into half a dozen hard knots. “Then why the hell didn’t you get on that helicopter where we could get you medical help?” he demanded, angry all over again. “Damn it, woman, do you have any sense at all?” Now she was making him just as insane as she obviously was.

Creativity is a painful and exhaustive process. The creator experiences everlastingly repeated pregnancies and births, that exhaust and empty him. However, he always seeks to relive again and again this amazing experience.

Rainer Maria Rilke wrote a series of letters to a young military officer who wished to be a poet. In one of them he responds to the young man’s lament that he had lost his belief in God: Why don’t you think of him as the one who is coming, who has been approaching from all eternity? … What keeps you from projecting his birth into the ages that are coming into existence, and living your life as a painful and lovely day in the history of a great pregnancy?13

Having seen her endure nine months of discomfort during pregnancy and the horrendous pain of childbirth, I could hardly believe my ears when she told me she wanted to have a second child. Now a seasoned pro, I was thrilled to help her again. And together we went through it all once more. As her children grew from infants in cribs to toddlers in nursery school, I picked them up from school, helped with birthday parties, and babysat, to give my friend much-needed afternoon breaks.

What American would not want truthful and complete information about every product sold in the United States so that we can be more capable of making wise decisions concerning our lives and the lives of our loved ones? These are our friends and our family members suffering from so many forms of cancer, several diseases of the heart, emphysema, poor circulation, blindness, strokes, various skin disorders, bad breath, asthma, poverty, clogged arteries, disfigurement, rotting teeth and gums, birth defects, infertility, sexual dysfunction, high blood pressure, aneurysms, complications during pregnancies, and all too often a slow and painful death. These suffering people are also many of us.

He couldn’t resist smoothing his palm over her silky hair. Stroking her like that, over and over again filled him with peace. Concerns about his mill and Steafan and all that Wilhelm might expect from him floated away on a cloud of contentment. Until he felt warm wetness on his skin where her face nestled. “Are ye weeping?” “No,” she said, but her voice caught on a sob. “There,” he said, “now we have both told a lie to the other. We are even.” Whatever had her distraught, her heart wasn’t so heavy that she couldn’t give a small chuckle. “Maybe I’m crying just a little,” she said. “It’s fine, though. Don’t worry. Get some sleep.” “I canna. My da told me a good husband doesna lay his head down for the night if his household isna in order and his wife isna content.” “He sounds like a very responsible man. Like father, like son.” No one had given him as much to feel proud over as this woman. “I do my best to be like him. Now tell me what’s fashin’ you. Is it Steafan? Your eye? Are ye in pain?” Her head rocked on his arm. “No. It’s nothing. Really. Pregnancy can make a girl a little emotional. That’s all.” “Ye miss your home,” he guessed again, ignoring her excuses. “Are ye worrit over finding your box maker?” She was quiet for a moment. “I suppose you could say that.” “Dinna fash. I will do all I can to see you home safe.” “I know,” she said, but she didn’t sound happy.

By our seventh anniversary, we had five kids and weren’t done yet. Raven was blessed with easy pregnancies and could run around until the moment of delivery. Oh, and did those deliveries become legend. When River was born, the whole crew was laughing their asses off in the waiting room because of Raven’s profanity-laced rants. Our twins came two years later. During their deliveries, a drinking game started with the crew and club guys. Every time Raven screamed a cuss word, Tucker told the guys at the bar and they’d take a shot of whiskey. Half of the guys were wasted by the time Savannah was born. As Avery joined her sister, the other half of the bar was just as drunk off their asses. The obstetrician nearly begged Raven to use pain meds. She refused of course. No one was telling her what to do. For Maverick’s birth, the hospital moved Raven to a room at the end of the hall and kept the other laboring mothers as far away as possible. Another change the third time around was how Raven refused to allow the club guys free fun based on her laboring pains. To play the drinking game, they had to donate a hundred dollars into the kids’ college fund. We figured at least one of our kids would want to do the education thing. The guys donated the money and got ready for Raven to let loose. In her laboring room, she even allowed a mic connected to overhead speakers at the bar. Despite knowing they were all listening, my woman didn’t disappoint. One particular favorite was motherfucking crustacean cunt. When Maverick’s head crowded, she also sounded a little bit like a graboid from Tremors. Hell, I think she did that on purpose because we’d watched the movie the night before. Raven was a born entertainer. That night, we added a few thousand dollars to the kids’ college fund, the guys had a blast getting wasted to Raven’s profanity, and I welcomed my second son. Unlike his angelic brother, Maverick peed on me an hour after birth. I knew that boy was going to be a handful.

I was so happy. I had changed lots of diapers in my twenty-two years and cared for lots of babies, but our Lily was ours, and to us, she was perfect and healthy. She was easy and quiet, and she slept really good. I always knew I was going to love being a mom, and I was right. I loved it. I could even take her to the movies, and she wouldn’t make a peep. Phil always says Lily was the first granddaughter who wasn’t afraid of him. And it was true. From the very first time they laid eyes on each other, baby Lily was a match for Phil. She just took to him. I guess it was the beard, and it was a good thing Jep had a hunting-season beard when she was born because she was used to it. She loved her Papaw Phil, and as soon as she was a few months old and could sit up, she’d sit in his lap and watch Fox News. Jep had always said he wanted his children to be around his family, especially his parents, so I made an effort to bring Lily down to Phil and Kay’s as often as possible. While Lily sat with Phil, I’d help Miss Kay with work or in the kitchen or just sit and visit. In the back of my mind, I still carried some of the fear and worry from my pregnancy. As she got closer to a year old, Jep and I noticed Lily hadn’t started talking yet, although she seemed to be normal and healthy in every other way. She was alert and sweet and smart, but she was quiet. Her eyes were big, and she watched everything going on around her. But she didn’t talk. In her second year, we got a little more worried because Lily still wasn’t talking. Developmentally, everything else was on track. She grew and ate solid good and crawled and walked, but still no words. We were concerned and afraid something might be wrong. Lily finally started talking when she was three, and she has turned out to be as smart as can be and does very well in school. There is nothing wrong with her. Lily is on her own timetable, and we had to wait patiently for her personality to emerge. I’m guessing her quiet personality came from her dad. I don’t know, but maybe I did all her talking for her, and she didn’t feel the need those first few years! Lily is twelve years old now. She’s still sweet and smart and quiet, and she still loves her family.

Lifelong pain, an unwanted pregnancy, and even death may be the reward for such a brief window of pleasure. What a foolish gamble!

We describe the decision-making time like being stuck at the top of a high mountain; there are two ways down, one was to jump off the steep side and the other was to roll down the rocky side. In both cases, we knew we might not be alive by the time we got to the bottom. There is no easy or less painful choice, really. —A dad

Lark soaked in the claw foot tub with the dogs sleeping nearby. I knew she was tired and pretending otherwise. Eventually, the day would come when she would look at me and admit the pregnancy hormones were a pain in the ass. When she did so, I would baby the hell out of her and make her feel like a princess. Until then, she wanted to put on a brave face without admitting she took mini-naps through out the day.

Finishing her cigarette, Raven put it out in the ashtray then sighed. “I never really bought into the God thing. Religion felt like a lie men told to make people listen to them. Mostly, it seemed dumb to think a magic man in the sky cared about us. Like if I was a magic man and could make the earth or whatever, I wouldn’t waste time on helping out losers.” Raven set the ashtray on the ground and crossed her arms as if cold. “I see what Lark has now with you, this house, the ugly dogs, her friends, and now the baby. It makes me think God might exist. While losers run in our family, Lark could be more if she let herself. Now she has more and I think God might have helped her out. I prayed someone would. Even not believing, I prayed and told God if He was real and wanted me to believe that He needed to help Lark. I guess He heard me because she’s happy like I’ve never seen her happy before. Not even when Phoenix was alive and we were the best we ever were as a family.” “I’m glad you’re here and you’re welcome to stay as long as you want, but, Raven, my dogs aren’t ugly.” She laughed and tapped her foot against mine. “You’re a good guy. I know I said that before, but I didn’t think you would be. I’ve been around and good guys are rare.” “They exist though.” Raven nodded. “I need to quit men the way I need to quit smoking. Just go cold turkey. If I try to be rational about it, I’ll fool myself into falling for another creep. No, just say enough is enough all that shit. Focus on other stuff like a job and roller derby and family.” “If you ever get sick of living here, the Johanssons have an apartment that Cooper used to live in.” “There are plenty of apartments in Ellsberg.” “Yeah, but if you want to avoid loser men, those apartments won’t help. They’re full of assholes. College shitheads and lowlife fuckers. If you stay out there with the Johanssons, no man will bother you. You might even like Bailey. She’s an acquired taste, but a good friend if you can deal with her mouth.” “Bossy bitches are my favorite,” Raven said, pulling her knees up to her chest. “No hurry moving out though. Lark is feeling unsure about stuff and having you here makes her feel more centered. Like she’s combining her old life with her new one and it fits.” “I just have one question, bud,” Raven said, standing up and ready to leave the cold evening. “Are you planning to fix her damn worm?” “I don’t normally tattoo pregnant women.” “You really going to have your kid born to a chick with a worm tattoo?” Smiling at Raven, I nodded. “I don’t want to do anything to jinx the pregnancy. Since we’ve been together, Lark was hurt by Larry, got into a fight with my ex, and had to hide under the table during a bar brawl. I want the rest of her pregnancy to be as pain free as possible.” “Sissy,” she said, grinning. “I’m really glad you aren’t an asshole. It was a pleasant surprise.” “Glad you approve, but don’t mock my dogs again and stop barking at Pollack.” “Fuck off,” she said over her shoulder while walking inside.

Mothering is a true spiritual path in that it will expand your spirit, make painfully visible your personal limitations, and bring some of the greatest heart-opening moments of bliss

- Welcome to the 21st Century: Where SEX is FREE & LOVE is EXPENSIVE, where LOSING phone is more PAINFUL than LOSING your VIRGINITY, where MODERNIZATION means NUDITY, where if you don't SMOKE or DRINK you are out of FASHION, where if you don't CHEAT so you are not SMART, where the BATHROOMS have become PHOTO STUDIOS, where TEMPLES become DATING POINTS, where doing WORSHIP TO GOD is DIFFICULT, where LIES become REALITIES, where the WOMEN fear PREGNANCY more than STD's , where a PIZZA DELIVERY is FASTER than EMERGENCY RESPONSE. PERSPECTIVES & DRIP DECIDE the value of person, where the BOYS/GIRLS are AFRAID of MARRIAGE but they love HAVING SEX, where KILLING HUMAN is a PLEASURE,where INSULTING THE GOD becomes the TRENDS of the era, where REVILING is a COURAGE where whoever PLAYS the MINDS always get happiness but whoever PLAYS the HEART gets HURT ,.... MODERNITY LOVE and LIQUID EDUCATION !!!

This is why murder and suicide are both sins. It is God's prerogative alone, as Creator, to give and take innocent life..asserts human beings are the ones who control life and death..A moral duty to honor life supersedes the personal hardship that might come due to pregnancy..Jesus reveals that this man was born blind so that one day he might see, know, declare, and delight in the glory of Christ..If the rapist were caught, would we encourage this woman to murder him in order to get emotional relief?..the God of the gospel has a proven track record of working all things, including evil things, for his good purposes..he has the power, love, goodness, and grace to give you and me all that we need to persevere through difficulty..It's moral silliness and cultural suicide to say that government shouldn't take away people's right to choose. What matters is what we're choosing..Of course we are pro-choice on these and thousands of other things..I plead for you to step out of a muddled middle road that says, "I may not choose abortion, but I don't think we should take away others' right to choose it"..Such thinking is not enlightened tolerance; it is sinful indifference..God does not desire for you or anyone else to live with the pain of regret. It is altogether right to hate sin in your history. The pain of past sin is often a powerful deterrent to future sin, but don't let it rob you of the peace God has designed for you in the present.

Found strange device in bathroom this morning. It looked like an egg timer. It said "Predictor" on the side of the box. I hope my Mother is not dabbling with the occult

Real pain existed there. Not only the pain of pregnancy, but the pain of denying it. That type of denial took work.

In the countries with the best maternal and infant outcomes—the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark—women and babies benefit from lifelong universal healthcare, but that care is markedly different: obstetricians attend only high-risk pregnancies. The vast majority of laboring women get individual support from a midwife, are free to move about and birth in whatever position feels best, and are rarely induced, anesthetized, or cut.

All the health issues I had dealt with since adolescence became worse during my pregnancy. The migraines were worse than ever. The sciatica was continuously active. My spine and joints ached constantly. My digestion was almost at a complete standstill, and the brain fog and dizziness were so bad I could hardly do anything on my own. The pregnancy caused so much stress on my body that my mind became extremely stressed as well.

Among those who would block the right of rape victims to choice, none is more determined than David C. Reardon,48 founder of the Elliott Institute. There is no eponymous Elliott; the institute’s website explains that the name was selected to sound official and impartial. Starting in the early 1980s, some pro-life advocates opposed abortion even for rape victims on the basis that it could lead to a condition they named ‘postabortion syndrome’,49 characterised by depression, regret and suicidality – a condition formulated as evidence that the Supreme Court had been wrong, in Roe v. Wade, when it averred that abortion was a safe procedure. The ultimate goal of the Elliott Institute is to generate legislation that would allow a woman to seek civil damages against a physician who has ‘damaged her mental health’ by providing her with an elective abortion. On the topic of impregnated survivors of rape and incest, Reardon states in his book Victims and Victors, ‘Many women report that their abortions felt like a degrading form of “medical rape.”50 Abortion involves a painful intrusion into a woman’s sexual organs by a masked stranger.’ He and other anti-abortion partisans often quote the essay ‘Pregnancy and Sexual Assault’ by Sandra K. Mahkorn, who suggests that the emotional and psychological burdens of pregnancy resulting from rape ‘can be lessened with proper support’.51 Another activist, George E. Maloof, writes, ‘Incestuous pregnancy offers a ray of generosity to the world,52 a new life. To snuff it out by abortion is to compound the sexual child abuse with physical child abuse. We may expect a suicide to follow abortion as the quick and easy way to solving personal problems.

If we were to take another example, and apply the same rules, it becomes obvious just how inappropriate and harmful this trope is. For some (not all) trans people, one element of being trans is the physical process of transition. It can be joyful, it can be painful, it can be messy, and it can involve surgery. The same could be said of parenthood. Conception, pregnancy, and childbirth are necessary parts of making a family for the majority of people. Like medical transition, it is vital that we're educated about these processes if there's a chance we'll find ourselves personally affected. And luckily, in both of these cases, the medical information is freely and easily available online, through public health initiatives, in libraries, and from the relevant medical authorities. But it would never be appropriate to approach a new mother in a cafe and say, 'so, did you rip your vagina giving birth to that one?' When greeting a colleague returning to the office after maternity leave, we don't ask if we can examine the stretch marks and possible scars, or ask about hemorrhaging and post-natal incontinence. If we're close friends or family, we might well talk about the most personal physical aspects of creating and delivering a baby - the same is true of transition. But the need to be honest and close with our loved ones doesn't make the intrusion of strangers okay.

In the village, women were not allowed to talk in the presence of men or eat with them. They had to hide their natural needs and conceal their pregnancies. When a new bride became pregnant, she tried to keep it a secret, though her mother-in-law would probably guess her condition from a growing appetite for pickles or pomegranate syrup. The girl had to continue working until the last day of her pregnancy without crying or complaining. When the labor pains started, the midwife would be summoned to do her job with the minimum of fuss.

Why don’t we consider moving in together? While we head for this event?” She gulped. “What?” she asked weakly. “Let’s clear the debt, get Kid Crawford out of the picture, I’ll take on your upkeep rather than Vanni and Paul shouldering your food and board, and we’ll evolve into…” He cleared his throat. “We don’t have to explain anything. People will just say, ‘Dr. Michaels likes that nice pregnant girl.’ We’ll share a house. I’ll be your roommate. You’ll have your own room. But there will be late nights you’re worried about some belly pain or later, night crying from the babies. You don’t want to do that to Vanni and Paul and—” “I was just going to go home to Seattle. To my mom and dad’s.” “They have room for me?” he asked, lifting his fork and arching that brow. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she said, slamming down her fork. “You can’t mean to say you plan to just follow me and demand to live with the babies!” “Well, no,” he said. “That would be obsessive. But Jesus, Ab, I don’t want to miss out on anything. Do you know how much babies change from two to six weeks? It just kills me to think you’d take them that far away from me. I mean, they are—” “I know,” she said, frustrated. “Yours.” “Yeah, sweetheart. And they’re also yours. And I swear to God, I will never try to take them away from you. That would be cruel.” He had just aimed an arrow at her sense of justice. The shock of realization must have shown on her face, but he took another bite, had another drink of his beer, smiled. “Live together?” “Here’s how it’ll go if you stay with Vanni and Paul. Toward the end, when you’re sleepless, you’ll be up at night. You’ll be tired during the day, but there will be a toddler around, making noise and crying. And you’ll have all those late pregnancy complaints, worries. Then you’ll have a small guest room stuffed to the ceiling with paraphernalia. Then babies—and grandmothers as additional guests? Newborns, sometimes, cry for hours. They could have Vanni and Paul up all night, walking the floor with you. Nah, that wouldn’t be good. And besides, it’s not Paul’s job to help, it’s mine.” “Where do you suggest we live? Here?” “Here isn’t bad,” he said with a shrug. “But Mel and Jack offered us their cabin. It’s a nice cabin—two bedrooms and a loft, ten minutes from town. Ideally, we should hurry and look around for a place that can accommodate a man, a woman, two newborns, two grandmothers and… We don’t have to make room for the lawyers, do we?” “Very funny,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Abby, we have things to work out every single day. We have to buy cribs, car seats, swings, layette items, lots of stuff—it’s going to take more than one trip to the mall. We have to let the families know there will be babies coming—it’s only fair. We should have dinner together every day, just so we can communicate, catch up. If there’s anything you need or anything you’re worried about, I want to be close so I can help. If you think I’m going to molest you while you’re huge with my babies—” “You know, I’m getting sick of that word, huge.

Consider, for instance, Jill Hubbard Bowman, an intellectual property (IP) attorney in Austin, Texas, who publishes a legal blog, IP Law for Startups, iplawforstartups.com, and an inspiring career website for young women, lookilulu.com. Jill Hubbard Bowman: Unexpected Twists and Turns I had a dream to be a trial attorney who would fight big legal battles and win. And then my dream was derailed by a twin pregnancy that almost killed me. Literally. It was a shock and awe pregnancy. It caused the death, destruction, and rebirth of my identity and legal career. I was working as an intellectual property litigation attorney for a large law firm in Chicago when a pregnancy with twins caused my heart to fail. After fifteen years of infertility, the twin pregnancy was an unexpected surprise. Heart failure because of the pregnancy was an even bigger shock. The toll on my legal career was even more unexpected. Although I was fortunate to survive without a heart transplant, I eventually realized that I needed a career transplant. As my heart function recovered, I valiantly tried to cling to my career dream and do the hard work I loved. But the long hours and travel necessary for trial work were too much for my physical self. I was exhausted with chronic chest pain, two clinging toddlers, and a disgruntled husband. I was tired of being tired. My law firm was exceptionally supportive but I didn’t have the stamina to keep all of the pieces of my life together. Overwhelmed, I let go of my original dream. I backed down, retrenched, and regrouped. I took a year off from legal work to rest, recover, spend time with my toddlers, and open myself to new possibilities.

New Haven psychologist Lisa Cross believes that it is no coincidence that these body-control syndromes occur more often in women than in men, and that they all tend to have their onset in adolescence. From birth to death, Cross argues, a female's experience of her body is far more confused and discontinuous than a male's: from her partially hidden genitals to the pain and mystery of menstruation to the abrupt and radical changes in body contours and function associated with puberty and childbearing to the symbiotic possession of her body by another life during pregnancy and breast-feeding. As a result, some women see their bodies as fragmented, foreign, unfamiliar, frightening, and out of control—as object, not subject, as Cross puts it. Add in social and cultural pressures—which lead teenage girls to define their bodies by their attractiveness, while boys define theirs by strength and function—and it is easy to understand what a perilous passage puberty can be for young women. In fact, it is puberty that first introduces bleeding and body fat into a girl's life, two very powerful symbols of the loss of control over her body. The psychological chasm between body and self widens when girls must negotiate these challenges in an environment fraught with the pain and terror of physical or sexual abuse or unempathetic parenting. "Self-cutting and eating disorders, as bizarre and self-destructive as they can appear, are nonetheless attempts to own the body, to perceive the body as self (not other), known (not uncharted and unpredictable), and impenetrable (not invaded or controlled from the outside)," Cross theorizes.

Every day we have practical reminders that we are weak and he is strong, and that yes, Jesus loves us! This is a greater treasure than healthy, pain-free bodies.

ChiroCynergy - Dr. Matthew Bradshaw | Pregnancy Chiropractor in Leland, NC Back Pain 30 million people nationwide suffer from neck and/or back pain, and this year alone, they will spend $40 billion to try and solve it. ChiroCynergy can help, whether the cause of your pain is down to a muscle/ligament pull or because of a subluxation (misaligned bone) in your spine. Let us help you get back to a pain-free life – by getting to the root of the problem instead of relying on painkillers and anti-inflammatory. ChiroCynergy - Pregnancy-Induced Back Pain Chiropractors in Leland, NC Back pain is common during pregnancy due to the changes occurring in your body. As your baby grows, the biomechanics of your body and your posture alter to make room for the baby. The additional weight and change in posture can lead to increased stress on the spine. Chiropractic can help ease the pain and prepare the body for a more natural birth process by keeping the spine and pelvis in optimal alignment for your baby’s journey. Let us take care of both you and your baby during and post-pregnancy with safe and specific hands-on care. Call ChiroCynergy the best pregnancy chiropractor in Leland, NC to schedule your free consultation with one of our doctors. We can properly assess any injuries you may have suffered – and possibly save you from years of chronic arthritic pain in the future. Call us: (910) 368-1528 #chiropractor_Leland_nc #best_chiropractor_Leland_nc #chiropractor_near_Leland_nc #chiropractic_in_Leland_nc #best_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #chiropractic_near_me #chiropractor_near_me #family_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #female_chiropractors_in_Leland_nc #physical_therapy_in_Leland_nc #sports_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #pregnancy_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #sciatica_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #car_accident_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #Active_Release_Technique_in_Leland_nc #Cold_Laser_Therapy_in_Leland_nc #Spinal_Decompression_in_Leland_nc

ChiroCynergy - Dr. Matthew Bradshaw | Chiropractic in Leland, NC Cutting-edge, state-of-the-art treatments. We don’t know any office that offers what we offer: Erchonia Percussor chiropractic adjustment tools, spinal decompression, cold laser therapy, gentle “no-popping” chiropractic, active release technique (ART), clinical nutrition, detoxification footbaths, acupuncture, ergonomic instruction, yoga instruction … ALL UNDER THE SAME ROOF by the best chiropractic in Leland, NC - ChiroCynergy! Almost 50 years of chiropractic experience (between our 4 Doctors). Schooled at the top-rated Chiropractic Colleges in the country. Treatments that fix the cause of your pain. Instead of masking your symptoms with medications and injections, we get to the underlying cause of your ailment/injury and correct it by using our all-natural, state-of-the-art treatments. We never use medications, injections or surgery. Call us: (910) 368-1528 #chiropractor_Leland_nc #best_chiropractor_Leland_nc #chiropractor_near_Leland_nc #chiropractic_in_Leland_nc #best_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #chiropractic_near_me #chiropractor_near_me #family_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #female_chiropractors_in_Leland_nc #physical_therapy_in_Leland_nc #sports_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #pregnancy_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #sciatica_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #car_accident_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #Active_Release_Technique_in_Leland_nc #Cold_Laser_Therapy_in_Leland_nc #Spinal_Decompression_in_Leland_nc

ChiroCynergy - Dr. Matthew Bradshaw | Active Release Technique (A.R.T.) in Leland, NC What exactly is Active Release Technique (A.R.T.)? ART is a patented, state-of-the-art, soft tissue management system developed by Dr. Michael Leahy (an Air Force engineer/chiropractor) that treats problems occurring with: - Muscles - Tendons - Ligaments - Fascia - Nerves Injuries to these tissues can occur in 3 different ways: Acute trauma injury – a sprained ankle playing racquetball is a great example of this type of injury. Compression injury – an example of a compression injury would be back stiffness and pain and/or numbness down the leg (sciatica) caused by sitting behind a computer frequently and for long periods of time. Sitting causes reduced oxygen flow to the tissues, which in turn causes the numbness and/or pain. Overuse injuries – frequently seen in people whose jobs involve typing all day. The repetitive motion can produce wrist and hand pain (i.e. carpal tall syndrome) due to the accumulation of small tears in the tissues. Each of these changes causes your body to produce tough, dense scar tissue in the affected area. This scar tissue binds up and ties down tissues that need to move freely. As scar tissue builds up: Muscles become shorter and weaker. Tension on tendons causes tendonitis. Nerves can become trapped. This can result in reduced ranges of motion, loss of strength, and pain. With trapped nerves, you may also feel tingling, numbness, shooting pains, burning sensations, weakness, muscle atrophy and circulatory changes. Even when most doctors say medications or surgery is the only answer, ART may still be able to resolve the symptoms and put you back on the field or back to work and into your best game. ChiroCynergy can help! We offer Active Release Technique (A.R.T.) in Leland, NC. Call us: (910) 368-1528 #chiropractor_Leland_nc #best_chiropractor_Leland_nc #chiropractor_near_Leland_nc #chiropractic_in_Leland_nc #best_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #chiropractic_near_me #chiropractor_near_me #family_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #female_chiropractors_in_Leland_nc #physical_therapy_in_Leland_nc #sports_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #pregnancy_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #sciatica_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #car_accident_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #Active_Release_Technique_in_Leland_nc #Cold_Laser_Therapy_in_Leland_nc #Spinal_Decompression_in_Leland_nc

To get the "healthcare" promised by the healthcare bureaucracy, it helps tremendously if the bureaucracy assumes that you are competent. When I called the nurse and said that I was bleeding and in pain, the nurse needed to hear that a competent person was on the phone in order to process my problem for the crisis that it was. Instead, something about me and the interaction did not read as competent. That is why I was left in a general waiting room when I arrived, rather than being rushed to a private room with the equipment necessary to treat a pregnancy crisis.

ChiroCynergy - Dr. Matthew Bradshaw - Chiropractic in Leland, NC CHIROPRACTIC “NO CRACKING” MANIPULATION Chiropractic is a health care profession that focuses on disorders of the musculoskeletal system and the nervous system, and the effects of these disorders on general health. Chiropractic care is used most often to treat neuromusculoskeletal complaints, including but not limited to back pain, neck pain, pain in the joints of the arms or legs, and headaches. Doctors of Chiropractic – often referred to as chiropractors or chiropractic physicians – practice a drug-free, hands-on approach to health care that includes patient examination, diagnosis and treatment. Chiropractors have broad diagnostic skills and are also trained to recommend therapeutic and rehabilitative exercises, as well as to provide nutritional, dietary and lifestyle counseling. Call us: (910) 368-1528 #chiropractor_Leland_nc #best_chiropractor_Leland_nc #chiropractor_near_ Leland_nc #chiropractic_in_Leland_nc #best_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #chiropractic_near_me #chiropractor_near_me #family_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #female_chiropractors_in_Leland_nc #physical_therapy_in_Leland_nc #sports_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #pregnancy_chiropractor in_Leland_nc #sciatica_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #car_accident_chiropractor_in_Leland_nc #Active_Release_Technique_in_Leland_nc #Cold_Laser_Therapy_in_Leland_nc #Spinal_Decompression_in_Leland_nc

My wife has become one of the latest victims of a British tabloid press that wages campaigns against individuals with no thought to the consequences—a ruthless campaign that has escalated over the past year, throughout her pregnancy and while raising our newborn son…I cannot begin to describe how painful it has been…Though this action may not be the safe one, it is the right one. Because my deepest fear is history repeating itself…I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.

She scrounged herbs from the cook and planted some of the seeds she’d smuggled on board with her in a box of manure: arnica for pains and bruises, mandrake for sleeplessness, and pennyroyal, a flowering mint, for unwanted pregnancy. For dysentery, egg whites and boiled milk. For fainting spells, a tablespoon of vinegar. She created a paste from lard, honey, oats, and eggs as a salve for chapped hands and feet.

It might aid with back, neck, and joint pain relief and sleep quality improvement.Before beginning chiropractic care during pregnancy, pregnant women should always consult their doctor.

The benefits of chiropractic care for pregnancy extend beyond pain relief, touching on improved nervous system function, enhanced baby positioning, and potential shorter labor times.

But the still, small voice won’t allow it. The still, small voice insists that if I walk back in now, I’ll be rejecting the gift inside of this crisis. Crisis. Sift. This is an invitation to allow everything to fall away in order to be left holding what can never be taken. The invitation in this pain is the possibility of discovering who I really am. Eleven years earlier, when I found myself stunned sober by that pregnancy test, I’d looked around and decided that adulthood meant taking on roles. Adults became and so I became, became, became. I became a wife and then a mother and a church lady and a career woman. As I took on these roles, I kept waiting for that day when I could stop acting like a grown-up because I’d finally be one. But that day never came. My roles hung on the outside of me like costumes

During a belated New Year’s cleaning, I come across my grad-school coursework on the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. Scanning my notes, I begin to remember his story. Frankl was born in 1905, and as a boy, he became intensely interested in psychology. By high school, he began an active correspondence with Freud. He went on to study medicine and lecture on the intersection of psychology and philosophy, or what he called logotherapy, from the Greek word logos, or “meaning.” Whereas Freud believed that people are driven to seek pleasure and avoid pain (his famous pleasure principle), Frankl maintained that people’s primary drive isn’t toward pleasure but toward finding meaning in their lives. He was in his thirties when World War II broke out, putting him, a Jew, in jeopardy. Offered immigration to the United States, he turned it down so as not to abandon his parents, and a year later, the Nazis forced Frankl and his wife to have her pregnancy terminated. In a matter of months, he and other family members were deported to concentration camps, and when Frankl was finally freed, three years later, he learned that the Nazis had killed his wife, his brother, and both of his parents. Freedom under these circumstances might have led to despair. After all, the hope of what awaited Frankl and his fellow prisoners upon their release was now gone—the people they cared about were dead, their families and friends wiped out. But Frankl wrote what became an extraordinary treatise on resilience and spiritual salvation, known in English as Man’s Search for Meaning. In it, he shares his theory of logotherapy as it relates not just to the horrors of concentration camps but also to more mundane struggles. He wrote, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” Indeed, Frankl remarried, had a daughter, published prolifically, and spoke around the world until his death at age ninety-two. Rereading these notes, I thought of my conversations with Wendell. Scribbled in my grad-school spiral were the words Reacting vs. responding = reflexive vs. chosen. We can choose our response, Frankl was saying, even under the specter of death. The same was true of John’s loss of his mother and son, Julie’s illness, Rita’s regrettable past, and Charlotte’s upbringing. I couldn’t think of a single patient to whom Frankl’s ideas didn’t apply, whether it was about extreme trauma or an interaction with a difficult family member. More than sixty years later, Wendell was saying I could choose too—that the jail cell was open on both sides. I particularly liked this line from Frankl’s book: “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

In addition, sometimes publicly counting our blessings can cause inadvertent pain to others. We no more deserve our blessings than others deserve their pain. In a recent essay on Motherwell, Liz Becker writes: When we say we are blessed, when we refer to our marriages or pregnancies or children in this way, we say, whether intentionally or not, that we have been arbitrarily chosen for joy, and that all of the suffering in the world has been chosen as well. Every hashtag, every smiling angel emoji, is another tiny arrow aimed at the person who does not have these things, the couple who just failed a third round of IVF, the woman going through her fifth miscarriage, the single man or woman who has struggled through yet another breakup, the parents who have buried a child.

They were used to punish those who, by their words, had transgressed against the prevailing conventions. In the course of four centuries, countless women decried as ‘scolds’ and ‘shrews’ because domestic slavery and incessant pregnancy reduced them to neurasthenia and frenzy were thus humiliated and tortured; political power thus held up to public ridicule the petty disobedient and the nonconformists; ecclesiastical power thus punished a long list of lesser infractions. The overwhelming majority of victims were always women, and the operative principle was mulier taceat in ecclesia, ‘Let the woman be silent in church’ – ‘church’ here meaning the ruling ecclesiastical and secular hierarchies, both constitutionally gynaecophobic. The sense was thus: ‘Let the woman be silent in the presence of the male’. The victims, locked into the masks and staked out in the town square, were also treated roughly by the crowd. Painful beatings, besmearing with faeces and urine, and serious, sometimes fatal wounding (especially in the breasts, anus and vagina) was their lot.

She knew she should be grateful. A child was a blessing, that’s what her mother always said. But her first pregnancy had felt more like an actual nightmare, nine months filled with excruciating, debilitating pain, and none of her doctors—not one—had believed her when she’d tried to tell them how bad it was. They insisted there was nothing physically wrong with her, that she must be exaggerating. They told her to try taking a Tylenol—Tylenol!—when the pain felt like someone tying her insides into knots. Lucy couldn’t help wondering if that’s what they told all the women who came in complaining about being in pain. But there was another part of her, a small shameful part, that wondered if maybe she wasn’t strong enough, if she was unworthy.

10 Things You Should Always Discuss with Your Gynecologist – Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital Your gynecologist is your partner in women’s health, and open communication is key to receiving the best care. From reproductive health to general well-being, here are 10 crucial topics you should always discuss with your gynecologist. If you’re in Chandigarh, consider reaching out to the Best Female Gynecologist in Chandigarh through Motherhood Chaitanya for expert care. 1. Menstrual Irregularities Don’t dismiss irregular periods as a minor issue. They could be indicative of underlying conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), thyroid disorders, or hormonal imbalances. 2. Contraception Discuss your contraception options to find the one that best suits your needs and lifestyle. Your gynecologist can provide guidance on various birth control methods, from pills to intrauterine devices (IUDs). 3. Pregnancy Planning If you’re planning to start a family, consult your gynecologist for preconception advice. This can help you prepare your body and address any potential risks or concerns. 4. Sexual Health Openly discuss any concerns related to sexual health, including pain during intercourse, sexually transmitted infections (STIs), or changes in sexual desire. Your gynecologist can provide guidance and offer solutions. 5. Menopause and Perimenopause If you’re in your 40s or approaching menopause, discuss perimenopausal symptoms like hot flashes, mood swings, and changes in menstrual patterns. Your gynecologist can recommend treatments to manage these changes. 6. Family History Share your family’s medical history, especially if there are instances of gynecological conditions, such as ovarian or breast cancer. This information is vital for early detection and prevention. 7. Breast Health Talk to your gynecologist about breast health, including breast self-exams and recommended mammograms. Regular breast checks are essential for early detection of breast cancer. 8. Pelvic Pain Don’t ignore persistent pelvic pain. It can signal a range of issues, including endometriosis, fibroids, or ovarian cysts. Early diagnosis and treatment are crucial. 9. Urinary Issues Frequent urination, urinary incontinence, or pain during urination should be discussed. These symptoms can be linked to urinary tract infections or pelvic floor disorders. 10. Mental Health Your gynecologist is there to address your overall well-being. If you’re experiencing mood swings, anxiety, or depression, it’s important to discuss these mental health concerns. Your gynecologist can offer guidance or refer you to specialists if needed. In conclusion, your gynecologist is your go-to resource for women’s health, addressing a wide spectrum of issues. Open and honest communication is essential to ensure you receive the best care and support. If you’re in Chandigarh, consider consulting the Best Gynecologist Obstetricians in Chandigarh through Motherhood Chaitanya for expert guidance. Your health is a priority, and discussing these important topics with your gynecologist is a proactive step toward a healthier, happier you