K °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

[adventuresofalicecane]

Cesarean

A cesarean section (C-section) is a major surgical procedure where a baby is born by making a large incision through seven different layers of tissue in the mother's abdomen.

Seppuku

Seppuku is a Japanese ritual suicide where a samurai kills himself by cutting into his belly. It was thought that seppuku was an honorable way to die. Sometimes, it is called hara-kiri, which is translated from Japanese as belly-cutting.

I gave birth to my baby girl 19 days ago. The plan was for a natural delivery and to be induced due to being on blood thinners however it did not go to plan.

On the first day of induction, I had the foley balloon catheter. The hospital advised that the week before they had a protocol change and that this was now their first way of inducing labour. The balloon was inserted and then we played the waiting game. The balloon fell out at 4 hours, inwas checked and told I was 3cms dilated.

I thought, awesome, this is going to be a breeze and all going to go fast. Oh how I was so wrong. They waited till the next morning to take me to the birthing unit (so about 20 hours later), they checked me and said I was 1cm dilated. I almost fell over... how? We were doing so well. Did they wait too long?

They couldn't break the waters at that point and decided that we would try cervidil tape. Cervidil is a long tape that they insert up near the cervix and it releases hormones to ripen the cervix.

They insert the tape and we waited. That night I was having back pains now and then but nothing strong.

The next morning, i was still only 1cm dilated. To say I was frustrated doesn't even cover it. This was day 3 and still no baby. After discussing with the doctor, we decided to try the cervidil tape again.

Same thing again, back pains but nothing else. The next morning, the doctors say I'm still 1cm. After discussing with my husband I decided for the cesarean. This was the 4th day I was in hospital, my baby should have been born by now, my husband was paying through the nose for parking to support me. I was sick of being pregnant and ready for the next chapter of the story to begin.

While I was pregnant, I had never considered that I could possibly have a cesarean. I was so focused that I was going to have a natural birth and I was actually keen on the natural birth because it kind of felt like a woman test. Could I handle the pain? Could I push the baby out without the epidural? How long would it take? I feel robbed of that experience, but she was determined to stay in there.

The cesarean process was overwhelming because it just all seemed to have happened so fast. Let me tell you, anyone that says "cesarean is the easy way out" needs a punch in the face cause they have no idea what they are talking about.

The process of getting the epidural is full on in it of itself. It's a huge needle going in your spine. I've had several lumbar punctures to relieve pressure from the brain so I wasn't completely new to the process.

Then you lay flat and start losing feeling of you body. The anesthetist had a surgical glove with ice in it. He was touching my foot, leg, abdomen- I couldn't feel a thing, i thought he was full of shit. Then he put it on my chest and it was like woah ok yeah I can feel that.

It's the weirdest sensation, you're just paradise from below the boobs down the rest of your body. You are paralyzed essentially? I could not move a muscle even if you tempted me with millions of dollars to.

Then my husband could come into the operating room, he was all scrubbed up and was by my head and holding my hand.

They start cutting into me, they cut into so many layers and separate your abs and you don't feel any pain, you can just feel pushing and pulling. My husband was curious so he would stand up to try have a look until they told him off for it.

Then at one point they bring the sheet that's infront of my face down and they proceed to pull out our baby. It felt so surreal, like this isn't actually happening right now, it's a magic trick right?

Our baby didn't cry right away, she gave a death stare to one of the surgeons like "how dare you pull me out of there, i clearly wanted to stay longer" after a couple of minutes and looking around she started crying. I sighed a breath of relief. I saw my husbands face when they pulled her out, he had tears in his eyes and just a face of being in awe of what was happening then and there.

My husband got to go up and cut the umbilical cord and they did the apgar test on her (she got 10 out of 10, already a high achiever) I could see the cutting and them checking her on a screen.

They brought her over and she was just so tiny, my husband and I staring at her, this is our little family now. It was an amazing and also scary feeling.

In that moment I became a mother. The cesarean was like seppuku, my old self committed suicide to bring this baby girl into the world and I now am a different person.

[sepublic]

I do think it’s interesting how the novel Dracula is meant to be a modern setting from its perspective. It’s very much that genre of story about an ancient fantasy archetype finding itself in a modern setting, complete with the rules-lawyering that often comes with modern parodies (that isn’t to say the stories of Olde didn’t have fun with loopholes either though).

Except Dracula is a story that plays itself straight. The vampire himself is not stupid. He’s possibly the oldest vampire of all which means he upgraded from animal instinct and mindless echoes of past memories to someone who’s regained his critical thinking skills. The story begins because he’s already adapted to how the modern world works now by hiring a solicitor who understands modern laws.

He knows now that he doesn’t have to march into London with an army like he used to; He can just buy property and the laws of London are forced to respect that. Similarly he’s already experimented in and discovered loopholes to vampire rules and limitations; Vampires are bound by the permission of owners so he simply uses his solicitor to buy and own a bunch of properties. If he needs to be invited in, Dracula hypnotizes someone to let him in.

Vampires need to return to their grave every dusk/dawn (whichever comes sooner), which causes their coffin to act as an anchor that limits how far from it they can travel? Dracula simply rations the earth of his grave into fifty coffins and spreads them across London so his range becomes exponentially larger.

All of these things make the story almost come across as a deconstruction and it might just be! It’s just that Dracula the novel became such a trendsetter that people nowadays see it as playing things fully straight. It almost feels as if the novel is written with the idea that readers have a basic understanding of vampires and their rules, so part of the thrill comes in the revelation of how the titular vampire is working around these rules. Likewise I’ve heard it used to be a trope in English literature for a traveler to visit some foreign land with a monster and escape by going home. But here the foreign aspect of the story is just the first (and final) arc; The monster’s plan hinges on coming to the UK itself!

So yeah. Dracula isn’t stupid and he reflects the idea that people of the past had just as common sense as the rest of us, they just had access to less/inaccurate knowledge and things worked differently back then. Dracula would be like… That bit of someone showing a medieval peasant a meme as they comprehend it perfectly and aren’t even wowed by the Doritos. If Dracula was set in the 21st century he’d probably understand social media well enough to become an influencer if he wanted to, though the issue of being invisible in cameras wouldn’t help.

[downtroddendeity]

Dracula is full of details that put it in what was at the time an incredibly modern time frame, which only isn't obvious to readers now because it's been more than a hundred years. A few off the top of my head:

Jonathan brings photographs of the properties to show to Dracula that he took with a Kodak portable camera.

Seward keeps an audio journal via phonograph recording.

Seward being a psychiatrist- the idea that you could actually try to talk to and understand a "lunatic" in order to help them get better instead of just throwing away the key was a depressingly novel concept in medicine at the time. Freud's Studies on Hysteria only came out two years before Dracula, for instance.

Blood transfusions. It's easy to make jokes about how Dracula was written before people knew about blood types and that's why Lucy gets transfusions from so many people with no problem, but because blood types wouldn't be discovered until 3 years after it was published, blood transfusion was still an extremely experimental and risky treatment that many doctors would hesitate to even consider, because sometimes when it was performed the patient would instantly die and no one knew why.

Mina's joke about "the New Woman"- anxieties about gender and feminism in Dracula are the kind of thing whole theses have been written about, but there's an obvious irony to this comment because Mina kind of is the New Woman. In contrast to Lucy, Mina is a highly-educated woman with a real actual job, and she works to hone those practical job skills because she plans to be an active participant in Jonathan's work.

When Van Helsing decks Lucy's room out with garlic flowers, he telegrams to Holland for overnight shipping across the Channel from a friend who owns a greenhouse, because garlic flowers are a good 3 months or so out of season at the time the chapter is set.

Jonathan literally makes a comment in Chapter 3 about the surreal contrasting modernity of sitting at an antique desk in an ancient castle and frantically scribbling steganographic shorthand in his notebook.

[briarrolfe]

Sometimes I think about my old manager at work who, in order to prove that the organisation was safe for trans people, told me about a fellow trans employee—a woman who was passing! who wasn’t out to me or to anyone else!—and about how chill everyone in management had been about her needing to take time off TO GET VAGINOPLASTY. He was not her manager! He was not her friend! He did not work in HR! There was no way he could have come into this PRIVATE MEDICAL INFORMATION without being told by another manager who had gossiped. And even if there had been, why the fuck was it any of my business!

Likewise, a friend of mine was just told by a school principal about how a prospective school was safe for trans kids… because a trans girl whose parents don’t affirm her at home is able to be affirmed at school. This information about this child’s gender and home environment was relayed along with her FUCKING GRADE LEVEL. This incredibly vulnerable kid was wheeled out as a selling point by the school with way more than enough information to figure out who she was.

In order to make the argument that a place is safe for trans people, cis people are wayyyy too happy to give out private information about trans people. With allies like these, who needs enemies!!!

[briarrolfe]

If you are the recipient of this kind of "and here is another trans person" information leak (ESPECIALLY when it outs a trans woman!!) it's imperative that you come down on it like the divine fist of God. We should shame these little weasels like trans lives depend on it (because they might). Might I suggest:

"I'm not sure I'm comfortable about having been told so much."

"I'm sorry, but that all sounded very private."

"And has she given approval for her medical history to be used as an example?"

"How do you know it's safe to tell me this?" (if the answer is 'because you are trans' then that is its own Massive Problem)

"Does (school) always share private information about trans students with prospective parents?"

"So, will you share my personal information like this?"

[mcweasel]

“the fifth doctor is so boring” the fifth doctor is an old man who woke up as a young man. a man who remembers what it’s like to be old and aspires to reach that level of maturity again to be taken seriously in his new body, but who can’t because he has an almost pubescent temperament. he tries and fails to be the doctor because he is simply ill-equipped on a mechanical basis and his entire character arc is built on the tragedy of losing a child who was in his care. this permeates his development to the point that he sacrifices himself for the life of one girl he barely knew.

THE FIFTH DOCTOR IS NOT BORING! he is a tragic hero.

also sometimes he shoots guns and says funny things. goaaaaat

[suispiria]

lately I’ve been Overcome With Emotion

[younggayanddoingokay]

Project hail mary time travel au where grace doesn't actually tell anyone he time-traveled or allude to it at all and tries to act as normally as possible but also keeps insisting on certain things for the ship (like a probe that can handle a planet's atmosphere) or insists on doing experiments in certain weird ways that took ages of trial and error to get to the first time around but he immediately gets results in like batshit crazy ways. sometimes he just forgets stuff (like little stuff) hasnt actually happened yet or he'll mention some aspect of the coma bot that lamai hasn't actually invented/figured out yet but that wasn't his specialty the first time and he doesn't know the timeline or realize that she hasn't come up with it yet and she's like 'wtf that's a great idea? how did he know this? why did he talk about it like i'd already figured it out?' he makes comments on elections/politics and accidentally predicts things because he simply doesn't realize that they havent happened yet.

hes like 'peter parker coming up with excuses for why hes doing weird shit' levels of bad at hiding his secret identity as a time traveler. he never says a word but the whole vat eventually figures it out anyway because theres simply no other explanation that makes sense to them. Stratt has an unofficial rule that if grace mentions an idea for the ship or something offhanded then it happens right away. embezzler bob keeps prying him for stock advice and he's like 'what the heck i know nothing about finance why are you asking?' it's an open secret on the vat that grace time traveled and everyone knows that everyone else knows except for grace who thinks nobody knows and then one day ilyukhina is just like 'hey grace did we meet aliens up in space the first time you did this?' and hes like 'oh yea totally, rockys great... hey WAIT A MINUTE?'

[lastoneout]

I know this is a tiny part of the wider problems born of diet culture, fatphobia, classicism, and racism but like god the idea that "healthy" food must inherently taste bad has completely ruined us as a society.

[lastoneout]

Every time you feel bad for having coffee with cream and sugar or ranch on your salad or putting extra butter and salt on your veggies I want you to imagine the spirit of John Harvey Kellogg in front of you and then I want you to kill him with a real gun and eat your delicious food in peace.

[lastoneout]

THIS ALSO!! DO NOT DIET CULTURE-IFY MY TASTY TREATS!!! Just because eating veggies makes YOU fucking miserable doesn't mean the rest of us need to fall in line and repent!! I'm having this for dinner

AND IT FUCKING RULES!!!

[lastoneout]

This gave me heartburn so bad I got a headache. Worth it.

[coke-and-candy]

One thing I hate about the diet culture it how it acts like seasoning is bad for you, as if salt and pepper are the only two seasonings out there. I’m not saying that too much salt isn’t bad, not just for your health but also because too much salt makes the food taste bad as well. You don’t need to boil or steam everything to the point of being tasteless and limp.

[plaguedocboi]

I remember when I was younger, anytime I watched a movie where the characters have to kill a scary monster/alien, I always thought the act of killing it was intended to be part of the horror. Like there’s this amazing creature that we’ve never seen before, and maybe under different circumstances we could’ve coexisted with it, but it’s trying to attack you and you have to defend yourself, but by destroying it you also destroy the ability to ever understand it and that’s sad and is supposed to make you feel conflicted.

It was not until well into my adulthood that I realized most people do not have complicated feelings about movies where people have to kill a scary alien monster, nor is that necessarily meant to be part of the narrative (unless it very obviously is). They just want the scary thing to die because it’s scary. I don’t have a real conclusion to this I just started thinking about it for some reason.

[natnormalatall]

roald dahl was antisemitic and misogynistic. george orwell was openly homophobic. edgar allan poe married his 13 year old cousin. dr seuss cheated on his wife (and was racist as well as antisemitic!). hp lovecraft was racist as fuck. anyways they’re fucking dead it’s not like you’re enabling their behaviors in the afterlife or something. then again I think they bleed into the books so uh keep an eye out for that

the difference between these old white guys and jk rowling is that the former group is all dead. jk rowling is alive and using your money to oppress trans people

[darlingofdots]

In the background of the video clip, posted by a fan at the hotel breakfast just before Christmas 2018, Shane Hollander is talking on the phone. He looks tired but he's smiling, pushing scrambled eggs around his plate with a fork. "I saw, baby," he says. "No, definitely, no way that was slashing, I'm with you. You'll get them next time, though. Beautiful goal you got in the first, that was so fucking sexy. I can't wait to see you tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Love you."

Which leads to a bit of an uproar because omg Shane Hollander has a girlfriend?? who plays hockey???? that's so on brand for him like. okay who was playing last night and got a goal in the first period, we need to find the woman who has Shane Hollander crooning into his phone like a lovestruck teenager. and the consensus lands on an unsuspecting and entirely unrelated CWHL forward who has never even been in the same city as Shane but the Internet is running with the story and there's journalists harassing her and Shane has to get his agent to call her agent so he can apologise for this mess and she's like, dude, I know it's not your fault, but Shane feels so fucking bad about it, you know?

And unfortunately it doesn't really let up as quickly as they thought because it's right before Christmas and isn't this a great story, fucking Hallmark movie shit, so a very unimpressed Leila (her name is Leila) has to look a reporter in the eye after her team just played a really good fucking game of hockey and everybody wants to talk to her about some fucking guy, you know? so she looks him in the eye and says, no, I am not dating Shane Hollander, I have never dated Shane Hollander, I will never date Shane Hollander, I am literally a lesbian. I have a whole-ass girlfriend. She plays for the Blades.

And Shane Hollander is so consumed by jealousy he almost chokes.

[theprofessional-amateur]

Every day I get a little closer to saying fuck it and becoming an apprentice in some at risk heritage craft or profession.

[theprofessional-amateur]

"let's have AI-"

I'm gonna go learn the art of hand engraving or thatched roofing. Maybe hand make clogs.

[trickstertime]

As a professional hand engraver, when it comes to old crafts like these, its way more accessible to get started with the basics than you'd expect. Back in the day good steel was expensive so trying something like hand engraving was expensive and difficult to justify. But now you can can just buy a good quality handpush graver online for less than a fancy coffee. Just think, for under a hundred quid you could get all the kit you need to get started with fucking up coins and stabbing yourself repeatedly!!!

Don't threaten to do it, go research it, and actually give it a go!!! Most of the books for old crafts are out of copyright. Even if you don't get a job at whatever you try, or hell, even of you don't become in any way good at it, just learning and trying something new is good for you, and it gives you a greater understanding and appreciation for things.

Fuck AI? Good. I agree. Now fucking do something about it. Return to doing human hand crafted things as an act of rebellion! Start knitting, start wood carving, start engraving, whatever the fuck. But most importantly, remember you don't need to be making money doing it to make it worth doing.

[amurana]

Brennan (as Tracker) came DIRECTLY FOR MY THROAT with this one. (eta: it's in the alt text but might as well put it here, too: "Obsessing over the right thing all the time, if it leads you to inaction where you're like 'I don't have a good option,' so you just stall or delay or don't do something, that's also a wrong choice.")

[thekidsfromyestergay]

This was on a post about how it's ignorant and privileged to wear headphones in public and I fear its already become a part of my vocabulary. Must everything harbor a moral failure.

[stormsthatrage]

Heated Rivalry AU where the relationship reveal happens because David Hollander's phone gets hacked and approximately 5,000 pictures and videos of Shane and Ilya being cute (both together and individually) get dumped onto the internet.

No accusations can be made about them throwing games for each other, because there are several videos of them being super competitive about absolutely nothing. For example, one of the dumped files is a video of the two playing Monopoly (filmed discretely from a hallway). They look about ready to murder each other. And then, off-screen, Yuna's voice - in a Mom Voice TM, of course - calls, "Boys, you better not be doing what I think you are!"

Ilya says, "Nyet, Mama," at the same time Shane says "No, Mom!" And in perfect sync they hide evidence of the game, not a single movement between them wasted.

There's also a video of them trash talking each other for being slow as they race to put away the most clean dishes from the dishwasher.

It's a whole genre. Play-fighting as they bring out a measuring tape to literally measure who shoveled the most snow from the driveway, bringing up hockey stats as they argue over who deserves to hold the tv remote, etc.

And, of course, Ilya isn't upset at David for the whole incident. Ilya is crying, though, because it's clear from looking through the photos how much David absolutely loves Ilya. It's so apparent through the captured moments how much David adores his second son.

[myfootyrthroat]

As someone who is broadly against carceral punishment, the frequent Le Mis-ification of shoplifting is still annoying.

I don't think it should ruin anyone's life regardless, but let's not pretend this guy was shoplifting weed trading cards to feed his family.

[glasspalacesstoneshop]

Honestly I feel like for all the talk of prison abolition a lot of the online left is scared to actually defend people who have done something bad.

I remember watching a video about how RealID laws could be a threat to prisoners’ ability to fly home and obviously conservatives were being conservatives about it, the leftist response was to talk about how many innocent people are in prison or how they didn’t get fair trials. I was the only person who posted anything about how “hey, if the guy did the crime and did the time, his punishment should end there. That’s why prison sentences end”.

[doodleoo]

what you learn from hobbies:

consistent practice opens up whole worlds of skill that you couldn't imagine

making mistakes in the process of learning is not only natural, it is also essential

activities that you enjoy can give you more energy back than you spent on them

wow everything is so expensive

[doodleoo]

my hands hurt

[escapepodding]

The miscommunication in Heated Rivalry is because they're living in different romance types to begin with:

Shane: In some sort of Austen-esque existence where hjs ill-advised flirtation with a notorious rake goes too far. Scandalised by the intimate use of first names he flees, concerned what society and his goodly parents will think, his reputation at stake. He tries to find a proper marriage prospect but alas his heart is lost to the rake! But he finally follows his heart and invites Ilya into his home too (and accepts first name usage!)

Ilya: Smoldering in mirrors and out of windows and getting emotionally wuthered screaming Shane's name on a moor. My man is byronically going through it gothic style

[escapepodding]

Scott Hunter is trying to live his best modern rom com life and is side-eyeing the fuck out of these two. No idea what's going on there and franly doesn't want to