The lonely scientist rants.

[rivka]

"[Rh incompatibility] wasn't an issue for all of human history until interventions were performed, like episiotomy and early cord cutting or Cesarians. Again, what gives?"

Okay, I have to get this off my chest here, because if I say it in response to the actual post I'm quoting I'll probably be banned:

For God's sake, isn't some kind of basic education in logic and science required in the schools? Don't people listen to themselves when they talk?

(Okay, never mind, I know the answers to those questions: no, and no.)

Rh factor wasn't even discovered until 1939. For "all of human history until interventions were performed," in that golden age of medical-provider-free natural homebirths in which nothing ever went wrong and there was no maternal or perinatal mortality, there was NO WAY TO TELL if Rh incompatibility existed.

Sometimes your baby was stillborn. Sometimes your baby had heart failure shortly after birth. Sometimes your baby was incredibly weak and sickly, but pulled through. And that was ALL YOU KNEW. It's not like your fellow tribeswomen would've stood around nodding sadly and saying, "Yep, this baby has hemolytic disease of the newborn. Just look at these abnormal red blood cells, which you can clearly see through the microscope I made out of vines and bark."

And even after the invention of the microscope in the seventeenth century... even after the discovery of blood grouping at the turn of the 20th century... people still had no freaking idea why some newborns developed hemolytic disease and died. You could go from one end of the world to the other and never hear a single person utter the phrase "Rh incompatibility." THAT DOESN'T MEAN THAT NO ONE EVER HAD IT.

I'll be the first to agree that there are plenty of screwed-up things about standard medical management of pregnancy and birth. However, I solemnly assue you: Rhogam for Rh incompatibility is not among them. If you are Rh- and your partner and baby are Rh+? Get. The. Freaking. Shot.

Comments

[journeywoman.livejournal.com]

MDC only has one forum worth visiting, the Working Mamas one. The rest is just too obnoxious to bother with. Gentle Discipline is one of the scariest places ever.

[bosssio.livejournal.com]

I hang out in spirituality and post exclusively to the UU threads... I also like to lurk in queer parenting because I am fascinated about the stuff I just assume about parenting as hetero privilege.

A lot of MDC I lurk on because I am fascinated about how people think - I disagree a lot of the time, but I still find it fascinating (but then I have a degree in anthropology).

[journeywoman.livejournal.com]

I confess that I have not thoroughly explored all of MDC. It's good to know that Working Mamas is not the only sane part of it.

I am also interested in seeing how people's minds work, but a lot of the rhetoric that I've seen on MDC has just made my blood boil, or has honestly frightened me. There are other online places for me to get the interaction that I enjoy, so I just don't go to MDC except for working parent issues.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

I find the Learning At Home forum surprisingly level-headed and non-crazy. It probably helps that there are so many moms of older children there - it seems like the really insane AP True Believer stuff is concentrated in the early years.

So you can't even tolerate the Diapering forums? Wow. (Never been over there, since we used disposables.)

[journeywoman.livejournal.com]

I used to visit the Diapering forums a lot, but a couple of years ago, there was a monster blowup over people spending a lot of money on handmade diapers. Like $300 on items for charity auctions. There was a faction that thought it was nobody else's business what people chose to spend their money on. And there was another faction that felt that by allowing posts about expensive diapers, MDC was promoting consumerism. The debate and rhetoric became extremely personal and bitter, the second faction won, and the first group was basically banished by the MDC administration. I was really disgusted by that decision. Now the diapering boards are dominated by discussions of prefolds and commercially produced cloth diapers, which don't interest me.

Admittedly, I haven't explored all of MDC because a lot of the places where I've peeked in, I've been turned off. Nice to know that there are pockets of sanity.

[geminigirl]

There are. I pick and choose carefully what parts I read, and I'm careful to take a break when I need to, but there are places that are okay.

I haven't found a supportive parenting community that fits the happy middle ground that we try and live in...where we lean towards a working in the real world, AP minded parenting style. You know the one where you "do the best you can."

[journeywoman.livejournal.com]

Try plan_survive--that's a good one.