I apparently had my baby in the dark ages – thankfully not before drugs were invented. But these days it’s hip to tweet your baby announcement. Check out the latest addition to the Albertyn family, if you didn’t already catch it on Twitter. (Granted, she was somewhat of a celebrity as the author of a book titled So Close detailing her battle with infertility.)

Way cool, but I have to wonder what kind of tweets I would have sent out considering I managed to make quite an ass of myself to both the anesthesiologist and my OB. Then again, I was in labor for 30 hours…. Well, too late to wonder about it now.

Would you tweet about your labor?

(You can also follow me on Twitter, but I’m not planning to birth a baby anytime soon … just fyi.)

Photo, “Twitter Map” by Boris Veldhuijzenvan

Ever read news and go, “Well, duh. It took them long enough to get there?” I recently had a conversation with Jeanne Connor Dessert. She’s struggled with endometriosis.

Endometriosis is a painful, chronic disease that affects 5.5 million women and girls in the USA and Canada, and millions more worldwide. It occurs when tissue like that which lines the uterus (called the endometrium) is found outside the uterus.This misplaced tissue develops into growths or lesions which respond to the menstrual cycle in the same way that the tissueof the uterinelining does:each month the tissue builds up, breaks down, and sheds. Menstrualbloodflows from the uterus and out of the body through the vagina, but the bloodand tissue shed from endometrial growths has no way of leaving the body.This results in internal bleeding,breakdown of the blood and tissue fromthe lesions, and inflammation — and can cause pain,infertility, scar tissue formation, adhesions, and bowel problems.

Obviously this is terrible to undergo. But, what is really upsetting to Jeanne and others in her support group is the way their pain has been dismissed by the medical community because it is of a feminine nature. Many go decades having their condition undiagnosed because their pain is completely dismissed by doctors. I hear similar stories from women about predominantly female pain diseases like fibromyalgia. 

Oh, I totally get that. During my first birth when my entire labia was severed and required about 25 stitches it was excruciating and I had to literally throw a temper tantrum before my OB/GYN would give me pain medication. “I can only give you 15,” she said. I felt I would have gotten more sympathy,empathy, compassion and medicine had I severed my finger. When the intern ripped through the stitches (to figure out why I had pain - uh, I just pushed a human through my vagina and my labia had to be reattached) there was no “fix” available and I was told I’d have to wait until the next baby to repair my mangled labia. And as the second OB/GYN ripped 25 more stitches out of my most tenderest skin without pain medication or a local anesthetic after my second and last child, I thought, “Why do they allow psychotic sadists to become obstetricians?”

As I could barely sit with my poor pained pudenda, my husband went in for a vasectomy. I noticed a huge discrepancy within the medical community when compared to men getting vasectomies. He was given a valium, a local anesthetic both during the procedure and the removal of stitches and a big bottle of refillable pain medication. Not to mention my undying gratitude for permanently preventing my vajayjay more heinous pain. They even gave him porn to make the semen testing process enjoyable. 

Why?  

According to an article, Women, Men and Ouch! the Painful Truth by Cathleen Medwick in O Magazine there is a very real difference in how the medical community perceives pain and treats it in women versus men.

In other words, this is not just a hysterical perception of mine and Jeanne’s this is a documented fact. Medwick talks about how difficult it was for her mother, who was dying of breast cancer, to get her pain treated or even garner any sympathy for it.

Medwick interviewed pain guru Jeffrey Mogil, PhD, director of the pain genetics laboratory at McGill University in Montreal. Mogil has apparently done something unheard of and revolutionary - he includes females in his pain studies.

That’s right. The scientific community has traditionally excluded women under the erroneous assumption that “females show too much variability in their responses due to hormonal cycling,” according to the article. 

Mogil is revolutionary because he noticed that women made up the vast majority of clinical pain patients. And so he thought to study them. (Am I the only one screaming, It’s 2008, what the hell took you so long? That’s a nose on your face.)

In his research he has discovered that women and men have a different genetic makeup and they experience pain differently. He believes, according to the article, that there are actually different neural circuits for men and women. He says this means that treating women with pain medication which is effective for men is not going to treat women’s pain adequately. Visa versa. 

Since most research excludes women, he believes, that’s resulted in inadequately treating women’s pain by using medications that were made for men. He also says women have a documented lower pain threshold. Saying that not only are women more likely to report pain, but we experience it as more painful. Other species do too, he says, citing female rats that flinch more than male rats responding to the same stimulus.It has recently been shown that estrogen influences pain sensitivity. Male rats given the hormone flinched in more pain than they did without the hormone. Testosterone, when injected in the female rat, reduced the response to pain. 

Women feel pain more acutely and yet:
Women are still twice as likely as men to be under-treated for pain.

I know a few new moms who are finding the transition to Mommy difficult. I can totally relate. I suffered Post-Partum Depression pretty severely after the birth of my first child. I had just witnessed 9-11 which was traumatic and that most likely contributed to the severity of my PPD. I’ve written a little bit about it on So Sioux Me so you can read Fear Not, if you want to know more details about my extremely difficult transition into Mama.

I’ve had a second child since then and I have had five years to reflect on the massive overhaul of identity that happens when independent and empowered women become mothers and I’ve never felt like the reality of what becoming a whole new entity gets any validity.

So allow me to rant about becoming Mommy. Maybe, if you’re a new mom and feeling not at all like yourself and kind of depressed, you can relate. And hopefully, actually my prayer is, that if you find yourself relating this will bring you a little bit of peace about what you’re going through.

In America we totally minimize birth and the real trauma of the whole ordeal. One minute you’re You. A woman who gets things done. Maybe you order underlings around at work or earn the respect of coworkers with your skills. You have money to play around with, gets to wear clothes you like, cash a paycheck and invest in whatever. You make deals or writes articles or manage a business or do whatever you do in your career. You communicate with adults frequently and daily on an intellectual level.

Your body was yours and you shared it when you felt like it and didn’t when you didn’t want to. You had a regular cycle and hormones that had been predictable.  Therefore you’d learned how to manage your monthly issues since you were 12. 

Now BAM you’re body has experienced this traumatic violent event - birth. Personally, I thought it was about as violent as being hit by a car. You wouldn’t emotionally bounce back from that in six weeks, I don’t understand why Americans expect women to bounce back from birth in a month and a half. The event changed your hormones, shape, vajayjay and everything else about you. You gave up your body for nine months to grow a foreign life and told yourself you’d be back to normal after birth. Dream On. Now you’re a milk machine. Now you smell of puke. Now you never sleep.

You feel like you are no longer YOU anymore. Your whole entire identity has gone through a dramatic and intense transformation. That’s takes more than six weeks or twelve weeks or four months or a year to adjust to. You don’t do the things that used to define You as You.

If you’re staying at home not working means you’re not getting any outside validation for the job you’re doing. You’re getting no paycheck. You’re only getting poopy diapers and the occasional smile or giggle, but it’s hard to cash that at the bank. You have to cut costs as expenses rise and you kind of resent not having your hair done like you used to.

Your husband thinks you’re doing fandiddly-taskic - so obviously he’s not very tuned in to what is actually going on with you. Which equals even less validation. But, there’s no way he can really understand because becoming Dad may be an awesome journey for him, but he’s still going to work, cashing a check and gets a lot of time away from the needy baby. And no one is sucking on his body half the day.

So what I’m saying is that what you are going through is NORMAL. It sucks but it’s normal. You are doing everything right. What you are doing does matter in the long run and it’s a valid and legitimate thing to be doing right now. You just have to realize that you are never ever going to get the same emotional kick-back from diapers and naps that you used to get cutting a massive deal in pharmaceuticals or whatever you did. The pay-off is different and there’s not a lot of instant gratification staying home with a baby. It takes time and practice to get used to. 

I now believe that being a stay-at-home-mom is a craft. Just like writing or any other profession. You have to learn how to do it. You have to make a structure for yourself. If you wake up everyday and just wander around and only do whatever you feel like doing then you will become clinically depressed. Period. You used to look forward to weekends cause it was Your time-off. But, now what do you look forward to? I can tell you the answer - you look forward to your husband coming home from work and you look forward to his time off.

I know you don’t want to, but you really have to get out of the house every single day for something - anything. A walk. A neighbor’s house. A grocery store trip. A mommy-baby sign language class. You have to leave the house daily.

You also have to “accomplish” at least one thing every day so you don’t feel like a total loser. Laundry is something. Cleaning the bathroom is something. Doing a budget is something. Find something every day that you can accomplish and then feel proud of yourself for doing it.

And really you must ditch that baby! If you are taking the baby on your dates with hubby, that’s ridiculous! You mustleave the baby sometimes or you will lose Self. If You lose You all is lost, because the baby needs You to be You and not some drone who smells like puke and feels like crap. Go out with other women without the baby. Supplement with formula or pump, it’s not that big of a deal. Join a book club. Go to a movie. Go out to dinner. Join a gym and leave her in the nursery for an hour while you work out or take a yoga class. You can not become only mom. You must also be You who has other interests outside the home. Otherwise you’re just the weird crazy lady who believes the baby will die if she goes out to lunch. That’s the definition of insanity! The baby can be without you for a few hours. The baby shouldbe without you for a few hours or she will have attachment issues in only a few short months and that will not be fun for you or her.

Stop reading parenting magazines. They should all be titled “How many ways can you accidentally kill your baby.” They induce anxiety and you do not need that much information. They are full of crap most of the time. Too much information is just scaring you can creating anxiety. You don’t need to know about every freak accident that might possibly happened to a kid. Throw them away, stop your subscription and buy Secrets of the Baby Whisperer: How to Calm, Connect, and Communicate with Your Baby. She’ll give sound advice without making you a panicked mess.

Honestly, physiologically and psychologically, you need to exercise. You just have to force yourself to do it. The endorphins you get from exercise are worth any anti-depressant on the market. Your poor body just went through a massive hormonal surge with way to much estrogen and then almost none overnight. Be kind to your new body and feed your brain some endorphins.

You probably don’t want to follow this advice if you’re suffering from PPD, but get off your butt and do it anyway.

If you are having compulsive thoughts about hurting yourself or your baby, which now that my child is five, I will admit to having had them. You need to tell your OB/GYN that you’re having brief flickering thoughts of hurting your self (really, I think that’s enough information to give him a picture of what’s going on without getting any authorities involved) and get some medication. The Le Leche League has a list of anti-depressants that you can take while breast feeding.

That said, I wonder if what new moms are really experiencing is a full-blown identity crisis resulting from adding MOM to the mix of SELF.