July 2, 2009
Blog Mom War over Freebirth and Antidepressants
I have been involved in a little spat over Freebirth and Antidepressant use with a blogger named Heather Armstrong. Dooce has the most popular Mom blog on the web, with over four million unique visitors a month. Compared to my thirty thousand or so unique visitors this is sort of David and Goliath in terms of popularity, influence, and writing skill (I am NOT a writer) - but I felt it was important to share my blog post from The Bitter Pill, where I am a guest blogger, so that my readers could look at this argument and then decide for themselves which mother is making the best choices for her children.
ORIGINAL POST (June 14th, 2009)
I’ve been a vocal supporter of home birth for many years.
As a childbirth educator I felt it was my job to tell pregnant women the truth, even if what I said was uncomfortable and painful for them to hear.
A few months ago I read a blog post by Heather Armstrong AKA Dooce. Heather is considered an expert on post partum depression and motherhood. She is also a liberal ex-mormon – sort of the anti-Jenny Hatch. She regularly stands against just about everything that is important to me.
I found that she was an articulate, smutty, sometimes funny but mean spirited blogger. And that those who tended to comment on her blog also used tons of profanity and were hostile to my LDS religion.
I was intrigued by the amount of conversation going on about Antidepressants. It felt like her readers were asking her drug consultation questions as if she was some sort of a medication guru. I was extremely dismayed to read that she was pregnant with her second child and had been taking anti depressants during her pregnancy.
But as with all of my personal judgements around issues with pregnancy etc al…I did not feel the need to contact her personally and let her know how deadly and damaging her choice would prove to be to her unborn daughter.
I get annoyed when others write me emails telling me how I am a bad mother for giving birth at home, and I am a very live and let live person.
When she wrote a vitriolic post about Freebirth on friday, I read through the comment section and decided to jump in the pool, as I usually do when unassisted childbirth is being discussed in the blogosphere.
My comment is found at the bottom of page one. And I wrote quite a bit on page two.
I defended freebirth and shared some links about orgasmic birth.
In the post and the comments we were called stupid, crazy, and some of the language was extremely insulting to our home birth community.
My inner childbirth educator decided to share the facts about antidepressant use in pregnancy and how it is a BAD thing for the baby and then linked to several sites where readers could learn more. Heather has a loyal following of dedicated commenters and many became indignant that I would heckle her for her lifestyle the same way that she had judged me and my friends in the home birth community.
I said:
“Heather has chosen to be a shill for Big Pharma by loudly proclaiming her addiction to Prozac and her use of this dangerous drug during pregnancy….do I care? Sure, I feel bad for her unborn daughter, and any potential heart problems she may have, but does that mean I am going to go on a campaign to convince or tell her I won’t tolerate her lifestyle? No.”
I summed up the conversation by explaining to those reading that we all make choices every day that impact the health of our kids. Some choose to give birth medically and use drugs for all that ails them, and we who give birth at home have decided that the medical people don’t have a whole lot to offer our children.
But ultimately I said that we should all live and let live.
Before Dooce locked the thread to more comments, a few more readers were talking about anti-depressants andthe tone was this almost pleading tone in the comments…”Dooce, take the blue pill, please oh please, take the blue pill….Dooce tell me I’m on the right meds, tell me I’m doing the right thing. Tell me the reality Jenny Hatch has just described does not exist….help me to know that the drugs I am eating every day are not deforming and killing my child…”
The emotion was real, and Heather did not respond, perhaps because she is at the hospital right now birthing her second child.
All I know is that I completely agree with Peter Breggin and his wife Ginger who in July of 2007 at the Huffington Post made the case that PREGNANT WOMAN SHOULD NEVER TAKE ANTI DEPRESSANT DRUGS.
They summed up their excellent post with these words:
“No one can or should blame the parents. But when the mother has been taking an SSRI antidepressant, increasing her risk by 240%, we must hold responsible the doctor who prescribed it, the drug company who manufactured and falsely promoted it, and the medical establishment that covers up and minimizes the drastic hazards associated with these toxic chemicals, including risks to adults, children and the unborn.”
I don’t judge ignorant women who eat antidepressants while pregnant, but I do have a sense of wanting to smack them upside the head and scream “how dare you judge me and my mothering choices when you are killing your child every single day with the toxic POISON you are eating! Wake up woman!”
I would like to challenge Heather Armstrong to take the red pill and find out how far down the rabbit hole goes in terms of the truth of the coverup surrounding pregnant women taking antidepressants.
The media largely trashed Tom Cruise when he suggested alternatives to drug therapy to a mentally challenged Brooke Shields. And millions of women daily dope and numb themselves with chemicals designed by thieves who have made billions from the mental challenges of birth traumetized women. And here we are a couple of years later and come to find out in the Wall Street Journal this week that the very scientist charged with conducting the government research on antidepressants for pregnant mothers is getting paid hand over fist by the drug company that makes the drugs.
“In a letter earlier this month to Emory, Sen. Charles Grassley (R., Iowa) said he learned the school had informed the NIH last summer that Dr. Stowe had financial conflicts of interest. The senator said records he obtained from GlaxoSmithKline PLC, the maker of the antidepressant Paxil, indicated Dr. Stowe was paid $154,400 by the drug company in 2007 and $99,300 during the first 10 months of 2008. The totals included payments for at least 95 promotional talks on behalf of the company. A Glaxo spokesman was unavailable for immediate comment.”
Parents, it is time to wake up and throw the shackles of medicine off our backs!
I wonder about Heather….and how this next postpartum will go for her and her child. See, it’s not just about the mother and her feelings. It is about the health and well being of the baby too. And if the baby is born without a frontal lobe, or has a heart defect or painful drug withdrawal for days in the NICU, I think a Self Righteous, know it all blogging Mom perhaps needs to accept just a bit of responsibility for her choice to eat deadly toxins and live as a psychiatric slave.
I wonder if she will take the blue pill – go back to bed, wake up, and continue with psychiatric care for her emotional issues. I wonder if she will continue to be a loud voice for drugs, gleeful in her mania, confident that none are as funny, wise, and all knowing as she in her “all is well in ZION” psychedelic high, and I wonder if she and her readers will continue to judge, hate, and mock us homebirthers and psychiatric survivors for our choice to live free.
Time will tell.
Jenny Hatch
Red Pill/Blue Pill references from the movie, The Matrix:
UPDATE: July 1, 2009
It appears that Heather Armstrong is eating her doctor approved blue pill and perhaps even the zoloftian, “breastfeeding friendly”, light blue pill…
But hey…she’s happy and free…
“So he made a minor tweak to my meds and asked me to come back and see him in two weeks, and I am not even kidding, I felt better that night. In fact, better does not do what I was feeling justice. I felt free.”
I’m glad Heather feels free on her meds. I was court ordered to take my toxic cocktail and it felt like slavery to me.
“So what about breastfeeding? That’s what you’re all wondering, I know, and this is what I’m going to say: he thinks that what I’m taking is perfectly safe to take while breastfeeding. He’s prescribed it before to women who are breastfeeding and everything has been perfectly fine. No, I’m not going to talk about what I’m taking because one, it’s no one’s business, and two, I don’t care that you think I’m poisoning my baby. I also think that anyone going through this needs to consult their own doctor and make an informed, personal decision about their individual situation. And then go on and live a better, happier life.”
Since I was the only person on Heathers blog who mentioned antidepressants being toxic in the comment section of her Freebirth post. And since I shared links to articles that proved this was the case, I can only presume that she is responding to what I wrote when she says that she does not care what I think.
That’s cool, I also do not care that she thinks I’m “stupid” for being into Freebirth. But she may want to pause for a sec and think about how her daughter will feel about her casually taking toxic poison every day while she is pregnant and nursing, and she may want to consider how her husband might feel about her eating her big bowl of prozac flakes with zoloft milk every morning while nursing her daughter, especially when true healing is to be found at the local Whole Foods market.
“Sorry hunny, I know you can’t put two thoughts together in order to solve that math problem and you started menstruating when you were five, and now as a sixteen year old you are growing a beard… but it was just so important that I not be panicked when you were a newborn, and dammit, only stupid people ignore doctors advice and go looking for alternatives to drugs.”
Hey, to each her own.
“I’ve been on the new meds for over five days, and I haven’t had a panic attack once. I feel like a regular person who has an infant and can handle it, and during my pregnancy that was exactly what I was aiming for. Turns out I needed a little help, a tiny adjustment, but here I am and I am loving it. I love what it has done to my relationship with Leta, what it has helped me see and appreciate in Jon, and I love that I can barely stand to be away from that baby for a minute. Jon has been watching Marlo so that I could write this, and a little bit ago he came rushing downstairs with this kicking, yelling, hungry bundle in his arms, and it was like I hadn’t seen her in years. And that yelling… that raucous, staccato, one-too-many-beers yelling… it didn’t make me cringe, it made me laugh.”
As the fake ad for Zoloft says “Zoloft does EVERYTHING!” (I’m only guessing that Heathers doc put her on Zoloft because it is considered the safest to take while nursing.)
“Perfectly Safe”, according to Heather’s doctor…
Please Mommies, Heather Armstrong is NO EXPERT on drug use during pregnancy and breastfeeding. (Neither am I, I only consider myself an expert on my own body and brain.) And it sounds like her doctor has drunk the big pharma koolaid when it comes to nursing moms eating this crap.
Peter Breggin MD is an expert psychiatrist who has written the definitive books on Psychiatric Medications.
Please take the time to research, pray, and thoughtfully explore alternatives to drug therapies when making the choice whether to eat antidepressants during pregnancy and lactation.
No amount of symptom relief from panic/depression/anxiety will help you overcome the guilt and horrifying feelings you will experience when you realize that your child has been permanently brain damaged by these toxic medications. Alternatives do work! And the biggest lie of all is that only drug therapies can be used when a Mother is in the throes of postpartum emotional illness.
Comments at the Bitter Pill are found here
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 10:00 PM
April 6, 2009
The Natural Family Blog, an online journal written by Jenny Hatch
The Paul and Jenny Hatch Family August 2002 (Seven months pregnant with Ben)
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 6:52 PM
March 18, 2009
Time to say Goodbye...
My hubby's salary is being cut by 16% this week, and while that may not sound like much, it is making it so the three to four hours a day I spend following current events and blogging is going to have to be spent in a part time job to help our family income.
Here is a video of me singing Families Can be Together Forever Acapella...
Families can be Together Forever
Thanks for checking in...these past four years of blogging motherhood have been quite an adventure! I pray that Heavens Blessings will pour down upon your head and you will be able to achieve every personal goal as you pursue your own happiness!
Remember:
Healthy Families Make A Healthy World!
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Jenny Hatch
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The Natural Family Company
"Healthy Families Make A Healthy World!"
Here is the video of my easiest bread recipe.
Continue reading "Time to say Goodbye..."
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 3:42 PM
Unassisted Childbirth: The Ultimate expression of "Going Galt" AKA "Shrugging" Ayn Rand Style: Atlas Shrugged - Some thoughts by Blogger Jenny Hatch
Jenny Hatch, expecting baby number five in "Virtual Galts Gulch" Colorado - doing my own prenatal care, preparing to give birth at home, and taking personal responsibility for the whole shootin' match.
Recent Birth Data from the CDC Indicates: CDC Preliminary Data 2007 PDF: The c-section rate rose 2 percent in 2007, to 31.8 percent, marking the 11th consecutive year of increase and another record high for the United States according to the CDC.
Gutted like a fish? Or give birth..
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Last night I was reading the instapundit Glenn Reynolds and he linked to a pajamas media video of Ayn Rand Institute president, Yaron Brook talking about "Going Galt." I watched all 22 minutes of the interview.
In the section of the video titled "Going John Galt", they talked about a real life version of Galt's Gulch and where it might exist.
In this post I want to throw out the idea that the most rational way to go John Galt in Family Life is in fact to take personal responsibility for the births of our children.
Yaron talked about a "Moral Revolution" in the interview. Challenging the underlying fundamentals in our society by doing what rationally makes sense.
Capitalism is the only way to pursue happiness because it is the only political ideology that protects the individuals right to pursue his own happiness.
After thirteen years of being steeped (brewed) in socialism during my Michigan public school incarceration from 1973 to 1986, I picked up a copy of The Fountainhead in my English teachers classroom (Bless her for having such contraband available to her students). I was just about to graduate from high school and read the book in a week. This book, along with my study of the Book of Mormon carried the day and rationality became my goal for adult life. (Some modern mothers call this Concious Parenting or Primal Mothering)
Two short years after I read Atlas Shrugged for the first time (1986), I was expecting my first baby, and entered into the irrational world of modern obstetrics as a new mother.
As I applied the principles of Objectivism to my own life, everything that I had been taught by my family traditions, our society, and all of the assumptions that pressed upon my young mind regarding HOW I was going to birth and raise my children overwhelmed my spirit. I found myself thrust into a state of insanity, as the irrational fought with the rational for control. In a state of complete overwhelm my mind broke from reality. This moment for me was the darkest time, but also the beginning of a new dawn.
For in the stigma and stereotypes that were thrust on me by well meaning but completely irrational doctors and the ideologies that they were slaves to, I found the courage and the will to run from irrationality to freedom.
These past twenty years since irrationality overwhelmed my heart, I have been able to move from medical slavery to freedom and the results have been a near constant state of personal happiness and fulfillment as a wife and mother.
I was also reading Dr. Amy's homebirth debate blog last night and read her most recent post dismissing the Brewer Diet for Healthy Pregnancy and many of the comments that followed the post.
Her words and the so called "debate" that followed them are an exercise in Irrationality. And if you would like to see for yourself the semantics of an irrational argument, I offer it up as a prime example of the irrational in the quest for healthy children, which is supposedly what the practice of Obstetrics is all about.
The late Dr. Tom Brewer shared the idea, backed up with a mountain or horse sense, practicality, and good judgement that NUTRITION is the foundation for a healthy pregnancy. I guess the important question new moms should be asking themselves is WHY would the medical profession even waste it's time doing research to "de-bunk" the Brewer Diet for pregnancy???
If it is such a non-entity of an ideology, why waste precious resources, time, and money to prove to families that the Brewer Principles are bogus???
Is anyone harmed or is any baby left permanently deformed by a mother eating a sound pregnancy diet during the childs gestation?
Why isn't someone in the medical profession trying to get the word out on Anti-Depressants and the fact that they damage children's hearts in utero?
Is it possible that the energy that has been used to discredit Tom Brewer and his amazingly researched and proven diet is because medical professionals and hospitals MIGHT lose business because babies are born healthy and don't need all the bells and whistles of NICU care?
Can't have all those moms eating healthy and making big, beautiful blue ribbon babies. They might just get the idea that they can take on prenantal care themselves, and then they might just give birth at home alone, and they may never even bother to come to us for help when the baby is ill and on and on and on...
Nutrition works! The medical profession KNOWS that once parents take personal responsibility for eating a proper diet for pregnancy, ninety percent of their business will go down the tubes.
Here I am at forty two weeks and three days of pregnancy eating a HEALTHY Brewer diet breakfast of soft boiled eggs, cracked wheat cereal, home baked whole grain muffins, fresh fruit, and red raspberry leaf tea. This was the morning of the day I gave birth to my nine and a half pound son after a six hour labor, and this pregnancy was the one where I utilyzed the brewer diet to its full capacity...every single day of my pregnancy.
We have been having a wonderful chat about Atlas Shrugged at Free Republic these past few weeks. If you would like to read some wonderful discussion and relevant debate, please go here.
I chimed in on the most recent chat by sharing one of my favorite quotes from the book. I'll share it here to outline how I have used Objectivism as a rational tool for raising my children. Since this philosophy undergirds all of my writings, goals as a mother, and also my hope for the future, please know that in all of this objective philosophy, I completely balance the Libertarian thought and practice with my absolute Faith in Jesus Christ and devotion to his gospel and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to which I belong.
I do NOT see the two as being in conflict and the reason why is because no government minder stood behind my back with a gun to force me to get baptised, pay 10% of my income to the church, or spend thousands upon thousands of hours serving in my community. I have done these acts of my own free will and as a witness to my testimony and faith. When I made the sacred covenants in the Temple that were so profoundly mocked by HBO this past week, I was entering into a contract relationship with my Heavenly Father, again of my own free will and choice.
Here is the quote from Atlas Shrugged:
P 784:
"The recaptured sense of her own childhood kept coming back to her whenever she met the two sons of the young woman who owned the bakery shop. She often saw them wandering down the trails of the valley - two fearless beings, aged seven and four. They seemed to face life as she had faced it.
They did not have the look she had seen in the children of the outer world - a look of fear, half secretive, half sneering, the look of a child’s defense against an adult, the look of being in the process of discovering that he is hearing lies and of learning to feel hatred.
The two boys had the open, joyous, friendly confidence of kittens who do not expect to get hurt, they had an innocently natural, non-boastful sense of their own value and as innocent a trust in any stranger’s ability to recognize it, they had the eager curiosity that would venture anywhere with the certainty that life held nothing unworthy of or closed to discovery, and they looked as if, should they encounter malevolence, they would reject it contemptuously, not as dangerous, but as stupid, they would not accept it in bruised resignation as the law of existence.
They represent my particular career, Miss Tagart, said the young mother in answer to her comment, wrapping a loaf of fresh bread and smiling at her across the counter. They’re the profession I’ve chosen to practice, which, in spite of all the guff about motherhood, one can’t practice successfully in the outer world.....
I came here in order to bring up my sons as human beings. I would not surrender them to the educational systems devised to stunt a child’s brain, to convince him that reason is impotent, that existence is an irrational chaos with which he’s unable to deal, and thus reduce him to a state of chronic terror. You marvel at the difference between my children and those outside, Miss Taggart? Yet the cause is so simple. The cause is that here, in Galt’s Gulch, there’s no person who would not consider it monstrous ever to confront a child with the slightest suggestion of the irrational.”
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The Brewer Pregnancy Diet Plan
You must have, every day, at least:
1. Milk and milk products--4 choices
1 cup milk: whole, skim,1%, buttermilk
1/2 cup canned evaporated milk: whole or skim
1/3 cup powdered milk:whole or skim
1 cup yogurt
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup cottage cheese: creamed, uncreamed, pot style
1 large slice cheese (1 1/4 oz): cheddar, Swiss, other hard cheese
1 cup ice milk
1 1/2 cup soy milk
1 piece tofu, 3"x3"x 1/2" (4 oz)
2. Calcium replacements--as needed (2 per soy exchange from group 1)
36 almonds
1/3 cup bok choy, cooked
12 Brazil nuts
1 cup broccoli, cooked
1/3 cup collard greens
1/2 cup kale
2 teaspoons blackstrap molasses
4 oz black olives
1 oz sardines
3. Eggs--2 any style
4. Protein Combinations--6 to 8 choices**
1 oz lean beef, lamb, pork, liver, or kidney
1 oz chicken or turkey
1 oz fish or shell fish***
1/4 cup canned salmon or tuna
3 sardines
3 1/2 oz tofu
1/4 cup peanuts or peanut butter****
1/8 cup beans + 1/4 cup rice or wheat
(measured before cooking)
beans: soy beans, peas, black beans, kidney beans, garbanzos
rice: preferably brown
wheat: preferably bulgar
1/8 cup brewer's yeast + 1/4 cup rice
1/8 cup sesame or sunflower seeds + 1/2 cup cup rice
1/4 cup rice + 1/3 cup milk
1/2 oz cheese + 2 slices whole wheat bread or 1/3 cup macaroni (dry) or noodles or 1/8 cup beans
1/8 cup beans + 1/2 cup cornmeal
1/8 cup beans + 1/6 cup seeds (sesame, sunflower)
1/2 large potato + 1/4 cups milk or 1/4 oz cheese
1 oz cheese: cheddar, Swiss, other hard cheese
1/4 cup cottage cheese: creamed, uncreamed, pot style
5. Fresh, dark green vegetables--2 choices
1 cup broccoli
1 cup brussels sprouts
2/3 cup spinach
2/3 cup greens
collard, turnip, beet, mustard, dandelion, kale
1/2 cup lettuce (preferable romaine)
1/2 cup endive
1/2 cup asparagus
1/2 cup sprouts: bean, alfalfa
Whole Wheat, Flax, Fennel Waffles
6. Whole grains--5 choices
1 waffle or pancake made from whole grain
1 slice bread
whole wheat, rye, bran, other whole grain
1/2 roll, muffin, or bagel made from whole grain
1 corn tortilla
1/2 cup oatmeal or Wheatena
1/2 cup brown rice or bulgar wheat
1 shredded wheat biscuit
1/2 cup bran flakes or granola
1/4 cup wheat germ
Raspberry Cinnamon Kamut Muffins
7. Vitamin C foods--2 choices
1/2 grapefruit
2/3 cup grapefruit juice
1 orange
1/2 cup orange juice
1 large tomato
1 cup tomato juice
1/2 cantaloupe
1 lemon or lime
1/2 cup papaya
1/2 cup strawberries
1 large green pepper
1 large potato, any style
8. Fats and oils--3 choices
1 tablespoon butter or margarine
1 tablespoon mayonaise
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/4 avocado
1 tablespoon peanut butter++
9. Vitamin A foods--1 choice
3 apricots
1/2 cantaloupe
1/2 cup carrots (1 large)
1/2 cup pumpkin
1/2 cup winter squash
1 sweet potato
10. Liver--at least once a week (optional)
4 oz liver
beef, calf, chicken, pork, turkey, liverwurst
11. Salt and other sodium sources--unlimited
table salt, iodized--to taste
sea salt--to taste
kelp powder--to taste
soy sauce--to taste
12. Water--unlimited
Drink to quench thirst, but do not force fluids
Real juice or milk might make better use of limited stomach space.
See more info about water here
Avoid pregnancy teas and juices which include nettle, dandelion, alfalfa, bilberry, or celery (they have diuretic properties).
13. Snacks and additional menu choices--unlimited
More foods from groups 1-11
14. Optional supplements--as needed
Vitamin pills, powders, herbs, yeast, oils, molasses, wheat germ, etc.
"Note: Vitamin supplements are in routine use in prenatal care; they do not take the place of a sound, balanced diet of nutritious foods.
Posted by Jenny Hatch at 2:45 PM