More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
February 19 - February 21, 2022
“Humans are built to have babies, so every type of human has babies,”
Traditionally, a two-spirit person’s ability to see and understand the world from multiple perspectives was believed to be a powerful gift.
“It’s not how you give birth, it’s how you’re cared for that really matters,”
Simkin realized then that it was not the physical act of birth itself that held the most potent memories for women, but the way they were cared for before, during, and after birth.
Women with support have less negative feelings about childbirth. They are happier.7
including maternity care and birth control are listed in the ten essential health benefits that all insurance plans are required to cover.
The reduction of Medicaid would mean no maternity care for two million women—half of all women who give birth annually in the United States.
One out of every six women in America has been the victim of rape or attempted rape, and every year over sixty thousand children become victims of sexual abuse.
Care is vital to society but also an engine for other things: decency, empathy, affection, love.
We dissolve parts of ourselves, starting with gluteal-femoral fat, a.k.a. our butts and thighs, and turn it into food for our babies.
Breasts have only one functional purpose: to make food for our offspring.
WHO and UNICEF urge breast-feeding for two years or more.
For more than a year of my life, there wasn’t one minute when I wasn’t thinking about, writing about, eating, or producing food.
Nutritionally, breast milk is a complete and perfect food, an ideal combination of proteins, fat, carbohydrates, and nutrients. Colostrum, the thick golden liquid that first comes out of a woman’s breasts after giving birth (or sometimes weeks before, as many freaked-out moms-to-be will tell you) is engineered to be low in fat but high in carbohydrates and protein, making it quickly and easily digestible to newborns in urgent need of its contents. (It also has a laxative effect that helps a baby pass its momentous first poop, a terrifying, black, tar-like substance called meconium.)
The human microbiome is a combination of bacteria unique to each of us that goes on to help us deal with infection, train our immune systems, and help process the food we eat. Microbes far outnumber our own cells, and they populate all the parts of our bodies.
there are a ton of them in breast milk. Human milk isn’t sterile—it’s very much alive. Much like yogurt, naturally fermented pickles, and kefir—foods that help to keep our digestive systems functioning properly—breast milk is filled with beneficial microbes.
Studies show that breast-feeding is good for a baby’s immunological health: breast-fed babies have lower instances of colds and viruses.
Within that vacuum, the infant’s saliva is sucked back into the mother’s nipple, where receptors in her mammary gland decipher it.8
Everything scientists know about physiology indicates that this baby backwash is one of the ways that breast milk is able to adjust its immunological composition.
“You have information about your whole life span that could be in your milk,” said Hinde. “Milk is telling the baby about the world its mother has lived in.”
(For the record, mothers, you are entitled to: a breast pump, reasonable break time to express breast milk for one year after your child’s birth each time you experience the need to express milk, and a place to pump, other than a bathroom, that is shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public.)
Right now, we lack the societal, institutional, and cultural support structure to help mothers meet their breast-feeding goals. If we’re telling women that they should breast-feed exclusively for six months, then we should give them—at minimum—the same amount of paid family leave.
“[Breast milk] is the optimum food for babies. I know that’s true, but there is a disconnect between how much the medical community is pushing breast-feeding and the American lifestyle,” she said. “[My daughter’s] well-being was linked to mine very strongly. I think we both would have benefitted a lot from me being more relaxed.”
said, milk is living and dynamic. It changes daily, even more frequently than that, because a baby changes daily. And so new information is directing scientists to develop formula that is more active and adaptable.
Breast-feeding mothers need trained support to help them keep trying. But they also need to be told that, if they want to, they can stop.
The standards we set for mothers, without real support, mean that very few women will ever meet them.
While I was held hostage on the couch, strapped into a My Brest Friend nursing pillow with an infant latched on to my body, I needed him to bring me a glass of water, some crackers, the remote control. I needed him to make me tea, fold my clothes, go outside and get the mail.
He asserted his desire to do more “important” work by occasionally insisting that I rest while he took care of the baby, even when she seemed to only want or need me.
(Whether you deliver vaginally or via C-section, you will be constipated after your birth. Not eating full meals during labor, taking painkillers, having your intestines moved around, causing gas and bloating, as well as having hemorrhoids and a torn-up perineum from pushing all make it difficult to move your bowels.)
Oxytocin is known as the “love hormone” because it produces a feeling of well-being and contentment during orgasm, birth, and breast-feeding.
“I am afraid to own a Body— / I am afraid to own a Soul— / Profound—precarious
precarious Property,” wrote the
poet Emily Di...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
It was never my body’s job to be perfect, just to keep me alive.
What I couldn’t fully appreciate then was the knowledge I have now: that being a mother means honoring the distinct people we have always been and recognizing that, as members of a family, we’ll be finding our way apart
and together, again and again, for a lifetime.
that, just before childbirth, hopeful parents of both sexes experienced a boost in their self-esteem.
Why don’t we talk openly about the fact that while there is much joy in becoming a parent, caring for a young child is also grueling, sometimes depressing work?
New parents should be regarded like endurance athletes or hard laborers.
the results have consistently shown that the quality of a couple’s relationship declines once a baby comes into the mix.
who didn’t discuss parenting chores and who is in charge of which task—“unexpressed and incongruent role expectations”—had more negative feelings about their relationships. In contrast, having similar beliefs about the need to share tasks—and being clear about who is responsible for what—helped couples maintain a happier relationship amid the chaotic banality of early parenthood.
that relationship satisfaction was affected only “marginally by whether partners’ ideal division of role responsibilities matched the actual division of responsibilities.”
The pelvic floor is both an essential guardian and gateway, yet we are taught virtually nothing about its anatomy or function.
Made up of a group of muscles collectively called the levator ani, the pelvic floor, as its name suggests, is the main support for all of your pelvic organs—bladder, colon, uterus—holding them up from beneath.
It’s believed that one in three mothers sustain pelvic floor injuries while giving birth.
No matter how you give birth, it requires all sorts of stretching, pushing, squeezing, stitching, rearranging, resettling, and healing.
Preparing for childbirth without ever hearing about your levator ani muscle and pudendal nerve is like training for a marathon without hearing about your hamstrings or IT band.
new mothers are looking at a fair amount of discomfort, possibly pain, in their vaginas, vulvas, perinea, lower abdomens, backs, and hips.
Scar tissue can also push on the pudendal nerve, the main nerve that serves the pelvic area, which itself can be stretched and injured during birth, scrambling or sending unpleasant sensations throughout your pelvis.
You might feel pain during sex, or less sexual sensation. It might hurt to exercise, and exercise and movement could cause you to pee your pants. Incontinence, both urinary and fecal, could occur not only when you’re running or jumping but when you sneeze or laugh.
