Odds n Ends

In the Name of the Most High

I’m horrible at updating my blog.  There’s a lot that I have to talk about and discuss that I don’t even know where to start.

I guess I’ll start with the obvious: I am due in about 4 weeks.  I have so many mixed emotions…. I feel eager, impatient, worried, excited, emotional, happy, content, nervous… all the usual I guess.  I just know that my life will completely change in about a month, and all I can do is wait and be patient until it comes.  I spent a lot of my second trimester worried about labor and the actual birthing process, but I actually am not too anxious about that part anymore.  Sure, it will be painful and difficult, but I mean… I expect that… and I’m actually looking forward to the process.  It is a powerful experience that bonds women together throughout the ages and it is just what I have to go through to bring my baby into this world.  I consider the experience a blessing on so many levels- with hardship there is ease (as stated in the Quran).  I recently visited a woman from my birthing class who had her baby about a month ago… we both had fears that the pain would be so intense that we would feel like we were dying.  And even though this woman didn’t have an easy birthing experience (3 hours of pushing, and had to use a vacuum at one point as well as a little bit of pitocin), she said she never felt so alive during labor and not once did she ever feel like she was about to die… and she did the whole thing with no pain medication.  I loved that phrase: “never felt so alive”.  I trust that my midwife will not make my birth a traumatic experience for me as so many births are in the U.S. (unfortunately)… I trust that my midwife will also help me to feel so alive.

Healthcare and racism: I don’t even know where to start with this.  From the townhall meetings to the ridiculous debates to the removing of the public option… I’m always surprised that those who would benefit the most from a public option are the ones who resist it the most.  As usual, people have no idea what they are talking about and just shout out slogans: “socialized medicine” “long waiting lines like in Canada” etc. etc.  I sometimes don’t understand democracy- doesn’t a democracy assume an informed public?  Unfortunately, I feel like we form opinions about things based on our instinct and what the corporate owned media tells us rather than evidence-based findings.  Not only do we not understand what we are arguing about most of the time, but we somehow think that the person who screams the loudest has the most valid point.  People who are studying health care at the university level don’t even understand the intricacies of our health care system… how does the average person become an expert in 2 weeks?  They listen to either Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann and believe they are an authority in the matter.  The truth is, our health care system is extremely complex and before we make decisions about what it should look like in the future, we need to understand what it looks like now.  And I doubt most people even have the slightest clue.  Also, the underlying racism in these debates is so blinding that I wonder at those who do not recognize it.  The tea party protests (or whatever they are) are so muddled with racism that I am surprised that anyone would argue otherwise.  People are just showing their ugly heads under the guise of health care or whatever else they pretend to care about.

Final thoughts: my career.  I’m so confused about the next steps in my life and making a wrong decision.  I know that this has been an underlying theme in all my recent posts, but I’m just so torn about what I am supposed to do in my life.  I’m okay with taking a break, but at what point should I go back?  And if I go back into the career world, what would I do?  Should I just get my PhD?  Should I look for a more flexible career that will allow me to set my own hours- if so, what would that be?  Should I even be thinking about this now?  What if I decide to homeschool- would I even be able to have a career… what would that look like?  And, yes, I am considering homeschooling, for a little bit anyway.

Lots of emotions and thoughts.

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