I’ll just let that sink in for a moment.

And repeat:

There’s no such thing as “healthy food”.

It’s true.

There is Health Food, as a cultural construct¹, but, as a cultural construct, it is ever changing; currently we are undergoing a cultural shift from low-fat to low-carbohydrate food earning the appellation. But, aside from the fact that we simply cannot agree on what qualifies, there is so such thing as “healthy food”.

One of the most frustrating things about being a fat woman is: everyone is convinced they have The Perfect Diet, and if I would just follow it, the fat would just walk away². Everyone. Everyone. The veg*ns. The Paleos. The Atkin adherents. The raw food peeps. Eat no fat; eat tons of fat. Eat no grains; eat soaked grains. Eat a fastfood turkey sandwich every day; eat nothing from a store. Everyone is convinced they have The Truth on what is Healthy Food, and what the other guy (or the fat chick) is eating ain’t it.

Or, maybe, for the super open minded and tolerant, they’ll say we’re not quite sure just what healthy food is (except you won’t find it at McDonald’s). But by all the saints and Starbucks, don’t question the idea that there is such a thing as Healthy Food, because surely, if we just apply Science/Prayer/Common Sense/Historical Analysis/Noble Savage Wisdom, we’ll figure it out. And no one will ever die.

What? That’s the logical conclusion to the idea of Healthy Food. If we eat right, we won’t get sick. If we eat right, we won’t get fat. If we eat right, we won’t become diabetic. If we eat right, our kids won’t get autism. (If we eat right, we won’t be infertile, and we’ll be able to have children, who will obviously be free of all illness and defect.) If we eat right, we won’t be crazy. If we eat right, we won’t die from heart attack or stroke or cancer or liver failure or kidney disease or AIDS — and, if we eat right when we’re pregnant, neither will our children.

These are all things believers in the myth of healthy food have said. Half of them to me.

Ok, but let’s say that’s a hyperbolic misrepresentation of the position of Healthy Food’s believers³. Let’s say that when you say “she got diabetes because she ate like crap” you don’t actually mean “she wouldn’t have gotten diabetes if she’d eaten right” which itself could only be true if “no one who eats right gets diabetes”, which is utter bollocks. Let’s say that, instead, you have amazing powers of sight into alternate dimensions and a perfect ability to predict outcomes of statistical likelihoods⁴ — because that what it comes down to, risk, with some eating patterns carrying, on a population scale, different risk profiles than other eating patterns. You’re just saying healthy food improves your odds, not actually calling healthy food a panacea. But there’s still healthy food and unhealthy food, right?

No.

If we are not claiming there is a food, or a way of eating, that brings perfect health (which is assuming we can even meaningfully define “perfect health” in the first place), then the best we can do with food is risk management. “Healthy” can only exist as a comparative, not absolute, value.

So, compared to what? Which is healthier, raw cultured butter from pastured cows, or cold-pressed organic olive oil? That depends on whether you’re vegan, or lactose intolerant, or live in a dessert without a means of keeping food chilled⁵, I’d say. Which is healthier, a plate of brown rice spaghetti in fat-free sauce made from tomatoes from your own garden, or a protein shake with artificial sugar substitutes — to a diabetic? Which is healthier, the home cooked meal a growth-delayed, sensory-averse child absolutely won’t touch, or the McDonald’s chicken nuggets they’ll scarf?

Food — all food — brings things that are “good” for us, and things that are “bad”; or, more accurately, things that we need in that moment and things that we can store for later and things we don’t need (right then or at all) and things that we have too much of and things that actively harm us. All foods have all of these — only the specifics and amounts of each change. And the specifics are variable depending on our needs, which not only are different from person to person but each person’s needs change all the damn time.

Given that no food can fill all needs simultaneously⁶, and eating is a practice in good enough balance over time, how can we call a food “healthy” as an absolute?⁷ Food is meant to meet our needs⁸, and can only be evaluated on its ability to do so. Even a Twinkie is “healthy” for a person starved for caloric energy.

So there it is. There absolutely are foods that have a better need-filling to harm ratio in any given situation⁹. There absolutely are reasons to aim for eating foods that better meet more of your nutritional needs more of the time (though you have no moral obligation to do so). There so absolutely are reasons to call for large corporations to take out unnecessary harmful components from the food they sell and for, at the least, factual labeling about those additives. I disagree with not a piece of that, nor with helping people, should they wish, learn how to feed themselves in a way that meets more of their needs more of the time with less harm. Please, if that’s your calling, keep at it.

But the fact remains: there is no such thing as “healthy food”.

I’m a horrible mother. I’m a horrible person. I’ve let so many people down. I should step away and hide away and go away. I’m bad. I’m bad. I’m bad.

What would happen if I said no? No to the thoughts, no to the recriminations, no to the hateful, hateful hate.

No: you yelled at your child, and I love you anyway.

No: you have a messy house, and I love you anyway.

No: you start projects you haven’t had time to finish, and I love you anyway.

No: you keep thinking these thoughts, and I love you anyway.

I love you. I love you. I love you.

How painful. To be seen, to be known, to be loved despite it all, because of it all. The fire sweeping through the diseased prairie, terrifying to behold.

Let it burn through me.

No.
and
I love you.

Yes.

- Miriam Webster Dictionary

Around this time in the Gregorian calendar, many people pick a word — a single word — they wish to invoke, experience, or focus on for the coming year. I’m normally not a meme sort of person, but today, for this year, a word came to me. It’s a word that came up for me again and again in 2011.

I have a strong body, capable of birthing 8 and 10lb babies, of carrying my children in my arms and on my back, of giving massage as deep or as light as needed, of lifting and bending and dancing and loving. And I have a strong mind, capable of surviving infancy and toddlerhood and (as my friends call it) The Fucking Fours, of crafting words into shapes beautiful, touching, and persuasive in turn, of thinking deeply and broadly, of feeling deeper and acutely, of dreaming and laughing and dancing and loving.

But what I lack — no, what I have capacity and the desire to develop further — is the ability to move between these states. My mind is capable of so much focus, on a single feeling or an idea, and of so much breadth, so many feelings and ideas, but is not yet skilled at taking each in turn in a way that leaves me with tangible accomplishments (posts, submissions, lists, emails and obligations responded to promptly). My body is capable of so much strength, in a single feat and a long day’s endurance, and of so much relaxing, the deep, heavy stillness of sleep and meditation and doneness, but is not yet skilled at living in the vibrant space of readiness for each moment’s task, at organized and sensible transitions from relaxation to effort and back again.

Tone is the middle path, the ability to dance from one path to another as called for, the function of all muscles (in body and mind) working in harmony so no one bears excessive strain, the state of neither clinging too tightly nor allowing unbalancing slack. Tone is the goal and the way one gets there. Tone is harmonious, joyful, pleasant to experience — and with its efficiency can move mountains, change minds, and fix so many ills.

I long for so many things — excellence in parenting, in writing, in activism and intellect and academics, in body and music and my many professions, in housekeeping and homesteading, community and family — and I want them all right now, no waiting or work required. 2012 will not be the year all my dreams become real, not with an infant and a (soon to be) five year old, for this is the year of surviving, of thriving in small ways, of gummy grins and growing teeth and scooting-crawling-walking, of milk and foods and beginning of sibling boundaries, of fully living in each moment and then letting it go to allow for living in and loving the next. 2012 will not bring me “balance”, that elusive perfect mix (as if life were a recipe: 1/3 work and 1/3 family and 1/3 fun, stir and bake and eat a slice a day); but, I hope, I will dance and rest and live this year in vibrancy, moving ever more easily between this moment, and this, and this.

A friend and I were talking today about pregnancy, and the “making” of babies (that is not so much making as allowing to make themselves out of and using one’s self and substance), and the devaluing of the work of pregnancy, and it occurred to me that I couldn’t think of a word for the type of work it is.

Because it is work — perhaps the most elemental form of production around. It is draining, exhausting, and oh so challenging. It pervades (invades) every moment of one’s life for months, whether we are aware of its effects or not. Everyone who goes through it, every time, feels differently, but none are unaffected, and at the end the world is changed. A new person is born, or there is a gaping, grieving hole where a baby belonged. Either way, work has been done.

But it’s not the sort of work you clock into (though obstetricians are far too amenable to helping us clock out early), or set your mind to (though bookstores have shelves upon shelves dedicated to the idea that we can), or in any active, willful way do. And yet, forced pregnancies aside (by which I include any pregnancy without full and authentic choice, if not in the conception than in the continuation), it is chosen work, not work without agency. Not involuntary, not undirected (though that too), not passive (to the contrary!). Not unimportant, not insignificant, and not necessarily easy. Undervalued (though over-sentimentalized), unnamed, and thus unrecognized.

Grow gets closer, but it is the fetus who grows in us, and our bodies stretch to accommodate. To grow as in garden ascribes too much control of the result to the manure-applier (both in pregnancy and in gardening) — and besides, it is our bodies that passes the raw materials to the being inside; we only feed ourselves, and trust our bodies to feed the fetus. (And feed it they will, near regardless of what we eat; not enough dietary calcium? No problem, we walk around with a skeleton full; we’ll scrape some off there to pass to our parasites.)

Pregnancy is, in the imperfect language of metaphor, parachuting (and how strange that the most ready comparable activity is one utterly frivolous, to the inescapable seriousness of reproduction). We jump (or are pushed, and oh does that first moment determine the entire experience), and then, simply by continuing to be, we do. It is so very active, voluntary and willed into beginning at the best of times, and once begun, merely (as merely as can be, heading to an inevitable impact) a matter of survival, of daily, inescapable grind. It is not like anything else, yet not dissimilar to so many other endeavors — but without the right word, making those connections is so much harder.

I need this word.

A Beautiful Birth

“I have to push, NOW!” I screamed to my husband as I refused the wheelchair he wanted me to sit in.  There I was standing in the hospital lobby in my husband’s shorts, a nursing bra and the only shirt I could fit over my very pregnant belly.  I stopped leaned against a pole and began to bear down.

“Go ahead and push if you have to.”  My completely supportive husband and partner figured there was no way I could really be in the final stage of childbirth already so he figured it would just help our baby along.

“Don’t you dare push!  Stop, take a deep breath, sit down.”  A male nurse who had been talking to the security guard when we came in came up behind me and made me sit down in a wheelchair.  A woman who was about six months pregnant grabbed her partner’s hand as they waited with us for the elevator.

We got in the elevator, and again, I felt an intense need to push the baby out.
“I’m pushing!  I feel like I need to go to the bathroom, I NEED to push her out NOW!”
The couple clung to each other.

We arrived on the labor and delivery floor and someone said to me, “You’ll need to triage.”
“No, you have my information, I was here two hours ago!  I NEED TO PUSH RIGHT NOW!  Someone needs to help me!”

“Wait, you’re the woman they sent home?”

A few seconds later, I was in one of the labor and delivery rooms, and one of the nurses took my shorts off.

“I swear to God if you tell me I’m still four centimeters…”

I could see by the look on the nurse’s face, the baby must have been crowning.  There were about six nurses helping out and someone ran to get our midwife.

“You’re going to meet your daughter very soon.”

The look on her face said she was wondering how it is that we ended up here like this.

Two nights before, I had thought I was in labor but it had fizzled out when I realized I hadn’t yet packed a bag for the birth center where we had planned to deliver our daughter.  We had originally planned to have a homebirth with one of the most respected midwives in Maryland, but our plans were derailed when at 33 weeks pregnant, I found out our midwife had received a letter of suspension from the Maryland Board of Nursing while they reviewed five complaints that had been filed against her since 2008. According to a website set up by her supporters: “[N]one of these complaints came from one of Evelyn’s clients or a client’s family.”

The Maryland Board of Nursing left us providerless, and so somewhere around 35 weeks after an exhausting search we settled on having a birth center birth.  It would allow us some of the flexibility and some of the must-haves I’d wanted for this birth.  Access to water to labor in and/or deliver in was key for me.  After my labor had fizzled out, I’d had to finally come to terms with the fact that my birth plan had changed and we were not going to have a chance to birth at home.

I spent Saturday walking through the woods near our house, talking to the baby and myself about why our birth could still be amazing and why the birth center was going to be a great experience for us.  I cried one last hearty cry over losing the ability to choose where I would have our baby.

Luckily, my parents had been in town for Thanksgiving when I had the false alarm on Friday so my mom extended her trip by four more days just in case so she’d be able to stay with our two-year-old if labor happened to kick off.

Sunday, earlier in the day before I was in the hospital lobby, I’d spent the day shopping and then chasing my two year old at the park.  Feeling contractions throughout the day but not timing them because they weren’t intense or close enough together.

By nighttime, I’d started to notice some blood while realizing that the baby wasn’t moving around anymore.  Concerned, I made a call to our midwives.  The midwife on call suggested we head to the hospital (that is, the backup hospital for the birth center) so they could verify that the baby was still moving around and healthy.

That night, I struggled as I cuddled my toddler to bed while managing through contractions.  My husband had tried putting him down, but he wanted Mommy.  I was nervous about the bleeding but luckily he fell asleep fast and my mom came over from her hotel to be with him.  We left our house around 9:15pm and headed out on the 40 minute drive to the hospital, chatting, blasting Big Pun’s “Capital Punishment” album.  The contractions were five minutes apart.
When we arrived at Labor and Delivery, we chatted with some of the nurses, noting to ourselves that the hospital was nicer than we expected. Up until that point, we hadn’t thought much about the hospital since the plan had been to birth at the birth center.  Our midwife examined the baby and the three of us listened to her heart rate increase and decrease in rhythm with the contractions.  She determined the blood had been bloody show and then she checked my cervix.  It was 4 cm dilated but still posterior and the baby was in -1 station in my pelvis which meant she’d have to work through 0,1,2,3 to be born.

Since the contractions weren’t yet “taking my breath away,” the midwife determined that I was likely experiencing false labor.  I let her know that the contractions were about three minutes apart at that point and they were feeling stronger and stronger.  Knowing that home was 40 minutes away, she’d told us that we should go to a hotel for the night.  That way we’d be in shouting distance from the birth center if “real labor” began.

We debated whether we should actually go to a hotel if they were sending us away from the hospital.  I mean, they clearly didn’t think I was in labor so why be away from our two-year-old for the night if we didn’t have to?  But something inside of me knew we should get the hotel room, so we did.

We headed to the Doubletree hotel that was about five minutes away and asked for the “hospital discount.”  Ash came back to the car offering one of the warm chocolate chip cookies that the Doubletree is known for, but I had no stomach for it.

By the time we got in the room, my contractions had increased in intensity and were two minutes apart.  Ash set up our iPod and the iPod speakers and put on some Norah Jones, then he dimmed the lights.  I went to the bathroom then I came out, instinctively getting in the all-fours position.  I’d decided to wing this birth. The Bradley class we’d taken to help with our son’s birth, had given us tons of useful information, much of which had stuck with us through this second birth.  However, I discovered in labor that the visualization approach to pain management wasn’t for me.  This time around I’d listened to a few hypnobabies tracks.  In fact, I had actually laid down to listen on three separate occasions and had fallen asleep each time.  I remembered from one of their affirmations something about childbirth not having to be pain-filled, and I remembered reading something about pressure waves or rushes and opening like a lotus flower in Ina May Gaskin’s Guide to childbirth.  So I got on all fours, and began the cat-cow yoga pose (or at least, my best attempt at it).  The baby had been in a weird position for some time so I thought it might help.  Though the process, Ash gave me support I needed which varied between applying counter-pressure to my lower back and staying clear when I didn’t want to be touched anymore.  The clip from the hypnobabies CD became my mantra: “Pain doesn’t have to be a part of childbirth.”  I remembered to try not to clench my jaw, my shoulders or my pelvic floor.  I pictured a flower opening up, and for a little while this helped me tremendously.  Until it didn’t and then I found myself wondering what to do next.

Ash suggested we fill the tub so I could change positions and get in the water for a while.  For some reason, because I was not allowed to labor in water during my son’s birth, I had built up water to be the end-all for managing pain during an unmedicated birth.  The drain on the tub didn’t fit snugly so we had to keep the water running in order for the tub to stay full.  I sat in the water, feeling a sense of completion after having been denied it during our first birth.  For a few moments it felt great, but the pain seared through the comforting heat of the water.

“If this is not labor, then there is something very very wrong with my body!”  I sat there frustrated, wanting to cry.  If my body was not in labor why was the pain so constant?  Why did it hurt so much?  I sent Ash away and then I cried for him to come back.  I kept urgently repeating that I wanted to change the plan – I wanted an epidural at the hospital, now.  Because if this is what 4 cm of false labor felt like, there was no way I would ever survive 10 of “real labor.”  Then I felt like I had to go to the bathroom so I sent him away.  As soon as I sat down, I realized I felt the urge to push.  It was time to push the baby out.

I insisted to him that I was about to have the baby and jumped back in the water.  Feeling more than a little confused, the urges to push kept coming.  Ash grabbed my phone to call the midwife.  He got the answering service.  About 15 minutes later we still hadn’t heard back. We’d learned later that the midwife had been catching another baby during those frantic moments.  I told him to call again, but that we had to get to the hospital.  Although the birth center had been the plan, the hospital was still fresh in our minds and, given the circumstances, the birth center seemed impossibly far away.  I screamed at Ash to call an ambulance.  Although he was playing along, I could tell that he didn’t really understand how far things had progressed.  To my request for an ambulance he replied, “I can get you there faster.”  Since it was the middle of the night with no traffic and we’d have had to wait for an ambulance to arrive, he was probably right as long as he didn’t take a wrong turn.  He told me to put his shorts on and I remember thinking he was the most ridiculous person in the world for suggesting I needed clothes right now. We were halfway out the hotel room door when the midwife finally called back.  Ash let her know that I’d requested to go to the hospital to which she responded, “it’s her choice.”

I pulled a pair of Ash’s gray athletic shorts on and we hobbled together through the lobby.  He told me he’d pull the car around, but I insisted on walking though the parking lot with him.  The whole ride there I held the bar above my seat and I stuck my head out the window. There was a chill in the air.  I looked at the lights from nearby restaurants and businesses pass by, feeling the pressure of my baby girl pushing against the birth canal.  Those few moments felt like a lifetime as I said “this is beautiful” over and over in my head.  Then I screamed out loud, “I’m about to have this baby in this car!”  Before I knew it, we were at the hospital and I was in the lobby threatening to bear down.

Somehow I’d made it into a hospital bed, my husband’s gray athletic shorts thrown aside.  I found myself face to face with the nurse whose expression told me that I had the baby had, in fact, already crowning when we’d arrived at the hospital.  “You have a kind face,” I told her.  My focus expanded as the midwife burst into the room, and I realized that I was surrounded by 6 or 7 women and my loving husband.  Every single person there was providing encouragement and guidance.  I asked if it was too late for get an epidural and the nurse with the kind face told me to focus on her.  The baby’s head was halfway out.  I yelled that I had to go to the bathroom and then apologized for yelling and then thanked everyone for being there.  My husband smiled from ear to ear as he watched me pushing our daughter out into the bright, crowded hospital room.  He leaned in close and said, “Amanda, you are doing this.  You are having the unmedicated birth you dreamed of.  You did all of this!”  A few seconds later, our daughter was laying on top of me.  I was still in the only shirt that had fit over my pregnant belly just a few moments ago.  I held our daughter and kept repeating to whoever was listening, “This is beautiful, she is beautiful.”

"...she is beautiful."

But.

I have misgivings about some of the rhetoric around these misogynist proposals. Not just the dishonest and bigoted shite coming from the side of their advocates, but from “my” side, as well, as we try to argue our way to avoiding becoming nothing more than government owned gestators.

Because Vulva Baby is a person. And she was the day she was born. And: she was the day before that, too.

I have said again and again that children are people, and babies are people, and assholes have mocked the hell out of me for that. Yes, these amendments absolutely must be roundly and thoroughly crushed, because they are functionally evil. But the argument of non-women-haters shouldn’t be “fetuses aren’t people”, because… who says? I know Vulva Baby was as much a person on Aug 31 as she was Sept 1. I know it, and no amount of anti-personhood rhetoric, no matter how much I want it to succeed at its cause, will convince me otherwise. But on Aug 31, though a person, she was a person inside me, dependent on me, fully intertwined with me. That’s the difference that makes all the difference, not any personhood or lack thereof. And no, she wasn’t a “person” on January or February 1, but, if I’d miscarried then, as I was afraid I was doing, I would have mourned. Mostly the lost potential, but also, partly, the tiny spark that was, then, her. That became, sometime in the next several months, this tiny person who now rests beside me.

We have no concept of interdependence, culturally, and a loathing of liminal states. We distrust if not abhor spectrums, and strive for absolutes: either a zygote is absolutely a person, or a 40 week fetus absolutely isn’t, because if it’s aught else, then we’d have to grapple with complexities and grey states and elucidating less sound-bite-friendly reasons to support our side. But when we shy from that, we lose so much. We lose truth, we lose common ground, and we lose the beauty of the growing person-within-a-person of a chosen pregnancy.

Fetuses should have no legal rights, because they reside wholly within the domain of the bearer of the uterus which houses them. But part of that domain should be the right to declare “this is a person”. No one else should get to do that — or deny us that.

Trigger warning for descriptions of medical abuse and flashbacks.

Uninvited

I’m lying in the bottom bunk next to my 3 year old son who’s sick with a painful ear infection. The top bunk feels like it’s falling down on me and I silently chant, “Go to sleep. Go to sleep” so that I can get up before the inevitable comes.

But, he’s taking a long time. He’s in so much pain and needs my comfort. By the time he drifts off, I’m covered in sweat and shaking from trying to hold this back.

He snores and I no longer have the strength to stop it. I’m gone.

Bright light shines in my eyes. I can hear the breathing as it quickens in anticipation. The glasses are slightly greasy as they magnify the light. Fingers pry my jaws apart. The pulling and pushing begins. The needle jabs between my teeth. Our breathing comes in gasps for the ohsotiny cuts with the metal tool. Finally, the tongue depressor pushing back to make me gag. I notice my heels are kicking the vinyl footrest of the chair from the pain.

Then it’s gone. I feel release.

I’m back with my son and he’s still snoring as I let the tears flow silently. My love for him is so intense as I watch his sleeping face that I doubt whether I should be caring for him.

My children deserve a complete mother that isn’t plagued by flashbacks of abuse. The depression is bad enough some days that I feel unable to care for them. There are days when my anger at myself is turned on them and I yell. I yell simply to hurt them and drive them away from my inner pain.

Yet, I continue. I continue to parent, even while flawed. I continue to parent my children with love and apologies. Those apologies for tripping myself up to avoid triggers for my flashbacks.

I continue because I believe that, while I am flawed, no one can love them like I do. I believe that positive parenting and gentle discipline will break the cycle for all of us.

I know that witnessing suffering triggers the flashbacks. So, I overreact when one of them hits the other or when one of them is sick, such as the ear ache above. I want to remove the pain from my children. I want to run. I want to fight the flashbacks. I want to beat the memories down with a sledgehammer.

But, I know that being able to stay with these children and holding them through their pain the way I truly want to be will come not from resisting but from getting to know the fears well.

I stay because I want to, but I can’t do it alone. I’ve got support I need while I do the work. Because it is work to heal. It is work to not curl up in a ball and stay there. I have actively cultivated a network of support. I have been brutally honest that would be times I would beg or demand to be left alone, but I should not be abandoned by them. They know that I will return to a state in which I can reaffirm that I want to stay the course. I have two trusted sitters, a few close friends, a coparenting partner, a therapist, an online community, and several holistic health care providers. They provide a net of support every time I fall.

It’s up to me to trust that it’s okay to fall. There’s no shame in this process. I can get back up on my own.

I have openly talked with my children about times I am sad, angry or simply unavailable. We speak about how love stays no matter where the person is. They’ve volunteered that love is like a “gas” or like “peanut butter.” Both of which I think are pretty apt analogies. They know that they have a large group of people who love them. I’m not their sole pillar of support.

I take scheduled nights out by myself, even when I don’t want to. It allows me to miss them. I’m able to be more patient when I return. I’m better able to calm myself and just allow the flashbacks to happen without reacting to them as strongly. I still have the physiological reactions and feel shaken after, but I can root in reality more quickly.

It’s hard. Harder than anything I’ve ever done. I question whether I would have had children if I had known I would be bringing them through this path with me. But, then again I question whether I would be alive to even walk this path. The love they have shown me has given me the ability to surrender without any assurance that I will get better or that it will become easier. It is the first time I can surrender without submitting to another’s power. I retain my own power because of their love.

I will walk, fall, and walk again every day. I will never be the mother I want to be. I will never be the person I want to be. I am okay with that. I’m okay with trying, never succeeding and trying again. Without guarantees or safety.

This daily practice is what it means to be a gentle parent struggling with mental illness. It’s not wrapped in a shiny bow of hope. It is ugly. It is real and true. I often wish it were not. But it is mine.

Why does the media show transgender children more sympathetically?

For some reason, everywhere I go lately there’s stories about trans children.  Nightline ran an episode, while Dr Phil ran one on one trans and one intersex child.  And CNN currently has a video up of trans children about two children at the Gender Spectrum Family Conference.

Interest in trans people in general and trans children in particular isn’t really a new phenomena, of course, but what’s notable about these stories is how sympathetic and non-sensationalised these takes are.  While there’s of course the odd bit of sketchy language, the children’s rights and identities are largely respected, and in the case of CNN allowed to speak in their own words.

Of course, it’s not all hearts and puppydogs in the media–and there’s still a lot of scaremongering out there.  Just yesterday, a Canadian newspaper ran a full page anti trans hate ad that read “don’t confuse me. I’m a girl, don’t cause me to question if I’m a boy, transsexual transgender, intersexed or two spirited.”  And of course there was the “psychiatrist” on Fox in the Toemaggedon story (you know the guy).  The WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN mob always like to pretend as though there’s no such thing as a LGBT child, that we just need to violently enforce gender norms and then no child will ever be trans. Phew.

But still, compared to the mockery, bathroom panic, and blatant victim blaming of trans murder victims, trans children get a comparatively sympathetic media treatment.  As such it’s worthwhile contrasting the sympathetic treatment of trans kids with the continued sensationalist treatment of trans adults, particularly women, and why there might be a such a great disparity between the two.

An idealisation of children as innocent

We as a culture have a bifurcated view of children as either angels or demons (but rarely full human beings).  In the first view, children are idealised as innocent.  Innocence is a Christianised theological category, connoting not just a lack of culpability or experience but also purity.  A lack of sin.  In the second view, we have the monstrous child, the demonic pure evil child familiar to us from horror movies and Stephen Moffat penned Doctor Who episodes.  This is the mirror image of the angel, its opposite.

But, in realistic cultural representations, the trans child is likely to retain their innocent status regardless.  In trans negative views, the mother or father are usually to “blame” for their transness, the culpability is shifted elsewhere.

An idealisation of children as natural

If children are considered innocent, then they are also often considered more natural than adults.  The idea of childhood as closer to nature is an old one, widely popularised by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s writings (eg Emile) in the 18th century.  Nature is pure, culture is tainted.

So for a child to be trans is to be more “natural” than an adult transitioner.  The desire to provide a scientific explanation for any kind of LGBT identity is, in effect, to call something “natural,” innate.  It’s not a choice, baby I was born this way.  To be natural is, in effect, in innocent.  So trans children already have an advantage here in being considered more natural.   If they’re closer to nature, then their transness must be natural, too.

In contrast, the adult transitioner is easier to critique – blame – for “choosing” to be trans.  Julia Serano noted in Whipping Girl that media representations tend to emphasis the artificiality of trans women, with a focus on make-up and clothes.  Trans people, especially trans women, are considered fake.  Not “really” as real in their sexes as cis people.

A cultural idea of children as not sexual

This is a really important difference between the two.  Media images of  trans women in particular tend to be extremely sexualised–the trans sex worker of colour is a stock figure in crime fiction for instance. The cultural confusion between gender and sexuality results in people considering transness as an intensified form of queer sexuality–the trans woman as a drag queen who went “too far,” the trans man as the butch woman who did the same.  And anxieties about trans people as “deceivers” go even further, because as trans academic Talia Mae Bettcher has argued, gendered clothing itself works as a form of symbolic signalling about genital status and hence sexual availability.  It’s a code, which is why we speak, nonsensically about “women’s clothing” and “men’s clothing,” as though the cuts of clothing somehow is necessarily linked to gender and sex.

So trans adults are a threat because they “mismatch” (as Bettcher terms it) the codes of cissexual heterosexuality, the organisation of genitally-determined sexed bodies into “potentially fuckable” and “not potentially fuckable.”  Wearing the clothes of the supposed other sex is “cross dressing,” is a violation of the cultural line between sexed bodies, gender identity and gender expression.  And because heterosexuality is so frequently premised on its melancholic rejection of homosexuality, to be attracted to someone with the “wrong” genitals is a kind of psychic threat, which often results in violence to trans people (especially from cis men).  As Julia Serano says in her poem “Cocky”

“My penis changes the meanings of everything. And because of her, every one of my heterosexual ex-girlfriends, has slept with a lesbian. And every guy who hits on me these days could be accused of being gay.”

In contrast, trans children are considered to not be sexual yet – their transness is not as strongly mediated by ideas of sexuality.  Sympathetic portrayals of trans children are just about gender , without a sexual component¹.  Adult trans people have long battled the assumption that they transition for a sexual reason, or that they’re sexually promiscuous or sex workers, but trans children don’t hit those some fears.  They’re not considered dangerous in quite the same way.

So in conclusion.

This view of trans children as sympathetic may not be quite as progressive as it seems.  While it’s wonderful to see trans children treated as actual living breathing human beings, and more positive representations will definitely help those children gain access to blockers and hormones, what happens when they grow up?

Because at some point, most of those children will become sexually active teens and adults–and then we’re at the same point as before.  Until we start to really interrogate the ways in which we idealise children and then demonise the adults they grow into (from innocent to fallen), things won’t really have changed so much after all.

Note: Although I do not require that every commenter agrees with the choice to birth at home, this is not a place for debate. Bear in mind that regardless of what you would choose for yourself, choice of birth place and attendants is and must be a part of any authentic reproductive rights movement.

Birthing at Home

By Amanda Llorens

There’s an African proverb that likens giving birth to crossing a narrow bridge.  You might have help on either side, but when it comes to the actual crossing, you’re on your own.  I’m due for my second narrow bridge crossing in early December.  When I went into labor with my first child, I remember getting strong urges to run off into the woods and have the baby alone.  Even fully immersed in the throws of labor, I was aware that literally having a baby in the woods was not a viable option.  In retrospect though, I realize that something deep down was yearning for a peaceful, secure, and familiar space to give birth.  This time around, I intend to get closer to what my body and soul were asking for.

I gave birth to my son in a hospital, supported by family, a doula, and a well-respected midwife group.  He came a little early at 36 weeks and 6 days.  I’d planned on a waterbirth in a hospital but because my son came early, neither birthing nor laboring in the water was an option.  In fact, even if he’d been full term, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to use a tub since the hospital only had two they were both already in use by the time I arrived.  Nevertheless, our birth experience was pretty good, as hospital births go.  There were no complications, and we had a healthy baby boy.  Still, two hours into a three-hour pushing session, our midwives changed shifts.  Needless to say, it completely threw me off.  In fact, it actually made me angry at the time.  The new midwife had a very different bedside manner and even told me that my previous pushing had been unproductive, so none of it “counted.”

Although my hospital experience didn’t leave me traumatized, it did leave me wanting more from my birth experience.  The hours and days after the birth had consisted of constant messages coming through the intercoms and nurses coming in to check on the baby, check on me, or run one of a dizzying number of different tests.  Then, just as we established a rapport with one nurse or another, their shifts would change.  I’d  left the hospital completely in love with my son, but completely exhausted. With all of the various interruptions, sleep had been nearly impossible.  The shower had been dirty and the cuisine was often greasy cafeteria food.  They’d even strongly encouraged me to give my son formula while we were just getting to know each other and trying to figure out breastfeeding.

This time around, I’m more confident in my own body.  Not only can it grow people from scratch, but it has successfully birthed a pretty amazing little person and it’s getting ready to do it again.

So, after years of knowing that women before the 1900s all birthed their babies at home, that home birth is as safe as a hospital birth for a normal pregnancy and that home births mean a reduced chance of unnecessary medical interventions, I finally sat down and asked what I really wanted for my future daughter and myself at our birth experience.  It’s one of the most special moments we will ever share as mother and daughter.  I will, with a push and a breath, push her out into the world to fill her lungs with air for the first time.  The two of us deserve a peaceful, secure, and familiar space in which to share that moment.

When I bring my daughter into the world, I’d like to be surrounded by the sounds, smells and comforts that I am used to.  During my last pregnancy, I labored at home for around 12 hours and felt totally safe and secure.  It wasn’t until I got in the car to head to the hospital that I started to get tense.  Then, sitting in triage in mid-contraction, I felt less like I was about to experience the most amazing day of my life and more like I had some disease that needed to be cured.  Then, to top it off, I went wrong somewhere while fastening what seemed like a thousand snaps on my hospital gown.  I remember looking down and realizing that my breasts and butt were exposed.  Talk about distracting.  This time around, I want a calm experience.  I want to be surrounded by things that remind me of how much I love my life and my family.  I want my son to be able to see his little sister and stay as long as we want him to.  I want to sleep in my own bed, with my husband, the night after I give birth.  I want to eat healthy food, prepared with our family in mind.

My birth team will consist of some pretty awesome people.  First, my husband, the only other
person in the world who loves our children as much as I do.  A man I’ve been with since I was 19 and he was 20.  The one person in the world who knows me as well as I know myself.  Second, our midwife, who is guaranteed to be the one “on call” since she has a solo practice.  She is a certified nurse midwife, a registered nurse, and has a bachelor of science in nursing, a master of science, and some other certifications I don’t even understand.  She also happens to be one of the warmest, kindest people I’ve met.  She has 21 years of birth experience in hospitals, at birth centers and at home births.  Third, the doula and childbirth educator from our son’s birth who is now the birth assistant for our current midwife.  There is something very special about knowing that two of the people that supported me while bringing my son into the world will also be there with me this time.  Both of these women have children.  Both of these women enjoy birth and are committed to supporting mothers and their babies as they journey through one of the most important experiences of their lives.

Don’t believe the hype.  My midwife isn’t going to show up with a bag of herbs and some happy thoughts.  She’ll bring along oxygen, medications for clotting if the need arises and all kinds of other important medical supplies you’d find in a hospital.  I have the choice to decide if I want my baby to get a vitamin K shot and the erythromicin eye ointment.  Birthing at home, I’m more likely not to get an episiotomy or any other intervention unless I really need it.  In some hospitals, you have to be very explicit and insistent to achieve that same kind of outcome.  In the event that something does go wrong, my midwife will call the emergency room nearby and I’ll be transferred there.  In the event that I need an emergency c-section, we’re lucky enough to be located about 7 minutes by foot from the hospital.  Technically, my husband could pull me there by sled (remember, it’ll be December), but an ambulance or a car will get me there much faster.  Most emergency c-sections require a 30-minute operating room (OR) prep so they’d still be prepping the OR while we checked in and got settled.

We’re planning to birth in water, but if meconium is present or something else about the situation changes, we may not have that chance.  If I do birth in water, I am less likely to tear than I would be birthing out of the water at a hospital.  People ask if I’m worried about the clean up afterward, but more than likely, the birth team will handle it.  Unless I have some sort of major hemorrhage, I likely won’t notice the clean up just like I didn’t notice them grab the Chux pad and sheet from under me at the hospital.

After all, I’ll be giving birth to a baby, not having a major surgery in my basement.

As dressed as we ever get

Although I frequently roll my eyes at the term “diaper-free”, by which EC is sometimes also known, the way we practice elimination communication is nearly so. But far more compelling at the moment to me than the way is the why of it — and Vulva Baby is reminding me daily of those reasons. There are reasons like earlier toilet independence (and a smoother road to get there, usually), reduced diaper use, reduced diaper rash, less time spent cleaning up or in contact with poo (really!), etc, etc — but honestly, those aren’t the things I’m thinking of these days, especially not when I’m tossing yet another premium size prefold in the laundry because of one tiny grain of poo on it.

No, we do EC because Vulva Baby tells us to, because within the first day of being born she was clearly grunting at us and waiting to eliminate until we held her in position. We do EC because she fusses until we hold her over a bowl and say, with a psss, it’s ok to pee now. We do EC because I can’t imagine ignoring her first communications now that I so distinctly recognize them for what they are.

We do EC because she relaxes and trusts us more, knowing that we understand her — at least most of the time. We do EC because sometimes she sleeps through a pee and sometimes squirms and kicks until pottied, only to fall right back asleep. We do EC because it’s another tool we have to help us figure out why she’s upset, and, sometimes, gives us the ability to do something about it.

We do EC for philosophical reasons, too — because I believe that children, even newborns, are people, because I believe it’s more respectful. But more importantly, we do EC because it’s fun, because it’s satisfying, because neonates spend nearly all their awake time either eating or eliminating, and this turns half of what she does into something we do together.

I admit I had a lot more anxiety, and put a lot more pressure on myself, when doing EC with the Boychick. There are many factors to my more relaxed attitude now, among them that Vulva Baby signals more clearly (or are we simply better at recognizing them?), less anxiety overall (so far, *knocks wood*), a better understanding of what EC with a newborn is like, and, most tellingly, more confidence, now that I don’t feel the need to “prove” that it “works”, because I simply know that it does.

Although there are many problems with EC advocacy, many reasons not to shame or pressure others into doing it, this experience leaves me wanting to shout about it in every venue available, especially because I am becoming ever more convinced that the reason it is perceived (and experienced!) as “so hard” and “too time consuming” is that we don’t see it. I’d read all about EC before the Boychick was born, read and watched everything I could get my hands on, pestered people with a thousand questions online — but still, I had never, ever seen it in practice. I knew how it was supposed to work, but had no idea what it was actually like in daily life. Only now, having done it once already, do I have that practical, indelible experience and observation that society had denied me.

I’d delve further into kyriarchy and its obsession for consumerist fixes and its disdain for the messy complexities of relationship, but if you’ll excuse me, I have a baby to potty.