Take the BLUE PILL DOOCE(Blog Mom war erupts over Unassisted Childbirth and Antidepressants)

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 Anderson 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 Anderson 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

Blue Pill/Red Pill reference from the Movie: The Matrix

It’s amazing what an enormously high percentage of liberals are on anti-depressants. Savage talks about this a lot, and while I have major issues with the guy, in this he opened my eyes. Virtually every liberal I know is on these drugs, and I believe they go far in explaining the wild mood swings and vicious aggression that explodes from these, not peaceful but synthetically soporific, people.

I know. Dooce’s chat room is the home base for liberal moms who are doped up. So sad to think of all the pregnant women who have been taking these drugs. I just ache for the babies.

Jen

Dear Jenny,

First and foremost, I support your right to birth your child at home. Second, I support your right to seek alternatives for any lingering hormonal imbalances that may have occurred as a result of childbirth, or from general depression.

Like you, I am a live and let live individual.

While I can definitely understand your concern for the potentially damaging consequences of *any* type of medication on an unborn child, I would ask you to temper the rhetoric.

I am a right-brain, logic oriented woman (who consistently ranks over 70% male metacognitive processes when tested), a college educated professional, and a devoted mother of 3 children. No one would ever mistake me for a "hysterical" or emotional female.

Following the birth of my son, I experienced a mild form of the "baby blues." Combined with new mother concerns, sleep deprevation, and improper eating, it took about 6 weeks before I felt like myself again.

I used to dismiss women who claimed to be suffering from post-partum, until I experienced severe post-partum following the birth of my second child, a daughter. To say that the experience was hellish is an understatement. It was a horrifying ordeal to feel as if you were constantly outside of yourself, to no longer recognize the person you had become, to no longer be able to articulate thoughts, retain information, or process stimulii logically. Explosive reactions, unpredictable mood swings, deep melancholy, and a rejection of affection were all part of my daily landscape for nearly a year. The worst part was, I knew something was wrong...but I simply could not fix it! This, in turn, increased my frustration and compounded the situation.

I did not seek medical treatment; it took almost a year before I was finally myself again. It was a year of my life lost, a year of my daughter's life lost, a year of my son's life lost. My deepest regret was not setting aside my foolish pride and seeking medical assistance sooner.

In preparing for the birth of my 3rd child, I insisted my husband take me to my doctor and demand antidepressants if I exhibited any of the same symptoms. Thankfully, the birth of my second son was a repeat of the first, with just a mild case of the baby blues that ended quickly.

For other mothers, though, each case of post-partum grows progressively worse.

Just as you would appreciate others being respectful of your decisions, folks who have suffered post-partum would appreciate the same respect from you.

I respect all mothers. No matter how they are living their day to day lives.

I do not respect an all encompassing evil psychiatric profession that fudges the research, bribes the psychiatrists doing it, and then lies to the public about what that research says.

I have great compassion for moms who suffer with emotional illness, I experienced a post partum psychosis after the birth of my first child and was court ordered to eat psychiatric meds for a year. A year also lost to my child.

We all have to live and let live, but I think the rhetorical tone was just about right given the lies of the medical profession and the pharmaceutical companies that give them their marching orders.

Read the Breggin article it is so well researched, the notes and sources are almost as long as the text: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/pregnant-mothers-should-n_b_57270.html

(I know it’s huffington post, but conservatives tend to be just a tad naive when it comes to medical issues.)

Oh, please! That's nothin’. I had all that *and* hallucinations and black-outs.

Story topper! - but it is a true story. Nobody know how bad PPD can be until they go through it. I don't know how you made it a full year. I flipped when my son was 6 weeks old. Dropped him and his sister off at daycare and drove to the local chaplain. When the chaplain's assistant asked me what I wanted to be seen for I said, “I need to be committed right now. I just need somebody to tell me how to get committed. I don't have a brain and I can't be a good mom so I need to be committed.”

Those wonderful men sprung into action so fast that everything turned into a blur. They drove me to the Nuremberg ER and wouldn't leave my side for a *minute*, not even for the exams.

I don't remember most of that day, but I do remember the dr and the hospital shrink coming in to give the diagnosis.

- I hadn't had more than 4 hours of sleep each night for 6 straight weeks because of a combination of a colicky baby, a demanding 20 month old and a hubby working 16 hour days.
- My blood pressure was 45 over “unreadable”. I was in shock from blood loss and needed a transfusion. (*That* explained the fainting spells!)
- I had a fever of 103’ from a “Maternal Infection” from the birth which had gone septic.

I guess one could say that I was “very sick” and had postpartum psychosis.

Once my body healed (two months of weekly IV’s, vitamins, sleep and antibiotics) I was put on an antidepressant and I was finally able to function.

Moms need HELP! Moms need NAPS!! Moms need somebody to strong-arm them into taking a BREAK!

Because moms want to be strong. They'll push themselves beyond human limits and will wonder why they're too “weak” to handle it. (eyes rolling)

Perhaps bringing back the Rule of Thumb would be more effective /s

Marie,

My post partum psychosis story is very similar to yours - especilly the lack of sleep, I did not dream for a whole month before I was put in the mental hospital when my oldest daughter was three and a half months old.

The main point of this thread however is antidepressant use in PREGNANT women - these drugs are very toxic and many women are taking them thinking that they will PREVENT post partum depression, when in fact they harm the baby and can cause a host of side effects for the mom.

Studies have also shown they have no clinical effect, and I believe women are far better served by using alternatives to drugs to prevent these emotional illnesses.

But the ultimate principle of my life is Live and let live...and I am happy to let all Mothers choose the life that fits them best.

I’m glad you made it safely through the storm.

Jen

what form of the rule of thumb? the one where a husband can beat his wife with a stick no wider than his thumb???

Jen