By Carrie Werner
When I was first pregnant, a woman I worked with at a health food store in Arkansas was pregnant as well. She gave me La Leche League's The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding. At the age of 22, having been bottle fed myself and not having seen a woman nurse a baby, this was the first time I'd heard of breast feeding! I am presently nursing my third child.
Shortly after that, I was going through the public assistance childbirth "program" in Philadelphia. I moved back to Austin in the break-up that made me a single parent and was in need of affordable childbirth options. Already inclined toward natural medicine, I was thrilled to find a midwife with whom a fellow mom and friend had bartered her birth care for housecleaning. This wonderful midwife took me as a client in my 7th month of pregnancy; her birth center's care was undoubtedly the primary factor that prevented my having had a cesarean-section. I began to have my first daughter at home, but after two days in labor, went to the hospital to induce my labor further. It was a midwife's presence with me at the hospital that prevented my coercion into a cesarean. The doctor made the midwife leave the room and told me that if I wanted my baby to live I would probably need to have a cesarean. Assigning the midwife as my birth partner, I told him it was her call. Quite annoyed, he left the room and a few hours later came back to witness the two contractions before I birthed my daughter vaginally.
The living-in/work situation a mom friend of mine told me about during my second pregnancy and divorce helped me to support my family at that time. I heard about the affordable Montessori school my daughters attended for 2 years, rethinking vaccinations, the cloth diaper concept and even met my current live-with partner...through a mom.
So, information we can offer each other as parents certainly does matter. And it matters for our children. Some of the parenting options I have mentioned here are not the mainstream "doctor recommended" choices most commonly presented to parents. Sometimes we have to look further than what is fed to us to find safe alternatives that have a family's best interest at heart.
Why doesn't society have a family's best interests at heart? For the most part it's about information. Companies do not necessarily know how or how well job-sharing works if no one ever approaches them with the subject. The school cafeteria would not necessarily know that a child feels left out or is even being ridiculed for always bringing her own lunch because there's not a vegetarian lunch option if no one mentions it.
Becoming a parent made me an activist. If we want healthy lives for our children (and we do), organizing ourselves and our efforts together is a very powerful way to make the constructive changes we need to make ours a healthier and more child-friendly world. Look at what La Leche League (which started as one mothers' support group) has done to educate people about breast feeding. I had a friend who had a bus driver try to kick her off a city bus for breast feeding. These types of education are needed.
There are ideas that I have (collective home schooling and bulk food buying, and share with others that would be far more possible with the thinking of other parents and allies and the resources we can access and generate together. And I know that my own experiences and interests are only the tip of the iceberg. There are ideas I've not yet considered that could change my life and you may have them.