With 95 million adults in the US involved in a step family experience, Samantha Waltz’s new book Blended: Writers on the Stepfamily Experience speaks to a wide audience. My friend Janet Bowden shares her review with The Mamafesto. In her … Continue reading
*This is a guest post written by Divya Kumar, ScM, CLC, CPD I recently read this article at Fit Pregnancy, which enumerates 7 steps that women can take to ensure breastfeeding success. It’s an excellent piece, full of applicable tips that women … Continue reading
From time to time I publish guest posts from Circle of Health International (COHI), a group of midwives and health care professionals committed to providing quality maternal health care worldwide. Read on to learn more about their newest campaign related … Continue reading
Apparently it’s guest week here at the Mamafesto! But no, that doesn’t mean I’ll now accept guest post requests for “hot beach bods” or “how to get your kid to eat broccoli” that seem to clog up my inbox. The ones this week are from people I respect and trust. Today’s guest post is from my Our Reality partner, Carrie Nelson. Carrie has a new side project that I’m hoping you’ll take the time to learn a bit more about and check out for yourself!
My Label is “LesbiAnders.” What Is YOUR Label?
I’ve been openly not-heterosexual for twelve years. In that time, I’ve changed the label that I use to define my sexuality no less than three times. Gay, bisexual, and queer have all felt appropriate at various points, yet none have ever felt “just right.” The most accurate descriptor I’ve ever used is “lesbiAnders,” the label I invented when I started to date my husband (Anders) after exclusively dating women for several years, but even that doesn’t always feel accurate or all-encompassing enough. Words are all we have to communicate our sexual identities to others; why, then, does it feel like they so often fail us?
In an effort to challenge the way we talk about sexual identity, I’m launching a photo project on Tumblr called What Is Your Label? I’m looking for people to submit photos of themselves while holding their sexual orientation “label,” as well as a description of what those labels mean to them. Have you used the same label since childhood? Do you switch between multiple labels depending on your environment or mood? Whatever your labels are, I want to hear about them. Ultimately, I want this project to start a conversation about the words that we use to describe our sexual orientations so that we can understand their limitations and explore new ways of communicating complex ideas about sexuality.
Stay tuned — I’ve got big plans for this project. For now, though, I’d be honored if you’d submit your label and join the conversation!
Back in March, I hosted a guest post on the midwifery model of care from Sera Bonds, found of Circle of Health International. Since then, I’ve kept tabs on all the great, much needed work that COHI has been doing … Continue reading
I am please to share this guest post from Sera Bonds of Circle of Health International (COHI*). Sera wrote this in response to a NYTimes article the framed midwifery as a fad/status symbol. While I am thrilled to see midwives … Continue reading
*This interview is a guest post by my friend, Lisa Duggan. Kirby Desmarais looks considerably younger than her 26 years. You might mistake her as the au pair, rather than the tenacious and capable mother, of her twenty month-old daughter, … Continue reading
Today was the first day back at work after a wonderful Thanksgiving break. And I opened my inbox – which I had not checked even one time over break because I refused to get sucked into work on my time off – to five different emails asking me to do five different, time-sensitive things. And this was on top of the five different time consuming things I had been asked to do before break. And on top of that, I have my first rehearsal on Thursday for the contest play and the 162 (yes, I counted) papers I had to grade as well as meetings scheduled before school tomorrow, and during my off hours tomorrow and Friday. The off hours and morning hours I use to grade papers and do the ten things that are still on my to do list because I’ve been asked to do them.
I’m not saying any of this to complain. I’m not even trying to make the point that teachers do, actually, work hard. Rather, I’m saying it because, after I filled in my calendar and to do list with all of the things that had to be done, I thought to myself, When on Earth would I ever find time to have kids in this mess?
As we all know, I’m not sure if I want kids at all. In fact, I’ve written about this several times. And here. And here. Oh, and here.
But I am open to the possibility of having kids, and I do like children. They’re cute and cuddly most of the time, and even pregnancy is getting less and less scary to me by the minute. I have many friends who have been pregnant and then lived to tell the tales, and it’s starting to seem like I, too, could possibly live through a pregnancy if I put my mind to it. But I absolutely cannot imagine having a child and having a career. I know lots of women do it, but I wonder, at what point, do we become good enough at raising children as well as at our careers rather than being really excellent at just one of those things.
I just don’t think I can do both at the same time. Plain and simple. Continue reading
I’m bursting with pride over today’s post. It’s a guest post from Liz Crossen, a woman that I am honored to call a friend. I’ve known Liz for many years, and I’ve had the privilege to watch her journey from a teen mom of two beautiful sons to a young mother working toward a degree in Women’s Studies.
Liz & Her Sons
When Liz told me about her upcoming thesis project for her major – focusing on the issue of teen motherhood in the US, I was immediately enthralled, and asked her to do a small write up about it for the blog. I just knew that there would be others that would latch on to her research, just as interested and excited by it as I’ve come to be.
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Synopsis of Undergraduate Thesis (1 of 2) for Women’s Studies Major, for The Mamafesto Blog Liz Crossen October 11, 2011 |
This guest post was written by a friend who is frustrated, angry and tired over a process this is supposedly there to help her. She wanted a platform to share her story and I was more than willing to do what I could. While creating a baby for some is as easy as one fun night, for others it’s not as simple. And for others yet, it’s a painstaking journey…
We have been going through this crazy process to try to make a baby—build our family. We are two thirty-something women, who have been together for over 11 years, married for over 5 years, own our own house (or at least the bank does for another 20+ years), live in semi-rural New England with our two cats, have post-graduate degrees, and a huge community of loving friends and family that support us from one mile down the road to the West Coast, across the globe, and many places in between. We are financially stable, have good professions, physically healthy, and emotionally (in general) stable. We are culturally Jewish and identify with spiritual teachings from many religions, including Judaism. We have a garden that can sometimes successfully group tomatoes and squash, and we often forget, or simply don’t make the time, to weed.
Our lives have included their fair share of strife and difficulties, just like many, if not most, other people; and at times we have dealt with it better than others. But trying to make a baby has been no small feat. First off- we had to decide on where we would get our sperm. After debating known versus anonymous donor, we opted for a cousin, so that our child would be biologically related to both of us. I am going to be the birth mother with my partner’s cousin’s sperm. We had only the most positive experience and response when discussing this with her cousin- him wanting nothing more than to help us have children. I am ever so grateful for his loving kindness. Now to get the sperm to my egg… he lives out of town, so if he isn’t in town, we have it shipped, overnight, in a kit that keeps it viable for 24-48 hours (thank you gayspermbank.com).
Either we inseminate at home, or I go to my midwife who washes it, spins it, and inserts it past my cervix [Intrauterine Insemination (IUI)]. We know the timing, or hope we get the timing right, because I chart my temperatures and cycles daily, pee on ovulation predictor kits (OPKs) every so often, and sometime I even go and get an ultrasound to quadruple check. This is all because I am blessed with irregular cycles, for which they have found no known direct cause other than possibly Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), although blood tests do not confirm this diagnosis.
So we have been doing this for 20+ months. Friends I was trying to get pregnant with are celebrating their babies’ one-year birthdays. Please, don’t hear that as complaining- it is wonderful to celebrate their lives and it is also a reminder of how long and difficult this has all been.
The Mamafesto 