Putting my foot in my uterus perhaps

In which our Hero is feeling a little exposed and feels like he might not have emphasized the part he wanted to

So to follow up my rant about homebirths to an audience that includes at least one person who is a textbook example of the healthcare factory fucking someone over royally through either gross incompetence or gross negligence (though as I remember the details, it’s kind of a competition to see which aspect edges out the other since both were in play), I think I’ll just say again:

First, it’s all my opinion, and clearly acknowledging that I am the less interested party in any such debate.

Second, I’m not saying that the medical factor is better, I just know that it’s statistically less worse. But my statistics training then requires me to iterate that statistical results are composite views over a large population which allows us to average over the people who got more harmed than helped.

Third, there are a lot of actual arguments to make a case for a home delivery. “It’s natural” is not one.

Fourth, my rant has nothing to do with midwives. I think the original article made a pretty good point about the huge variation in skill and certification contained in the category, but that’s not where my issue falls. So for all the good reasons for me to have offended anybody, don’t pick that one.

Fifth, I already accepted home birthing once. I would be entirely prepared to have a frank discussion about it again if Nocturne told me this was something important to her. This time, I feel like what I read equips me to articulate where my concerns lie and thus to mitigate them. And that’s the part that’s the most significant to me. Because the biggest problem for me was not the home birth, but the the fact that I didn’t feel like my concerns mattered or were addressed. I felt trampled, and then that feeling never got processed after things ended and probably fermented a little in my brain.

(Yeah, it can go on the should-have-been-a-sign list. Just give me a few hours to flip to the end so I can add it.)

This is how I feel about it. But different people live lives with different risk profiles. Some people jump out of planes. Some people eat steak blue-rare. It’s not actually wrong. it’s just prioritized differently. Apologies for the histrionic edge to the thought as expressed.

I don’t know why I didn’t remember to link it yesterday, but here’s a link to that post I was reading about lessons learned from a home-birth gone wrong.

Now. What else can I be offensively opinionated about today.

Actually, while I’m posting links, let me add another one that’s kind of topical because OD did it’s regularly scheduled drunken fratboy (memory leak) stumble into the dirt. My hosting provider, in addition to their own server farm, and in addition to their twitter feed that updates multiple times a day as incidents occur and are resolved, also has a website that they pay someone else to host for them. Their theory is that by having a second company host the status site, then even if they’re down completely, their customers can get updates.

Here’s what an outage looks like when handled by a mature support organization: Updates every 20 minutes.

Going to give Coal her iron ring tomorrow. I inadvertently got her a pen. Part of me wants to keep it because it’s cool. Part of me thinks its absurd because she’ll have a memento of the occasion, her ring. Part of me wants to write her a little card. Part of me thinks that either she’ll already appreciate it or she’ll never understand.

Anybody got questions, or suggestions for what I should write about? I’m feeling a little stuck.