no boys allowed in the room!!!!

OTM

Breastfeeding seems to be rare in the small towns I have been in, per the pediatrician offices I visit. Not everyone can do it and feel lucky and grateful that I have been able to. But because I do, I worry constantly about the quality of my milk. So far, our baby is where she should be, if not better, so I continue.

The impression I have had is that breast milk is only healthy if you are. I have never thought breast milk across the board is good, all individual, many variables. I know programs like WIC emphasize breastfeeding for economic reasons but also stress a well balanced diet to do so.

I do know of a woman who was dead set on breastfeeding despite the fact that her pediatrician said her baby was not thriving and should be switched to formula. She refused to switch. I have no idea what happened to her or her baby but that is an example of what can happen where there is a heavy pressure to breastfeed.

Based on a documentary I once saw, New Zealand is where just about everyone has a micro farm in their backyard, make their own soap and clothing, harvest their own salad and honey.....so that article doesn't surprise me.

That's the image nz sells to the rest of the world, but believe me - it's far from true

Do tell....less creepy thinking most of the country is not a commune.

just read the comments on any news story from stuff.co.nz, i think that will reveal NZ is as full of empathy-lacking, greedy, sexist, racist, homophobic assholes as anywhere else

Hey to change the topic, any other gals w/the nuvaring here? If so, leave it in during?? Or take out? Can you tell? My uterus is flippy floppy so I don't think it's in the normal position for me.

Also does anyone else constantly read nuvaring as a verb in the present participle??

leave it in.

i don't use it anymore but i never took it out, couldn't tell, was never a prob outside of the hormones being a prob (which is why i stopped using it)

well, i mean i took it out when it was time to take it out, but not for any other reason

Yeah. Don't have one now but had one and you leave it in.

this pic of natalie wood cracked me up
http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9g05l0Biz1qdjn0ao1_500.jpg

It's like she knows how ridiculous that dress is, but is having fun with it anyway. Awwww. Poor Nat.

i was looking at her yoni hands + huge smile!

W/r/t nuvaring: leave it in. Be aware, though, that the physical um interaction can pull/suction it out without anyone noticing? I woke up with it lost in the sheets more than once, and that means it was out for hours longer than it's supposed to be. Didn't prove to be a problem, but it was not reassuring.

I am just gonna sit here and lol for a while at "yoni hands."

You can also experience a "ring toss" situation with the Nuva Ring, but I do not view that as a drawback because it's hilarious.

i had to think about that for a minute. and then, OH.

lolz.

yoni hands

omg

wow I did not know yoni hands are a thing. Jay-z does this a lot, but not in front of his vagina. I think it's the Official Gesture of Roc-a-Fella records (don't even get me started on THAT name..)

http://www.pointsincase.com/files/u2/jay-z-roc-sign.jpg

i always left the nuva ring in. my gyno told me that since it has such a low dose of hormones that it's best to only take it out if absolutely necessary? take that w/ a grain, because i don't think i've seen that in any literature.

I think the official lit says UP TO 3 HOURS, or at least it used to. I always assumed that was the most cautious possible estimate and that it was likely to be okay for longer than that, but who wants to chance it? Not me.

it is the only hormonal method ever that didnt make me feel like an emotionless zombie

I know. I've used it two or three different times. Eventually even the low level of hormones was too much for me, also I had some srs personal problems I should have solved sooner rather than later which were probably was was REALLY making me a zombie but I'm grateful for my IUD anyway.

I am getting mine out in a couple weeks and I'm scared! I hope it doesn't hurt too bad.

When I had one out, it was eh painful-ish, but also really fast. Totally different from the insertion in that it was over so quickly.

OK, good. That's what I was hoping.

Oh yeah, I had an IUD taken out and it was nothing. No worse than a pap smear, and totally unlike the insertion (which made me want to die).

Thanks guys, I feel better.

I have been going condoms-only and I'm just too paranoid for it. Plus freaky deaky accident already! God! Went to pull it out and I followed all the directions – held onto it at the base and whatnot, but it was stuck inside me and didn't want to come out?? Such a thing has never happened before. My #1 rule is no babies so I hope the plan B did its job.

IUD insertion didn't work for me. The man who 'tried' to insert it was one of the most condescending authority figures I've had to deal with in my life.

lol <3 "my #1 rule is no babies"
i love that rule

yes
I have a little 1" piece of cardboard with this picture taped to my turntable

http://www.thefix.com/sites/default/files/styles/article/public/no-pregnancy-fix.jpg

you have no idea how happy that makes me

i recognize it from somewhere. is it from an accutane container? i think my friend showed me something like that when she was on it but i could be misremembering

yes, I had an endless supply of them when my brother was taking Accutane

Hmmm. I feel like I would kind of like to discuss this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/17/cool-girl-gone-girl

Adewunmi is generally a pretty cool columnist, and I have not read the book in question, but there is just so much "Hmmmmm" in my response to that article.

Because this assumption (from the book, rather than Adewunmi herself): "You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who'd like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them." is such bullshit.

I don't doubt that that trope exists and is manipulated in male authored films to turn into a new kind of MPDG. But there *are* girls who grow up tomboys and geekgirls and have interests associated with the "wrong" gender and are into those things because we like them not because we're looking for ~male approval~.

Which I think she tries to get into in the latter half of the article, but at the same time, I'm still feeling butthurt and twitchy at being told that because a kind of woman has been manipulated into a male fantasy figure, that means somehow she doesn't exist at all? It just feels like one of those "you can't win either way." But maybe I don't know what she's talking about because I haven't seen the films or read the book. But having spent most of my life being "the girl who was not into girly shit" I resent being told I was that way because of ~Patriarchy~.

having spent most of my life being "the girl who was not into girly shit" I resent being told I was that way because of ~Patriarchy~.

tbh i was that way because of patriarchy? i mean, not because i wanted to be attractive but at least in part because as a child i thought boy things were better than girl things (once i'd ascertained that the use of things was gendered), and i lived in a culture which confirmed this belief for me, so that my nascent interest in e.g. playing with toy cars or listening to indie became a repudiation of 'girly shit'. But everyone is the way they are because of patriarchy! it has been an inextricable part of our culture, we can work against it in ourselves but the fact that it was there will always be true.

that is a confused article, anyway - the "cool girl" the quote is railing against is a ladette type, not an MPDG at all.

also: we can win either way

i guess the secret is to remember that other people's definitions never apply to them and so clearly cannot apply to us

Yeah, that is part of what is confusing me, the conflation of ladette and MPDG which seem to me to be different phenomenon. (Though they are both caricatures which are marketed as male romantic fantasy figures.)

I don't think that ~Patriarchy~ was to blame for my tendencies (though obviously I have probably internalised a lot of the automatic dismissal of "girly shit" because Patriarchy) but because I honestly did not realise that I was a non-Boy until I hit puberty and sprouted breasts. Until that point, I did not see any difference between myself and my brother and did not understand why suddenly puberty meant that I had to develop different interests than I had always had.

I get that Patriarchy exists and it does horrible twisted things to people. But women can exist in ways that are not necessarily always derived from Patriarchy.

women can exist in any damn way they like, it's true.

i honestly do not think the article is worth the time it would take to work out what it is trying to say beyond "some women seem to have made more of an effort to fulfil certain male fantasy roles but tbh it's hard for everyone and judging is nagl"

I guess that's it, though. Just that despairing sense of "oh god is this yet another thing that I'm going to be judged on? Fuck that."

Hokay, sorry for long and self-absorbed post.

I am totally a tomboy and a geek with very male-coded interests and I did not read myself in that excerpt AT ALL because I have never been the "cool girl" - too ugly and neurotic by far. In fact I can get p. angry when people say "why don't more women like this thing", because it seems to mean "why don't some women who are Cool Girls like it, because I am going to pretend women like you who like it don't exist, and if you continue to remind me that you do I'll get v. unpleasant telling everyone your Cool Girl credentials or your Liking My Stuff credentials are not up to snuff".

(Though I'm not sure the Cool Girls get off any more lightly on that part. I guess they just get less of Phase 1: Ignoring and more Phase 2: Gatekeeping. What I took from "Cool Girl": mainly hot but also socially "fun", plus maybe some nastier back-stabbing anti-feminist aspects listed in the article but not the original rant, which I won't list so we don't have to argue abt how straw-womany they are, which is probably a little but I know I was guilty of some of them when younger and insecure in a mostly-male group)

So I'd agree the conflation of MPDGs and hot ladettes and geek girls into one big category of Women Who Like Man Stuff without considering the different ways in which they like Man Stuff and the different reactions they get for it - never mind the different categories of Man whose Stuff is being liked - is not very helpful here.

But I read this post on "'fake' geek girls" yesterday and it ties into the bits of this I can relate to, so here it is: http://www.themarysue.com/on-the-fake-geek-girl/

(Interesting post, C#. I was into boy stuff before I knew it was gendered, of course, but definitely entered a feedback loop when I was at primary school that the stuff other girls liked must be Bad and whatever the boys liked must be Good, and later was drawn to interests not shared by others at my girls' secondary school; maybe pure iconoclasm plus not even knowing any boys, and obviously the origins of likes/dislikes are always tangled, but probably still an element of privileging male interests, yes.)

Yeah the 'fake geek girl' thing is a red herring – if there are geek posers it's not a gendered phenomenon.

I try not to read about any of this stuff anymore so I can just go deeper into my own fantasyland of what a fun woman's life is like without worrying I'm fitting some kind of (patriarchy-tooled?) stereotype. I spent my mid-'20s worrying about all that shit, image, and I had no fun at all.

yeah i always just ignore "articles"/opinion pieces like that because clearly they are not talking about me as a subject or as an audience so NEXT

whoa xp

i meant that thing about "cool girls" -- i didn't mean your fantasyland. I live there too!

meaning also that i have stopped trying to figure out where i "fit in". i don't feel like i fit in anywhere, so i just carry on not worrying about it. i guess to some degree everyone's interested in defining themselves but i have little interest in that, for the most part.