Christian Side Hug

I support this movement what can I say.

The newest and likeliest reason we are all probably NOT pregnant today

Obama Eliminates Abstinence-Only Funding in Budget. From the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy via Huffington Post:

President Obama released his FY 2010 budget today and called for at least $164 million in funding for a new teen pregnancy prevention initiative. This includes competitive grants for evidence-based programs, research and evaluation, and an authorization for $50 million in new mandatory teen pregnancy prevention grants to states, tribes, and territories. The budget eliminates funding for Community-Based Abstinence Education and the mandatory Title V Abstinence Education program.

More on that here: http://yeswecanholdbabies.wordpress.com/

The Newest and Likeliest Reason We Are All Probably Pregnant Today

Our good friend the Abstinence-only Movement - already able to claim more pregnant teenagers than the Dayton Mall on a Tuesday afternoon - has secured Bristol Palin as its newest spokesperson. If the Palin family is good at anything it's reminding us that things could always be worse, or in this case, dumber. Sort of like when George W. Bush threw an 8-year-long frat party on our country's front lawn, and McCain decided the best person to help clean up the mess was the WORST PERSON TO HELP clean up the mess.

Sigh. Anyway, Bristol Palin, as the new Candies Foundation Ambassador to Teens, is now going to be flying all over the country talking about how hard it is to be a mom, and how she wishes - not so much that she had been more careful when it came to condoms and Levi but that she had never used a condom at all, because the safest sex is no sex, but then what about her son, is she saying she would rather he had never been born? So confusing.

Gail Collins ("Bristol Palin's New Gig"):

But surely, when it comes to combating teen pregnancy, the Palin family has done enough damage already. What worse message could you send to teenage girls than the one they delivered at the Republican convention: If your handsome but somewhat thuglike boyfriend gets you with child, he will clean up nicely, propose marriage, and show up at an important family event wearing a suit and holding your hand. At which point you will get a standing ovation.

Now a single mom on the outs with the father of her baby, Bristol wants a new kind of happy ending.

“I just want to go out there and promote abstinence and say this is the safest choice,” she said on “Good Morning America.”

“It’s not going to work,” said her ex-boyfriend, Levi Johnston, in a dueling early-morning interview.

If you have ever watched Levi Johnston on TV for two minutes you will appreciate how terrifying it is when he has the most reasonable analysis of a social issue.

There's an app for that...

In its continuing quest to convince its users that with a strong enough 3G signal they can control anything, Apple's iPhone now offers several applications that will track your menstrual cycle. Among them: iPeriod, FemCal Lite, Petals and iVag (okay, I made up that last one).

Users enter the first and last days of their periods, as well as optional "intercourse data" -- and we can only imagine what that encompasses. "Name of Partner. Um...Josh? James?"

Menstrual tracking apps are rising in popularity among the following groups: boyfriends who just want to avoid their girlfriends at "that time of the month," technologically inclined "rhythm method" Catholics, and twenty-something single women and their gay husbands (because it's sweet when someone cares).

IVF: "You don't know me!"

So I'm chatting with a co-worker the other day, and she's adorably preggers, and we're talking about Octomom, and I utter the familiar refrain: "Why did IVF doctors even implant eight eggs in that woman in the first place?!"

"Actually," she tells me, "I went through in vitro fertilization treatments to conceive my child, and the doctors always implant twice the number of eggs to ensure the woman gets pregnant. I only wanted one child, but I could have ended up with twins!"

Apparently, she goes on to tell me, if the woman is older or her uterus is otherwise inhospitable to pregnancy, this 2:1 ratio can get even higher. So, a woman trying to have one child could be implanted with three or even four eggs to try to increase her chances.

Furthermore, she continued, because IVF is expensive, and because usually only a certain number of IVF treatments are covered by a woman's insurance, sometimes women choose to be implanted with, say, six eggs, in hopes of having all three of their desired children with one pregnancy. So, it's not all about having as many babies as possible and getting welfare and your own talk show and musical and having people write about how you look just like Angelina Jolie you smug, insensitive, fertile 26-year-old...she said, to, um, paraphrase.

Thus, I was schooled. THE END.

Equality is OURS!

"Previous attempts to develop an effective and convenient male contraceptive have encountered problems over reliability and side effects, such as mood swings and a lowered sex drive."

Maybe men will get fat, too.

FAS or famine...

One of the most troublesome things about the fact that I'm pregnant, like, all the time is that I'm also drunk, like, all the time.

Women in their twenties know it well: the moment when you're sitting, knees akimbo on the toilet, peeing on a little white stick, your mind reeling over every light beer, jello shot and dirty martini you've imbibed since you hooked up with that one dude last Tuesday and he likely impregnated you. Great. Now not only are you going to be a single mom, your child is going to be mentally impaired and look weird.

In all seriousness, the prospect of FAS -- Fetal Alcohol Syndrome -- is frightening and anyone thinking of getting knocked up should, of course, do all they can to prevent it.

But as any human biology student, nurse and/or, um, common sense will tell you, it's nearly impossible to give your baby FAS in the first few weeks of pregnancy. This is because the embryo hasn't tapped into the mother's blood stream yet.

Think of the days before pregnancy tests. Did the wenches stop drinking meade even before their bodices began to feel tight? Nay! Did those saucy Victorian gals lay off the laudanum before their once-yearly tupping? Dubious. And what about all those children created at Woodstock...were they conceived without the aid of booze and "herbal refreshment?" No way, man.

But the Internets tell a different tale. Google "drinking and early pregnancy" and you'll run into any number of sites that malign you for being a terrible, irresponsible mother if you're ever caught drinking while fertilized.

The March of Dimes says, "no level of alcohol use during pregnancy has been proven safe."
WebMD goes on and on about potential facial deformities and brain damage. Finding a site that tells you the stages of development of a fetus and encourages you not to abort is easy; finding one that can tell you exactly when the fertilized egg hooks a trailer hitch to your circulation system ain't. (If you have a link to this info, please post in the comments.)

As a result, message boards are full of women guilty and worried sick. This from parents.berkeley.edu:

just found out I am pregnant. Only 5 weeks as far as I can figure out. My big worry is that a few weeks ago I had a weekend away with my girlfriends and we drank a fair share of wine and beer. Has anyone else had this experience? How did your pregnancy turn out? I am really nervous that I have done something terrible to this tiny embryo. worried

The responses from the message board are resoundingly reassuring, if anecdotal:

Don't worry! I didn't know I was three weeks pregnant when I took advantage of an all-you-can-drink resort in Mexico. I am not a regular drinker, but I did it up that weekend. Once I found out I was pregnant I was worried about that weekend of debauchery... but then had to realize there was nothing I could do to change what happened. 9 months later, I had the most perfect baby girl in my arms. anon

Your baby is fine. Any physician you ask will tell you this.

Great news, obvi. But why so difficult to figure out the facts behind this comforting bit of common knowledge?

Maybe it's because preventing FAS is kindof like the DARE program ("To keep kids off drugs") we all went through in elementary school. Pick a social ill, hyperbolize the shit out of it, and scare folks into thinking that one little snorty-snort of delicious nose sugar is going to make you beat your own mother.

That may be fine for the kiddies, but I think we grown-up women are mature enough to handle the straight dope on just how drunk we are allowed to get, especially before we even know we're preggers! So if all you informative health sites could just let us know exactly when this bundle of cells thingy actually saddles up to our blood stream and starts sucking down vodka along with us, that would be great, mmmkay? 'Cause lord knows we drunk, probably pregnant girls have enough to worry about. Thx.

decent places to get knocked up II: Grand Junction, Colo.

Actual, pregnant crowd at Grand Junction Festival.

Yeah. "It's Your Love" by Tim McGraw makes me want to do irresponsible things too.

Pregnancies Jump After Grand Junction Festival

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.—Whether it's something in the water or the grooving sounds of country music, the aftermath of what one health officials calls Grand Junction's "Woodstock" drives up pregnancies in this city each year.

Nurse-Family Partnership supervisor Wanda Scott said referrals to her agency from the Mesa County Health Department quadruple every year after the music festival Country Jam. Scott told commissioners about the phenomena Monday during a presentation called, "How are the Children?"

Scott said on average the health clinic sees between 25 to 30 pregnancies a month. She says five weeks after the festival that number jumps to almost 80 a month.

The festival ran from June 26-29. Performers included Tim McGraw, Clay Walker and Sugarland.

"That's our Grand Junction Woodstock," Scott said, referring to the 1969 counterculture rock festival in Bethel, N.Y., featuring such acts as Jimi Hendricks and Janis Joplin.

Grand Junction is a city of about 50,000 about 245 miles west of Denver.

Country Jam Director Steve Berg said the information surprised him.

"I certainly can't stop them from having sex. If we could stop it we certainly would," he said.

Commissioner Janet Rowland said education could help prevent unwanted teen pregnancies but didn't know what else could be done to stop them "short of putting birth control in the water at Country Jam."

better her than us

Isn't the whole benefit of "the change" that you DON'T HAVE TO HAVE A BABY AT 70? Grandma, please.

decent places to get knocked up

This weekend at Marshalls there were many dresses that for some reason reminded me of like teenage children of farmers losing their v-cards on haystacks and stuff. They just had this je ne sais quoi... "come hither to my haystack and do me" quality.

It inspired me to write this post.

Places You Could Become Pregnant at Any Moment: //

//

a haystack

a car

a bed

home of a lead singer of a band

anywhere there also happened to be a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape