In case you needed more reasons to start wearing a Belly Bandit, read what Pregnancy & Newborn just published in its March issue

Lust vs. Must 
“Transforming the postpartum flab back into your regularly chiseled abs isn’t easy, and if you’re anything like the moms we know, you’ll gladly accept some help. There’s always the tummy tuck route, but if you’re looking for a less expensive, less invasive option, give the Belly Bandit a try.
Worn under (or even over) your clothing, the belly wrap provides support as it helps get your stomach back to its pre-baby shape.”

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All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

I eat a healthy diet, drink plenty of fluids everyday to keep hydrated and exercise every week, but my hear needs more than just a healthy lifestyle I guess. I’ve been looking for a “magic potion” that will magically fix my hair and the thing that reportedly comes closest to being this “magic potion” is Moroccan oil. Moroccan oil is another name for Argan oil which is made from the kernels of argan tree fruit that grow almost exclusively in Morocco. Supposedly the oil is pressed from undigested argan nuts plucked from the poop or Moroccan goats that actually climb the trees to eat the nuts and then…well sounds like these goats are not chewing their food properly.
But let’s get back to the hair miracle potion I’m after: I did investigate this Moroccan oil thing and found many commercially available hair products claiming to contain Moroccan oil and they are EXPENSIVE!! wouldn’t mind paying the price if these products would actually contain Moroccan oil, but if you take the time to read the ingredient labels, turns out that the moroccan oil content is just a small fraction of the total content. So…being the DIY trooper I am, found the real deal and hope all you ladies looking for better hair days will try this at home:

(found on a great site I’m falling in love with: GreenChiCafe.com)
Miraculous Moroccan Hair Oil – DIY Diva

“I always love an exotic hair beauty formula, so I began to look around on the Internet, sure that I could find a green, do-it-yourself (DIY) version of Moroccan oil if I looked hard enough.

–by Annie B. Bond, best-selling author of five books including Better Basics for the Home, and most recently, True Food, with Melissa Breyer and Wendy Gordon (National Geographic, 2010).

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The people of Louisiana must sleep soundly knowing that their state protects them from … unlicensed florists.
That’s right. In Louisiana, you can’t sell flower arrangements unless you have permission from the government. How do you get permission? You must pass a test that is graded by a board of florists who already have licenses. To prepare for the test, you might have to spend $2,000 on a special course.

As somebody who works with welfare recipients, this whole business of making it as hard as possible for somebody to set up a fledgeling business is really one of my pet peeves. Women who are good at braiding and styling hair are forbidden to pick up a little extra cash doing so unless they spend ungodly amounts of money going to beauty school and becoming licensed. They don’t want to go into full-time competition with salons. (And once they graduate, they can’t get enough work to pay back their student loans because there’s a glut of beauty school graduates competing for the few jobs that pay enough to make payments on the loans.)

Who benefits? The beauty school, of course. They sell cosmetology courses to women they know won’t be able to make a career of it. The licensed salons, of course. They shut down the small time competitors.

These women just want to be able to legally braid the hair of friends and neighbors in their apartments for a mutually agreed-upon fee. But they’re forbidden to do so (or at least to report the income and count the time toward their “welfare to work” requirements) because they’re not licensed. And even if they were, the Housing Authority forbids them to “operate a business” from public housing.

So women who could pay a bit more in rent to the Housing Authority, and receive a bit less in welfare, and have a little more income and self respect, are forbidden to do so. God forbid they should do anything for themselves!

What are we being protected from? Bad braids?

Let’s have a hypothetical hair braider. Call her Braidy. If Braidy does bad braids, she’ll get dissed all over the projects and nobody will go to her for braids. So it’s not like she needs to be licensed to protect the public from bad hair styles.

Let’s say we get rid of all the stupidity. Let’s say we let Braidy openly charge her neighbor $50 for a hair braid. Braidy reports the income to the DPW. They give her $25 less in cash a month. Braidy reports her increased income to the Housing Authority. They raise Braidy’s rent $2 a month. So the taxpayers are giving Braidy $27 less in benefits a month, Braidy has $23 dollars a month more to spend on her kids, and Braidy’s neighbor got a cheaper, more convenient hair braiding job.

If Braidy gets enough of a reputation, Braidy may even earn enough money to get off welfare. She’d still be poor. She’d still be living in the projects. But she’d have her self respect, she’d be stimulating the economy by spending her additional income. She’d be setting an example for her neighbors of how to get off cash assistance.

Why is the government set up to keep this sort of thing from happening? Who benefits from keeping Braidy from making a little extra legally reported income? Who benefits from preventing Braidy’s neighbor from getting a hair braid from a friend she likes to hang out with?

Like I said — the beauty school. The established salons. (Who might not even really be losing business, since Braidy’s neighbors can afford to pay Braidy $50 for a braid, but can’t afford to pay the salon $200 for the same braid.)

It seems to me that the prime beneficiaries are those who like to keep people like Braidy as dependent on the government as possible.

Recently, federal agents raided Dr. Kermit Gosnell’s clinic in Pennslyvania and discovered one of my worst nightmares realized: an unsafe clinic, with unsanitary conditions, sketchy staff, and to top it all off, fetus parts in jars. The doctor has killed at least a couple women, injured more, and who knows how many women who went there and just had a bad experience. So why did women go there? It had a terrible reputation. The answer: Gosnell charged very low prices. Women who were going there couldn’t afford the extra it cost to go to a safe clinic. So, essentially they had two choices – carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, or go to this super sketchy clinic that was affordable, and hope for the best. Not really very good choices, huh?

First of all, I’ll address the idea that carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term is not a very good choice. Plenty of women beg to differ, and doctors who listen to and care about them learn from them. Dr. Alec Bourne, who had challenged the British abortion law by performing an abortion on a teenage girl who’d been raped by soldiers, nevertheless wrote in his memoir:

“Those who plead for an extensive relaxation of the law [against abortion] have no idea of the very many cases where a woman who, during the first three months, makes a most impassioned appeal for her pregnancy to be ‘finished,’ later, when the baby is born, is thankful indeed that it was not killed while still an embryo. During my long years in practice I have had many a letter of the deepest gratitude for refusing to accede to an early appeal.”

Ambivalence — even to the point of rejecting the pregnancy — is normal in early pregnancy. Accepting and adjusting to the pregnant state is a normal developmental task of pregnancy.

Abortion minded women, given a chance to address their concerns, often change their minds, as was noted by Planned Parenthood Medical Director Mary Calderone:

[1955 Planned Parenthood abortion conference] members agreed, and this was backed up by evidence from the Scandinavians, that when a woman seeking an abortion is given the chance of talking over her problem with a properly trained and oriented person, she will in the process very often resolve many of her qualms and will spontaneously decide to see the pregnancy through, particularly if she is assured that supportive help will continue to be available to her.

It strikes me as very dubious at best to “treat” a normal and self-limiting phenomenon, such as ambivalence and early rejection of the pregnant state, with such a drastic and irreversible step as abortion. It makes no more sense than acceding to a stonefish victim’s impassioned plea that the effected limb be amputated, without informing the patient that the pain will abate and the patient will again be glad to have retained the limb.

Typically the distress, and thoughts of aborting, abate around quickening — when the fetus itself, rather than the mere state of being pregnant — becomes real to the woman. And now modern technology frees us of a prior time constraint. The woman no longer need remain conflicted and distressed until 16 or more weeks into the pregnancy. Viewing an ultrasound of her embryo or fetus can allow the woman to resolve her ambivalence, and to commit to seeing through the pregnancy.

Aren’t health care professionals supposed to look for the least drastic option? And showing the patient an ultrasound and referring her to supportive services is much less intrusive and invasive than performing an abortion.

Now, I have to give credit where credit is due: Evidently there were some abortion supporters trying to get Kermit Gosnell’s filthy abortion mill closed down:

CHOICE, a Philadelphia abortion referral service, contacted the state medical board about Gosnell because some of his patients had called CHOICE with appalling stories, said Brenda Green, the organization’s executive director.

“We were told that we could not file a complaint. It had to be a patient. It could not be a third party,” Green said.

Here’s part of where the problem lies. Gosnell’s practice wasn’t a clinic. Thus, the health department couldn’t just step in and do an inspection. As a private physician’s office (however much it might look like a clinic to a prospective patient), Gosnell’s abortion facility could only be investigated if a patient herself complained.

It seems to me that one solution would be to not allow abortions to be preformed in non-clinic settings.

So, you just had a terrible experience in a medical facility and want to file a complaint — but in order to do so you must be willing to submit all your medical information including the abortion you just had, and be able to travel two hours to another city to go to a hearing. And people wonder why more reports weren’t filed.

That’s not right — for filing a complaint about abortion or any other botched procedure or quackery. The complaint should be sufficient to get at least a cursory investigation going, and if more information is needed, then the board can come to the patient. (I must note, patient’s names are redacted from medical board documents.)

What can we do to make clinics that don’t provide the best care possible better? And what can we do to make sure a clinic like Dr. Gosnell’s never exists ever again?? Can we create some sort of regulatory commission? Since clearly, the health department dropped the ball on this one big time. How we can get this information to low income women?

I am beyond delighted to hear this coming from a prochoice source. I have some suggestions.

1. Start holding the National Abortion Federation accountable. Too many prochoicers assume a NAF member is a high quality abortion provider. That ain’t necessarily so. The existing policing organization needs to actually start policing its own members.

2. Local referral groups can get copies of Warren Hern’s Abortion Practice. Hearn includes a chapter about how to assess whether or not a facility is following recommended standards of abortion care.

3. Local prochoice groups can also do docket searches, etc., on practitioners to get the inside scoop. This primer was written for prolifers, but the techniques for finding out what’s what remain valid.

4. Spread the word among organizations likely to make abortion referrals.

I would be more than glad to extend support to prochoice individuals and groups, without in any way trying to convince them to outlaw abortion. Just contact me.

In closing:

“What happened inside that building is not the real story. The real story is why women sought care there at all,” Schewel said. “This prohibition on Medicaid payment leaves desperate women vulnerable to substandard providers.”

Actually, no. The CDC’s own research indicates that eliminating public funding for elective abortion reduces the incidence of abortion-related hospitalizations among Medicaid-eligible women. Even when all other factors are adjusted for, public pay patients still have a higher compilation rate than private pay patients.

The real story is the way the focus has become on “How do we arrange legal abortions for these women?” rather than “How do we identify and address these women’s real needs.” Which takes us back to where I started.

“What the hell is this?” Wilkinson asks her husband, as she lifts up her suit top to reveal her stretch marks. “I want to look sexy for you again!”

What bothers me the most about this is 1) she is feeling badly about herself after having given birth only three months ago (this is so sad!) and 2) she wants to regain her figure for her husband and not for herself.

While I rag on Kendra a lot, it’s moments like these that I wish that average women saw more often. Celebrities are not ‘perfect’ and they work really hard to achieve slender bodies. What is particularly interesting about this snippet is that for someone so unfailingly vacuous, you have to feel a little bit sorry for her. I think there is genuine disbelief; for someone so used to managing her appearance and relying upon diet and exercise to keep herself thin, the very idea that somehow your body can change totally outside of your control is actually probably very difficult for someone like her to cope with. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next thing we hear from her is that she’s going to have plastic surgery.

It’s bad enough to have your post-birth body judged when you are not a celebrity; it’s even worse to feel horrible about yourself with the world watching your every move.

Are you a nursing mother?

The University of Massachusetts Amherst Breast Milk Research Lab is asking us to help spread the word about and important breast cancer study at the University of Massachusetts. They are currently looking for breastfeeding women who have had, or are expecting to have, a breast biopsy to participate in an approved study.

“The goal of this study is to identify molecular biomarkers for signs of increased risk of developing breast cancer. Knowledge of the molecular changes that occur int he breast cells may be helpful in developing preventative and therapeutic strategies for all women.”

If you qualify for this study, you will be asked to donate a breastmilk sample and will receive $25 in appreciation.

For  more information, please contact Dr. Sarah Lenington, Recruitment Coordinator, at (413) 545-1037, or email slenington[@]cns.umass[.]edu
More information is also available at www.breastmilkresearch.org

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For those of you still wondering why Angie tweeted her abortion, she gives us a glimpse:

JACKSON: …. I’m a blogger, and I’m actually writing a book, ‘Birth and Death: Life of a Newborn Cult’ about my experiences, and I talk about a lot of controversial or hot button issues every day.

Translation: It was a publicity stunt to plug my book that I’m writing.

JACKSON: Well, when I had my son, who is four now, I had a tremendously difficult pregnancy and 98-hour back labor, and my doctors advised me to avoid becoming pregnant again, which is why I had an IUD inserted in my cervix.

What doctor allows a patient to be in labor for 98 hours? Hello? Is this 1810? Either Angie’s doctor is a quack or Angie’s stretching the truth a tad here.

And there’s a world of difference between “my doctors advised me to avoid becoming pregnant again” and “pregnancy is life-threatening for me”. My best friend had life-threatening pregnancies. Her doctors pushed for tubal ligation.

And IUDs are inserted into the uterus, not left in the cervix. Again, either Angie’s doctor is a quack or Angie can’t get her facts straight.

JACKSON: I had prepared that if I became pregnant anyway, I would have an abortion because the risks were too high for me to continue a pregnancy.

Translation: I knew if I got pregnant I’d just kill the baby. No biggie, right?

PHILLIPS: As you well know, we’ve been looking at all the various comments, both negative and positive to what you did, and these are really harsh. But people wrote in and said- they called you all kinds of names, from being a whore to someone who just couldn’t keep her legs closed. They called you a baby killer. I mean, it’s even hard for me to say these things because some of those- the e-mails and the responses were so brutal. How did that make you feel? Did that bother you? Did it make you think twice about what you did?

JACKSON: Actually, if anything, it showed me more how important it is to talk about taboo things or to talk about personal things.

Translation: I hit the attention-whore jackpot.

JACKSON: …. One- about half of American women will have an unintended pregnancy before the age of 45, and one in three American women will have an abortion sometime during their childbearing years. And yet, this is something we almost never talk about, or at least we talk about the political aspects, but not the individual women.

Translation: I’ve been living in a cave for the past ten years. Or I’ve just been too wrapped up in myself to notice that the internet is crammed to the electronic rafters with first person abortion accounts, including women blogging their abortion. Naw, let’s be honest. I knew the “blog my abortion” thing had been done to death — ha! — so I had to up the ante a bit if I was going to generate publicity for my book.

JACKSON: ….Some of the heat that I’ve gotten has certainly showed me what the cost of that silence is, is that when a woman does want to discuss it, she’s- the reaction is quite strong.

The reaction wasn’t the cost of silence, Angie. It was the cost of shooting your mouth off. “Oh, my baby is dying inside me even as I speak. And I think that’s just about the coolest thing ever. Eat shit, prolifers!” And plenty of them took the bait. And this is surprising?

PHILLIPS: Final question: what made you decide to do the RU- 486? Is that something you discussed with your boyfriend? How quick did you make that decision? Why that route?

JACKSON: Sure. I investigated – I looked at a couple of websites, one of which is imnotsorry.net, which includes a lot of personal abortion stories, and I read how different women had felt.

Translation: What I said before about the silence on this issue? That was total bullshit. I knew the net was full of first person abortion stories. I had to think of a way to trump all those stories and get the spotlight on the center of the universe, namely ME!

JACKSON: I thought that the RU-486 abortion-by-pill at home would be a more natural and comfortable experience.

1. Punk’d!

2. Frankly, I think you chose chemical abortion as part of the publicity plan. Tweeting a surgical abortion would have meant that you’d be on your Blackberry while you were in the stirrups. Much easier to tweet at home.