Today is my son’s 3rd birthday, which means that it’s been almost four years that I’ve neglected to write you this letter.

For about four years before he was born, you were my gynecologist. I saw you regularly for annual pap smears. Despite knowing that you would not consider my husband and I for an apartment because we were not married at the time, I still chose you as my gynecologist. It was quite romantic and convenient to have a black woman with an established practice on my same block as my care provider. And, the fact that you took my insurance made it feel like kismet.

On the morning I realized that I was pregnant, I was also spotting blood. After consulting with a friend’s midwife, I called you for an appointment. The joy of having my gyne on the same block was at an all time high as you obliged and told me to come on over. Within 20 minutes I was in your rear examining room coming down from that high. After examining me and finding some tissue to be sent to the lab, you were convinced that I was experiencing a miscarriage. We moved into your interior consultation room and the rest of our visit was a series of one-liners. You scribbled on a prescription pad and handed me the note:

“You’re definitely having a miscarriage.”

“Take this to the emergency room for a D&C.”

“If you’d used condoms, you wouldn’t be in this situation.”

How quickly your office became a den of shame. For months, I wished that I’d said something vicious or clever in response as if that could have clear the room of your contempt. All I managed was a simple and unnuanced, “Babies are a blessing.”

Sometimes, I wonder about you. I wonder if you saw that last statement as as a simple declaration of fact (which you could have no knowledge of). I wonder what you think it means to actually care for a pregnant woman. I wonder how could be so cold. It is cold-hearted to imply to a woman losing her possible child that she should never have become pregnant in the first place.

If you had ever been curious enough to ask, you would have known that I actually wanted to be pregnant.

I wonder if you have ever said such a thing to another woman. See, I happened to be highly educated, gainfully employed and in a loving, committed relationship. For the most part, society says it’s OK for me to have babies. I shudder to imagine how venomous your counsel could be for a woman with a less respected context.

To be clear, it is both unprofessional and mortifying that you would use your position and the time of miscarriage to spread shame.

As for how fared after leaving your office, things got worse before they got better. I took your note to the emergency room at NY Methodist Hospital in Park Slope. Without even conducting an ultrasound, they determined that my pregnancy was not viable and that I should have that D&C you recommended. Remember, I wanted the baby so confirmation that I was losing it saddened me. However, on the serendipitous advice of a friend, I fed my skepticism and declined the surgery. Days later, morning sickness kicked in and I returned to the hospital confused only to learn that the baby was growing inside me just fine. The ER doctor who worked with me should have sent me for an ultrasound before deciding to schedule a D&C.

I try not to hold their negligence against you, but I’m certain that a note from my gynecologist urging an emergency D&C was more than persuasive. Still, she had a responsibility that she did not meet.

Anyhow, since that last awful moment in your office, we have had no communication. I let the midwife who cares for me handle retrieving my records from your office and never looked back. Still, whenever I tell people my story, they always urge me to write to you. I usually share my story to encourage other women not to settle for unprofessional or otherwise sub-par care; I share it with you in the hopes that it might inspire you to a higher code of ethics and humanity.

Truthfully,

Anayah

I thought I’d share some of my favorite lullaby songs with you. These are a few tracks from our bedtime soundtrack I sing to the children to help them get to sleep. I make changes to songs that are romantic/sexual or include content that is irrelevant to the children – like angels or blue eyes.

Stevie Wonder – You Are the Sunshine of My Life

Carpenters – Close To You

Danny Kaye – Inchworm Song

Stevie Wonder – Golden Lady

Cameroonian (?) Children’s Song – White Sands and Gray Sands

Scottish Folk Song – My Bonnie

Share some with me. What are your favorite songs to sing to your little ones?

I just ran across this video while scrolling through my late night Facebook newsfeed:

For starters, I really appreciate that Chika Oduah used her platform to do a piece on African-American women and home birth. It’s the kind of niche topic that seems to weird out black news outlets and when mainstream outlets cover home birth, they frequently exclude women of color altogether. Furthermore, Chika interviewed Black doulas and obstetricians for this piece – also a very rare move. So, three cheers to Chika!

Now, I have to share my criticisms in the hopes that if she or anyone else picks up this topic, they will be better able to do so with balance. Did you notice that this is a piece on home births, yet I didn’t list midwives? For some strange reason, there is speculation about the home birth experience, including the possibility of complications and maternal mortality rates without any mention of or word from the only professionals specifically trained in home births: midwives! More specifically, Certified Professional Midwives. By excluding midwives and only having obstetricians – who are trained in a medical birth model – weigh in, she has already skewed the balance of the piece.

Not only are there no professionals qualified to address the topic in the piece, but the unqualified professionals are allowed to present their opinions as facts when there is much evidence to the contrary. The first obstetrician calls home birthing “medically foolish” because she worries about what would happen in the case of complications. Why is physician aware of the fact that CPMs are trained to recognize complications. This is why study after study has shown that planned home births attended by qualified and experienced midwives have either comparable of better rates of perinatal mortality. These physicians should not be allowed to push their opinions as facts. I’m sorry sister Chika, but the jury is not still out on this topic. The evidence is overwhelming and any of the amazing home birth midwives in the NYC metro area, of which a few are Black women, would probably conveyed as much. There’s also the International Center for Traditional Childbearing, a professional organization of Black birth workers of color with many members who are providers of home birth services to African-American women.

Another point that went unchecked was the assertion by the obstetrician that poverty was the cause for higher rates of maternal morbidity in African-American women. Studies have shown that high rates hold across educational attainment and income level for Black women. It is not for poverty or lack of education that Black women die more than any other group during labor or as a result of complications from it. That may be that doctor’s opinion, again, but it is not supported by facts. I really wish the team who prepared the data for this piece had done more research to present a more balanced and thorough presentation on the topic. While I am proud home birther, I don’t even believe that it’s where so much attention needs to be paid when it comes to Black women because about 99% percent of us are still bringing our babies in hospitals. So, my point is not even to promote home birth here…but to say that it deserves a fair and researched approach.

For your consideration, I’m including a list of studies on the safety of home birth. It was compiled by Wendy Gordon of the Midwives Alliance Division of Research in a longer post rebutting a faulty and misleading article issued by ACOG. Anyway, here’s the list:

Ackermann-Liebrich U., Voegeli T., Gunter-Witt K., Kunz I., Zullig M., Schindler C., Maurer M. & Zurich Study Team. (1996). Home versus hospital deliveries: follow up study of matched pairs for procedures and outcome. BMJ, 313(7068):1313-18. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.313.7068.1313.

Anderson R. E. & Murphy P.A. (1995). Outcomes of 11,788 planned home births attended by certified nurse-midwives: A retrospective descriptive study. J Nurse Midwifery, 40(6):483-92.

Cawthon L. (1996). Planned home births: outcomes among Medicaid women in Washington State. Olympia,WA: Washington Department of Social and Health Services. Retrieved from http://www.dshs.wa.gov/pdf/ms/rda/research/7/93.pdf.

Chamberlain G., Wraight A. & Crowley P. (eds.). (1997). Home births – The report of the 1994 confidential enquiry by the National Birthday Trust Fund. Cranforth, UK: Parthenon Publishing.

de Jonge A., van der Goes B. Y., Ravelli A. C., Amelink-Verburg M. P., Mol B. W., Nijhuis J. G., Bennebroek Gravenhorst J. & Buitendijk S. E. (2009). Perinatal mortality and morbidity in a nationwide cohort of 529,688 low-risk planned home and hospital births. BJOG, 116(9):1177-84. DOI: 10.1111/j.1471-0528.2009.02175.x.

Hutton E. K., Reitsma A.H. & Kaufman K. (2009). Outcomes associated with planned home and planned hospital births in low-risk women attended by midwives in Ontario, Canada, 2003-2006: A retrospective cohort study. Birth, 36(3):180-89.

Janssen P. A., Saxell L., Page L. A., Klein M. C., Liston R. M. & Lee S.K. (2009). Outcomes of planned home births with registered midwife versus planned hospital birth with midwife or physician. CMAJ, 181(6):377-83

Janssen P. A., Lee S. K., Ryan E. M., Etches D. J., Farquharson D. F., Peacock D. & Klein M. C. (2002). Outcomes of planned home births versus planned hospital births after regulation of midwifery in British Columbia. CMAJ, 166(3):315-23

Johnson K. C. & Daviss B-A. (2005). Outcomes of planned home births with certified professional midwives: large prospective study in North America. BMJ, 330:1416. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.330.7505.1416

Leslie M. S. & Romano A. (2007). Appendix: Birth can safely take place at home and in birthing centers. J Perinat Educ, 16(Suppl 1):81S-88S. doi:10.1624/105812407X173236

Murphy P. A. & Fullerton J. (1998). Outcomes of intended home births in nurse-midwifery practice: a prospective descriptive study. Obstet Gynecol, 92(3):461-70.

Northern Region Perinatal Mortality Survey Coordinating Group. (1996). Collaborative survey of perinatal loss in planned and unplanned home births. BMJ, 313(7068):1306-09. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.313.7068.1306.

Olsen O. (1997). Meta-analysis of the safety of home birth. Birth, 24(1):4-13; discussion 14-6.

Olsen O. & Clausen J. A. (2012). Planned hospital birth versus planned home birth. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, Issue 9. Art. No.: CD000352. doi: 10.1002/14651858.CD000352.pub2.

Wiegers T. A., Keirse M. J., van der Zee J. & Berghs G. A. (1996). Outcome of planned home and planned hospital births in low risk pregnancies: prospective study in midwifery practices in the Netherlands. BMJ, 313(7068):1309-13

This weekend, I had the opportunity to visit with one of my favorite families. They, too, welcomed a second baby boy into their family recently. He was doing his newborn sleep all day thing, so I didn’t get to hold him. But, his adorable head of hair and caramel brown skin were completely swoonworthy!

They introduced us to the worlds of Extreme Couponers, mermen, Key & Peele, and a Black owned tattoo shop. Our toddlers toddled around with varying degrees of consideration and territoriality. A chill evening…until my respiratory system started rebelling.

After being there a couple of hours, I got the largest lump in my throat. I knew immediately that it was from the plug-in type air freshener, but I didn’t say anything. You see, for years I’ve noticed that I develop a reaction to strong fumes, specifically: paint, perfumes, air fresheners, cigarettes, and bleach. I’d never really mentioned it to anyone but my husband because it sounded kind of weird. I know that not drinking from plastic and being on a plant-based, low processed food diet leaves people unsettled, so I felt self-conscious about afford another thing to the list.

This time though, l let my denial go on for too long. Excited to finally be out of the house postpartum, I stayed way too long. What would usually leave me with a lumpy throat and slightly swollen lymph nodes has had me sneezing with a runny nose and mucous in my throat. Yuck, boo and I’m tired! I already get very little sleep with a newborn.

Wen I mentioned it to co-workers, they were all “those things are toxic!” So? I finally got my Internet diagnosing on and discovered that this is a thing! I found this article from USNews where the president-elect of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immonology recognizes that many people have physiologic response to air fresheners.

The article goes on to talk about how air fresheners and products with fragrance (like perfume and laundry detergents) emit volatile organic compounds, which may trigger allergic reactions. Paints usually have them, too. Then, I read this piece on Care2 about carcinogens found in fragrance products and knew I had figured it out. And if you want to read more, check out this Wikipedia page section on the toxicity of air fresheners. I can’t believe the government allows these things on the market in their current formulations. There’s no official test for this, but I’m sure that it explains my plight so I’m diagnosing myself. I have allergies to toxics!

I’ve known a few people to suffer from symptoms of seasonal allergies in off-seasons and I wonder if they may be actually be reacting to these toxic compound, too. No one ever talks about how we may be allergic to elements of our human-made environment. Have you ever experienced allergic symptoms to chemicals?

I gave birth to our second child almost five weeks ago now. He’s an absolute gem. If we weren’t so paranoid about child abductors and internet weirdos, both his and SJ’s photos would be plastered all over this blog. It’s a good thing we are though, it keeps me focused on making sure I don’t hide behind my children in my increasingly more important electronic life.

Like last time, my mother arrived on the scene from over 600 miles away pretty quickly to help out. I was all too ready to play out my role, resting and breastfeeding while she helped with the cooking and laundry. We researched and watched random things on the internet, from how to plant moringa trees to watching Denzel’s character self-sabotage in Flight. It felt so good to just be with my mother. To be a daughter.

This all sounds so damn normal that I have to back it up and inform the reader that our relationship has become increasingly strained in recent years. Heartbroken at my decision not to leave NYC for a return to Chicago, my mother has become more and more distant from me and judgmental of my life. On top of remaining in NYC for these past 8+ years, I’m not married to a rich man. I think there’s a part of her that believed attending elite institutions meant that I would end up married to a man of material wealth. I don’t have to tell you that is not the case.

You see, my mother and I are a lot alike. We have a striking physical resemblance, share a similar humorous outlook on the world and have lots of personality quirks in common. It was only recently that I realized that she has processed our similarities sameness and it as rubbing off on me. In a previous post, I wrote about my second pregnancy blues being connected to feelings of failure from my mother’s life. Well, this has been the biggest elephant in the room between us until now. During her visit, we finally got to have a heart to heart.

There I was rinsing my kale for a nice salad and she began with a compliment. The kind you know will end with a “but…” and a whole litany of criticisms. She finally laid out her disappointment about my not moving back home. My reply, “I don’t want to live in Chicago.” It continued like that for about 20 minutes with me allowing her to voice her concerns. One of which being that I had stayed home to raise SJ for two years and the financial restrictions that had put on our lifestyle, “You know you don’t do as much as you did before he was born!” It’s true, but not something I’ve thought to lament about. I explained to her what I had been telling my family for the past couple of years: we wanted the children to have at least 2 years at home with a parent AND I was in school part-time in preparation for going back full-time this year to become a nurse-midwife. I can accept that I’m a little strange to my family and they may not always understand what I’m up to. But, dammit…how many times did I have to explain to them what I’m planning and doing for them to realize I wasn’t sitting on my hands watching life go by. That’s when it really clicked for me that unless I said it, she wouldn’t realize that she was interacting with me based on her feelings about her own life and perceived shortcomings, not mine.

It was like something out of a movie. I looked her in the eyes and tenderly said, “I am not you.” In a film, there would either be sappy music or silence. In real life, there was the latter. A few beats later, she said “You’re right.” It was like a revelation. During our tear-filled goodbyes days later, she repeated some variation of that and apologized for being so distant. She’s promised to be in touch more, which she has. I’m glad because I really missed my mother.

The funny thing is that I didn’t realize I was pregnant until I was already 2 months in the game. The fact that I was exhausted, laid out and fit to be tied by 3 in the afternoon didn’t make me the least bit curious about what was going on. All I could think was that I might have to start drinking coffee to have energy to keep up with SJ. I had a rationalization or deflection for every pregnancy symptom. Consider these conversations I had with my husband:

Me: Maurice, my stomach is getting big. I think having a child slowed my metabolism. Help me come up with an ab routine!

Him: Ok. Show me some photos of how you want to look.

Me: Ok. In the meanwhile, I’m starting P90X. [I actually did!]

Another time:

Him: Babe, that skirt is looking kinda tight around your belly.

Me: I know, it’s the Food Baby. It won’t go away. I think I need to get my colon cleansed.

Weeks later…the morning before we found out:

Me: For some reason, this skirt isn’t fitting right. I’m gonna have to wear this maternity shirt with it to make it work.

Him: You sure you’re not pregnant?

Me: Stop looking at my Food Baby!

That day, SJ and I took him skydiving as an early Father’s Day gift. I ate a pan of lasagna, half a watermelon and a full Trinidadian vegetable roti. Putting all that food down made me rethink the existence of my Food Baby. Suddenly, it made sense to take a pregnancy test. Ta da, we were about 8 weeks pregnant.

Here I am 7 months into this pregnancy and only now blogging about it. It’s been a complicated past 5 months since we learned we were expecting. And, I’m ready to start blogging about it.

First off, there’s nothing like being pregnant a second (or more) time to teach you that each pregnancy and child is truly unique. You know I’m a birth and breastfeeding advocate; I doula, teach childbirth education, blah, blah. Every mother I know has had a completely different pregnancy and labor experience than I did with and now I can add myself to the list.

The story of how we finally got the hint to even consider taking a pregnancy test is quite humorous, so I’ll have to blog about that next. Right now, I want to talk about inherited fears that become limiting beliefs.

I went from deep denial to a sort of shell-shock. To me, having a second child looks more like quadruple the work than double. Within four years, I planned to be a nurse-midwife already and then we could have another baby. I’ve now come to believe that this timing is actually better than what I planned, but it took me a bit to overcome my pregnancy blues.

After about a month of sitting on the couch in a funk lamenting the end of my dreams, I had a realization: I am not my mother. Don’t get me wrong, my mother is a phenomenal human being. But, she never did get around to finishing her undergraduate degree and becoming a biologist like she dreamed. Her last attempt was when I was her third and youngest child; her sixth is now a sophomore in high school! Degrees are certainly not the measure of one’s life, but it’s always loomed over her and threatened her economic security. When I was an undergrad, she offhandedly projected her own personal disappointment by telling me that I wouldn’t graduate either because I was so much like her. It’s only now that I realize how much of my mother’s life narrative I’ve internalized as my own, despite the degrees.

It was a tough road, but I’m grateful for the realization.

This is the thing: women can and do continue on with their life plans after having a second, third, etc. child. I don’t really know how they do it, but I will soon learn.

We completely weaned SJ from breasteeding about a month a half ago. My goal was for us to go for 2 years and I’m over the moon that we made it. It was a bit emotional to end it, but it just became to painful with me being pregnant and all (surprise!). There’s also the really glorious side of it: he gets a better sleep experience and eats more. He must have had a preoccupation with the working status of my breasts that kept him from full rest because he didn’t start sleeping all the way through the night before we might weaned. Now, he’ll even nap for 2-3 hours. Glorious, I say!

The flip side is that he has an insatiable appetite now. He wakes up asking for food and goes to sleep chewing. Pancakes are his absolute favorite. He wakes me up yelling ” Yeye, PANTATES!” and sometimes requests them for dinner. I make them all most every morning and have gotten the art of a fluffy, nutritious, dairy and egg free pancake down. The secret is in not over mixing the batter. Here’s the recipe I’ve concocted from various cookbooks and random Internet searches:

Ingredients
1 c unbleached all-purpose flour
1 c quinoa flour
2 TBSP baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 c nut milk
4 TBSP high quality oil
2 TBSP maple syrup (or preferred liquid sweetener)
Cooking oil spray

Heat the skillet on medium. Combine the flours, baking powder, salt and cinnamon in a large bowl and whisk thoroughly. In a separate bowl, mix the nut milk, oil and sweetener. Combine the liquid mixture into the dry mixture by stirring no more than 3 or so times. It’s fine if there are still pockets of dry mixture. Over mixing will cause the pancakes to flatten!

Here’s how a batter that will yield fluffy pancakes looks:



Now, go ahead and spray the heated skillet with cooking oil spray. Add a couple of spoonfuls of batter for each pancake. It takes 2-3 minutes to cook each side in my cast iron skillet, so watch them!

Sometimes, I also make a fruit syrup by blending 1/3 c frozen berries with about 2 TBSP maple syrup and 1 TBSP coconut oil until creamy. We use that instead of straight syrup when I want to cut down the amount of syrup these guys guzzle.


]]> http://www.soulvegmama.com/page/pancakes-fluffy-quick-and-vegan/feed/ 0 http://www.soulvegmama.com/page/turning-edamame-into-hummus/ http://www.soulvegmama.com/page/turning-edamame-into-hummus/#comments Sun, 27 May 2012 09:15:57 +0000 Anayah http://www.soulvegmama.com/?p=890 I recently starting buying most of our produce from a buying club lately. We’re on bad terms with the food coop because someone (not me!) couldn’t keep up with his shift hours. Luckily, there are lots of options for accessing organic produce in NYC. Usually that means a bit of traveling outside of my neighborhood, but the buying club pick-up is pretty close; only 15 minutes or so away.

Buying locally almost always means that we end up trying out foods that we wouldn’t ordinarily. Last week saw me turning stalks of rhubarb into iced tea (that kinda tasted like kool-aid) and cupcakes. Still, I was intimidated by the bags of edamame staring out at me from the bottom shelf of the fridge. Would I go the easy route: steam and lightly salt the pods? No! I wanted to feel like I was really doing something and I’m glad I did because we ended up with this great (vegan, duh!) edamame hummus:




Edamame hummus



Ingredients


1 c edamame beans shelled
2 garlic cloves
1/8 tsp cumin
1/8 tsp coriander
1 tbsp parsley (I used carrot greens)
Juice from half a lemon
2 tbsp tahini
2 tbsp water
salt to taste

First, bring 2 cups of water to boil. Add edamame beans and boil for 3-5 minutes. They should still have a firmness to them, so don’t over cook them.

After draining the beans, add all of ingredients (except salt) to a blender or food processor. Process until creamy and slightly textured. Taste and add salt to your liking. Be sure to mix the salt in well.

Yields about 8 ounces of hummus, a common supermarket size.

]]> http://www.soulvegmama.com/page/turning-edamame-into-hummus/feed/ 1 http://www.soulvegmama.com/page/curry-cashew-cream/ http://www.soulvegmama.com/page/curry-cashew-cream/#comments Thu, 12 Apr 2012 09:10:47 +0000 Anayah http://www.soulvegmama.com/?p=853

I’ve been making variations of the cashew cream to compliment meals lately.

Curry cashew cream

1 c raw cashews soaked for 3-4 hrs, rinsed
1/2 c water
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp curry powder
1 tbsp fresh lime or lemon juice
1/8 tsp sea salt (to taste)

Blend until creamy.

This spread tastes great with the Sloppeh Joes (pictured above). We’ve also used it as a jazzed up sour cream on taco night. Exclude the curry and add 1/4 tsp of onion powder and another tbsp of lemon juice for plain sour cream.

Blend til creamy.

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