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@whileyouweresleeping
“It makes me mad that people do not treat girls equally. Plus a lot of girls are better at sports than boys. So all I am saying is that I would like to do something about it. And I need your help.” —13-year-old Ayla in a letter to President Obama about the Women’s World Cup. Today, Ayla will introduce the President as he congratulates the World Cup Champion U.S. Women’s National Team. Watch it live at 11am ET.
It makes us mad, too, Ayla.
-- From NYC.
Ending Coca Fumigation in Colombia is the Right Call
Tomorrow, Colombia’s government will most likely choose to suspend a U.S.-backed program that I’ve opposed for most of its 20 years of existence: the use of aircraft to spray herbicides over vast regions of Colombia where poor farmers grow coca bushes.
I’ve traveled several times to these far-off zones and talked to hundreds of people on the receiving end of the “fumigation” policy. The people I found weren’t drug lords: they were families living on the edge of poverty, in communities with almost no signs of a government. Coca didn’t make them rich, but fumigation–which, it turns out, may be carcinogenic–did make them hungry.
Most of the time, what came in the wake of the spray planes was… nothing. No land titles, no credit, no farm-to-market roads, no integration into the national economy. And of course no security or justice.
This has been a cruel policy, using chemicals to attack the weakest and most desperate people in the entire chain of illegal drug production, transshipment, and trafficking. Even worse, it has been a failure: for every acre of coca Colombia has reduced, it has had to spray more than 16–and even then, reductions have proved short-lived.
I’m very glad to see this program go. Here’s a 4-minute video where I talk about all this. (Y aquí hay una versión en español.) Also, see the statement just posted to WOLA’s website.
The suspension of fumigation, along with the possible signing of a peace accord, offers Colombia a unique opportunity to end this history of government neglect and the illicit crop cultivation that has accompanied it. We urge Colombia, with U.S. support, to employ the political will and resources to seize this opportunity.
This is brilliant news. -- From NYC.
Ocean Kitchen, An Aquarium With a Kitchen Countertop on Top
All I can think is "no storage."
-- From NYC.
First Impressions
Luz and Inez are four months and a week. I've officially forgotten what it's like to be childless and I thought I'd list some of the things we’ve learnt:
I don't feel like a mother per se. I hardly feel that they are "mine." Mostly, I see myself as a temporary guardian, entrusted with keeping two humans safe until they can do so themselves. This is such a sappy cliché, I realise, but I mean it literally. They are very much their own people and I'm surprised at how wary I am about interfering with that.
I do feel like mauling anything and anyone that will even remotely appear to harm the girls, however. To a slow and painful death. This fierceness has also caught me off guard, I did not know I had it in me.
Which brings me to my next point: the three of us are still mostly animals right now. I'm 98% lizard brain, 2% prefrontal cortex. My face is on theirs a lot. I push them around with it to wake them up. They pass out with their nose pressed up against my cheeks or neck. They rub their foreheads on my skin, hard, and I let them, and we can spend hours breathing each other in. Early on, all I wanted was to have them in our bedroom and close the door. I became irrationally angry at whoever held them for "too long" (i.e., more than five minutes). Only Jason was allowed. And also, if you offered to hold the babies in the middle of the night whilst they cried, you'd get growled at and/or bitten. When Inez ended up in the PICU at three weeks, she did not spend much time in her hospital cot at all. She spent it on me. It was against the rules, but not a single nurse or doctor challenged me on it. She was going to sleep on me, IV or no IV, and I would not be talked out of it. And after their first vaccines, I turned our room into a dark, dark cave and took them both in all afternoon. Animals, I tell you.
Given all this, Jason is my most important ally. I’m not just saying that. When your cerebral self goes basic mammal, you want someone nearby who has their wits about them. Letting the girls cry it out so they (and we) sleep through the night is one of the hardest things I've ever done. It's also the best decision we've made, thus far, for the family. Without Jason's cool head, I'd have never gone through with it. I spent the first 24 hours of it in hell, with guilty, exhausted tears streaming down my face all night and day. The second night, Jason set me up in our room, with headphones, Netflix, and a breakfast tray with sushi on it. The girls did great. All I needed was to trust them and us to get through it. They now sleep soundly and so does Jason. I still wake up in the middle of the night to pump and check that the girls are still breathing. And nuzzle them. What.
And speaking of support... I was insanely lucky to find a genuinely un-judgmental group of mothers. We talk about every single thing. Everything. And the crap it's got me through, you have no idea. At this point, I don't know how anyone does it without fellow parents. From questions about gear, feeding or sleep, to fights with our partners and crazy-making kids, it's all safe, it's all valid: anger, sadness, joy, and the humour of every situation. They've become a lifeline.
Which is good, because that shit about being under the microscope the minute you become a parent? It’s true. I get looks and comments because both girls are still on breast milk, and I also get looks and comments because we’ve just started supplementing (to the tune of four ounces a day, but you know, still). I got side-eyed because the girls slept in our room at first, and then because we let them cry it out too early. I got questioned for trying to consolidate feeds and for not starting that early enough. For taking them out when it was cold and for not doing it enough. For using the Bumbo seat and not using it. You get the gist. People have oh-pinions. So do I. I prefer mine.
Friendships are interesting. Many great people (led by Lisa) banded together to bring us food and carry us through the first 12 weeks. You don’t know gratitude until you see that happen. Predictably, we've been dropped by some of our childless friends. It doesn't feel great, but we saw it coming. More bizarrely, people who disappeared on me long ago are coming out of the woodwork, online and elsewhere, as if it were ok to talk to me again now that I've reached mama level. A very old friend, who 15 years ago told me she wasn't quite sure why I insisted on keeping in touch with her as if we were middle-school BFFs, has asked me to call her if I go to Paris. It seems I've joined a club I didn't know existed, and my girls have turned me into a person worthy of attention. As if only motherhood defined me. I find myself resenting that more than being deserted.
Family is amazing. My mother came for six weeks, my aunt is here at the moment, my half-estranged father has turned out to be an involved (if digital) grand-dad. They see us work at it and I sense their growing respect. They keep marveling at how organised we are, at how positive and relaxed we seem. It makes me feel adult and loved. When you start a family of your own, having your extended family close is an utter gift.
Generally speaking, the change has been positive. Yes, I worry, as any overly informed middle-class mother would, about their sleep, their appetite, the number of wet diapers, my breast milk supply, whether I’m giving them equal amounts of time and attention, whether we’ll crack the impossible equation that is childcare. Quite frankly, though, those concerns feel superficial. Below all this is a thick, solid layer of serenity. We’re ok. The kids are all right. We’re drilling down to the bare essentials: food, sleep, love, laughter. My daughters are healthy, happy children. My husband is an incredible, bright, loving father. Bath time is a party, playtime is hilarious, nap time is my fun time, their morning smiles are rays of sunshine.
We’re figuring it out. It’s liberating.
-- From NYC.
Look at this fucking hippie. -- From NYC.
Includes much too much information. There are descriptions of lady parts, mentions of bodily fluids, needles, hooks, and baby poop. Get over it, it's a twin birth story.
-- From NYC.
An interesting piece about a touchy topic.
When I became pregnant, I was astounded to realise how little I knew about my own body and reproductive health. Apparently, I am not the only one, and it’s hurting childbearing prospects for many of us.
Anyway, this is a must-read for every woman who is asking herself whether she wants children.
— From NYC.
GPOIW (Gratuitous picture of Inez Wednesday.) -- From NYC.
I know you all know by now, but here it is, officially: our girls arrived exactly a week ago, at 6:04 and 6:16 in the morning. Luz and Inez are in the process of upending our lives. They keep us up long hours, and we wouldn't have it any other way. Thank you, everybody, for all the love, support and gifts you've sent our way. This family is lucky to have you all. -- From NYC.
3am in Hyde Park
"Winston Churchill was never easily shocked. In his new biography of the wartime PM, Boris Johnson relates how, one February morning, Churchill was told that one of his ministers had been caught in a compromising position. 'Did I hear you correctly that so-and-so has been caught with a guardsman?' he asked his chief whip. 'In Hyde Park? On a park bench? At three o'clock in the morning?' The chief whip answered in the affirmative. Churchill took a puff of his cigar. 'In this weather?' he added. 'Good God man, it makes you proud to be British.'"
(Latest issue of The Week)
-- From London.
Happy Halloween from Jason and the twins! -- From NYC.
Who wants to play? I've got a spreadsheet and everything.
-- From NYC.
The symptoms for the flu—fever, nausea, vomiting—are very similar to those of Ebola. That means the more people who get the flu this year, the more people are going to panic about potential cases of Ebola, cases that the vast, vast majority of the time will prove false. Reducing the number of people who get the flu will help quell that panic.
Want To Help Combat Ebola? Get a Flu Shot. (via thenewrepublic)
Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea are occasional (rather than typical) symptoms of the flu. Most flu patients never experience them, and of those who do, most are children.
The flu is not a stomach bug. There is not such thing as a "stomach flu." The flu is essentially a brutal cold on steroids. It gives you a sore throat, a stuffy nose, a cough, and on top of that, chills, fever, extreme fatigue, and incapacitating headaches.
Still, it's not an excuse not to get vaccinated. The flu will kill many, many, many more people than Ebola in Europe and the U.S. this year, as it does every year. It probably won't be you, if you're strong and healthy. But if you catch it, you'll help spread it to people who may not be so lucky. So stop freaking out about ebola and get your flu shot.
-- From NYC.
Absolute must-read. Cbowns writes:
Maternity (and paternity) leave policies in the United States are well-documented as the worst among first-world nations. You’re not guaranteed a single week of paid leave. If your company is more than 50 employees, you’re legally allowed up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave.
Some companies have made some novel changes to their maternity leave policies that just begin to modernize them, providing three to six months of full-time paid leave, with a few providing flexible options to extend full-time paid leave by working part-time for longer. More novel still, a handful of companies have started closing the maternity-paternity leave gap and apply the exact same maternity leave policy to fathers. If you’re just lucky enough to work at one of these companies, a dual-income household can work two-part time jobs, stagger childcare across both parents, and continue to pay their bills without having to make the brutal choice between their careers and their child.
Apple and Facebook made the headlines this week with an announcement to finance female employees who decide to freeze their eggs. (Their current leave policies are noted below: 1.) Egg freezing is an experimental technique that combines with in vitro fertilization to allows women to have a child from their own eggs past the normal fertility cliff of their late 30s and 40s.
The breathless praise in the tech media was abundant. What a novel, interesting, high-tech way to address the structural inequalities women face at these companies! Samantha Allen, writing for The Daily Beast deconstructed the illusion brick and brick, and shows how this isn’t the huge win that everyone would love to think it is. (Go read, this can wait.)
She quotes a survey by Forbes of 716 women who have left the tech sector. (Speaking of articles to read: add that one to your list, and take notes.) 68% left for motherhood specifically. Only 9% of those who left had already planned to become full-time mothers, while the remainder…
… noted that factors like insufficient maternity leave, inflexible work arrangements, or a bad work environment made their career in tech incongruous with parenting. Of all the women Snyder surveyed, nearly 90 percent of them said they did not plan on returning to the tech industry in the future. The incompatibility between motherhood and tech, it seems, runs far deeper than the timing of pregnancy alone. And the problem is so severe that the women who leave almost never want to come back.
Egg freezing is a splashy, headline-grabbing complement to the pernicious failings by companies to support employees who want a family. Companies in the US have used a variety of techniques to send a message to women who consider starting a family. With stingy maternity leave policies, a complete lack of on-site childcare (a housing complex under consideration by Facebook is designed to provide daycare for dogs but not humans), and a work environment not imaginative enough to consider transitioning employees to be permanently part-time to support their families, the message is simple:
“You cannot work here if you have children.”
Against this background, egg freezing is not a perk, it’s an abuser’s reward. It’s another way to avoid making a decision which they’ve already ensured you’ll regret. It’s another way to entice women to not have children.
My partner had a long conversation about it this morning. Here’s some of what was said. (Quotes here are intentionally paraphrased and unattributed.)
“Before, [the situation was], you had kids, now what! You already made that choice, and we’re not going to help.” Egg freezing provides a new option: “Look at how bad it is for you [to have children while working here]. Here’s a way to just… not.” “It’s a flashy way of reinforcing a message that companies have for women considering a family. Here’s another way in which you can not have kids right now. Look at how hard it’s going to be to have kids. Here’s a way not to.”
"Before, it was subtle: we’re not going to invest in an amazing experience for you once you reproduce. Our goal is to get you back to the office as quickly as possible. We’re going to make zero concessions to make this easier. This is the first time where it’s ‘actually, just don’t [have kids] at all.’ "
"It’s very distinctly and clearly encouraging. It’s what they’ve always believed all along, but they’re putting their money where their beliefs are. It’s disgusting."
Facebook provides 4 months of paid leave for both mothers and fathersfor full-time employees. Apple’s announcement about egg preservation came as part of a Fortune article which contained details about new changes to their leave policy: “expectant mothers can take up to four weeks before a delivery and upwards of 14 weeks after and expectant fathers (and other non-birth parents) can take six-week parental leaves.” ↩
ZEUS: hey baby wanna make out EUROPA: i don’t know, i’m kind of– [Zeus turns into a cow] ZEUS: how about now
Mallory Ortberg, Dirtbag Zeus.
Still laughing.
-- From NYC, thanks to Jamelle Bouie.
I just want you to know, friends and family, your "I got my vaccines so I can meet the twins!" messages feel like the very best gifts these parents-to-be could ever hope for. We love you dearly.
-- From NYC.
"If not me, who? And if not now, when?" — Emma Watson kills it at the U.N.
-- From NYC.
