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

[irismoonlight.livejournal.com]

*headdesk*
Hopefully someone made enough of a related point to embarrass said poster into silence? Because... wow.

[naomikritzer]

I am 90% confident I know where Rivka was reading, and if you say anything "unsupportive," i.e., contrary to the accepted pseudoscientific gospel, you get banned.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

See, this is why I get uncomfortable on parenting boards: I'm a moderate.

I am neither "OMG I will take anything any medical professional tells me as Received Gospel and have a fully medicalized pregnancy and birth, tee hee!", nor am I so far out on the crunchy-organic attachment-parenting natural-birth spectrum that I'm against things like Rhogam, or prenatal vitamins (I kid you not, I've heard people agitating against their use).

And sometimes it feels like there's noplace for me to go to get REASONABLE advice. Advice that isn't C-section-happy, OR "If you do not breastfeed your child for a full 2 years you are a child abuser." It's like being a double-outcast.

[naomikritzer]

What I realized from my online wandering is that every mommy board out there has certain hot-button issues.

1. You've got the issues that are controversial elsewhere, but that 90% of the people on the board agree with each other on, and anyone who turns up who argues for the remaining 10% will be banned or run off for trolling. Nonetheless, threads on this subject can generate many, many replies.

Frequently, on mommy boards, there are certain things that are considered abusive or actively neglectful that are not seen that way by people outside the cult group. Depending on the board, it might be abusive to cosleep, or abusive NOT to cosleep; abusive to breastfeed for more than a year, or abusive to not breastfeed for at least two years; abusive to vaccinate, or abusive to not vaccinate; etc. There is frequently a strong consensus at a board on several of these. Frequently, you can do just fine at a board where you buck a few of these if you just don't ever bring it up. For example, if you like the community's attitudes overall but think they're whacked on the infant sleep issue (you use Ferber at four months exactly and to hell with anyone who has a problem with it -- sucks for them that they're tired all the time!) you may be fine just staying off the infant sleep threads.

2. You've got issues that are obscure elsewhere, but that on that particular board are incredibly controversial. The split here is not necessarily even, and can be as disproportionate as 75%/25%, but there is a vocal minority. Sometimes the board will collectively agree to disagree, or have the subject banned outright by the moderators. What can be particularly fun (or, you know, incredibly tedious) is when part of the board takes the position that one practice is abusive and the other group takes the opposite position and it gets argued over and over again. Often you'll get a splinter board started over these.

3. You've got issues that on that board are viewed as completely negotiable, with the attitude that responsible parents can make totally variable choices and whatever works for your family is fine. At MDC, schooling choices are viewed this way, which is great; there's a good homeschooling forum, and a decent Learning a School forum, and people are civil and helpful and open-minded. I consider the fact that they treat unassisted vs. midwife-assisted homebirth the same way ("oh, if you want a midwife, that's great! I, however, birthed alone in the woods with the howling wolves") genuinely freakish.

The trick is to find a board where all three categories roughly mesh with yours.

At the board I mostly post at, spanking and carseat use are in #1. Spanking is ABUSE, and failure to use a carseat is INCREDIBLY NEGLECTFUL. I'm fine with those -- I mean, I'm not as hysterical about spanking as some of the others, but I don't use it, either, and I'm okay with it being socially unacceptable. Cry-it-out for babies is also unacceptable -- that's one I don't much care about, but again, I never did it, so eh. Alternative health care is in #2: there are non-vaxers and there are also people who will call them irresponsible. Homebirth vs hospital birth is in #3, but it had better be an assisted homebirth (or at least planned that way) or we're back into category #1.

There's probably a board out there that would mesh with you but it can be hard to find it.

[almeda.livejournal.com]

My main problem is, on some issues, I'm still trying to figure out where *I* stand, and with only shrill caws back and forth that Practice A is (according to individuals) either mandatory or abusive, isn't helping. Sigh.

Also, I find the mommyboard I read the most (Circle of Moms, on Facebook) to be utterly overrun by people with almost no practical parenting knowledge, by my standards -- and many of them have multiple kids. Maybe it's just that I'm a geek, and I process through information ... and that I've a scientific bent of mind, but most of these people throw vocab around with no idea what it actually MEANS or how to weigh evidence.

And then there's the sizable group on there that think both (a) if your kid's not on rice cereal before they're 2 months old you're deliberately, abusively stunting their growth, and (b) that six-month-old infants are capable of being manipulative, and must be ignored when they cry because 'they're only doing it to get attention.'

Both of which viewpoints I find incomprehensible, though for differing reasons ... I try to keep a small circle of experienced moms I trust around to toss stuff at for sanity checks.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Do you mind sharing the name of the board? Because it sounds like a pretty good fit for me as well.

[naomikritzer]

Only if you are comfortable with profanity. Lots and lots and lots of profanity. You know how boards sometimes install filters to turn "damn" into "d***"? This board once put in a filter that turned "(((hugs)))" into "(((buttfucks)))."

Also, they view flame wars as entertainment and will egg people on when they start fighting. And they are not at all supportive of people who are acting stupid. Or gentle. Or tactful. And once you have posted something, you can neither edit nor delete it.

It's got a really high number of intelligent and coherent people, though, compared to a lot of boards.

It's currently undergoing an upgrade and may be intermittently really slow; that should be finished pretty soon, but in the meantime traffic is down.

I have found that this board is a really excellent parenting resource in terms of getting useful advice from people whose perspectives are similar to mine. People have useful books to recommend, useful experiences to share, etc. But it's not a board for everybody.

www.sybermoms.com

Most of the conversation takes place on the forum called the Main Event, and you'll have to register before you can see it.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Try the LJ community plan_survive. It's going through a low-traffic spell, but I've found it to be full of people who are both sane and supportive.