Dear Senator McCain and Governor Palin,

Time and again in America, people of all races and backgrounds have overcome division and fear, and come together to uplift the country and create a more equal and just society. It’s part of what makes this country great.

With an African-American nominee running on a major party ticket and a woman on the Republican ticket for the first time in history, this campaign has seen Americans–men and women of all races–inspired to continue that great tradition, coming together to bridge the gaps that history has set between us in service of our national progress.

But let us be clear: while we have made great strides in this country when it comes to racial equality, we are not finished. Now, more than ever, we need leadership that understands that we live in complex times where too many are quick to judge another by the complexion of their skin or the sound of their name.

In the last few weeks, Senator McCain and Governor Palin, rhetoric at your campaign events has taken an increasingly dangerous tone that seems to ignore the precarious state of our progress when it comes to race and ethnicity.

Supporters at your rallies and other events have used hateful language and called for violence against Sen. Obama yelling “kill him!” “off with his head!” and “bomb Obama.”

For the most part, you have stood by in silence. In addition, you have also repeatedly made statements that somehow connect Senator Obama with terrorism. Your surrogates have emphasized his middle name. This is problematic and dangerous, and we believe helps create the conditions that have given rise to these incidents of violent rhetoric from some of your supporters.

Today, we’re standing together as Americans of all political persuasions to express our deep concern that the decisions of your campaign are contributing to a dangerous atmosphere of paranoia, division, and hate that, as we have already seen, has the potential to seriously harm our country and its progress.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

In these trying times, candidates seeking the highest offices in the land must call on the best in each of us, and call off the worst.

We urge you to join people of conscience from all races and backgrounds to reject the politics of division and fear, and come together to uplift the country and create a more equal and just society.

– The undersigned —

Here is the plan for the birth of my child. I’ve taken words from the dreams of 200 women. I’m translating them for the hospital staff.

1. No blue hospital gown. No sterile drapes. When I give birth, I want to be naked. I want my body to choose the colour of its growing.

2. No enema. No antiseptic wash. No shaving of pubic hair. If I wanted to shave something, I’d shave my head. Like Jean-Luc Picard. I’ve always wanted to be captain of a star ship. When I give birth, I explore uncharted territory, I move and writhe into new worlds. I want to go where no man has gone before.

In 1872, an English doctor named John Braxton Hicks discovered pre-labor contractions. This was sort of like Columbus discovering America. Some people already knew it was there.

3. No drugs. No epidural.

I want to feel the baby moving, his hard head pushing through layers of me. My bones shifting, my uterus contracting. I want to feel birth. I want to know fire.

4. No episiotomy. No amniotomy. I don’t want anything that rhymes with lobotomy. I prefer to stretch slowly, burning in a rim of panting breaths, around my baby’s head.

Pierre Vellay, MD, wrote that pregnant women must be “trained in the proper way.” His vision: Laboring women “like expert engineers with perfect machines and carefully presented information (who) control, direct and regulate their bodies.”

5. No Pitocin drip. No synthetic hormone to stimulate labor. Let my baby choose his own birthday. My body does not recognize the ticking of the clock on the wall.

I don’t want to control my body. I want to surrender. Let the darkness soak through me, drip down my legs. Let the pulse of that unborn voice throb through me.

I don’t want a needle stuck in my hand. If my labor slows, I’ll lie in the sun on a fur quilt and let my husband caress MY nipples. I prefer to get my hormones the primitive way.

6. No electric fetal monitor.

I don’t need a machine to tell me how my baby is doing. He kicks, he twists, he somersaults inside of me.

Robert Bradley, MD, advocated the idea of the husband as the labor coach. He liked the idea of natural birth, but still he thought that somehow a man had to be in charge.

7. No bright lights. No noise. No softball cheers. Don’t give me instructions. My body knows what to do. Birth is not a team sport. I don’t want a coach. I want my husband’s presence. His hands to grip. His arms a sling to lean the baby bulk against. His face a mirror in which I can watch my baby emerging.

8. No stupid jokes. No cheerful chatter. No television, please. I want to listen to the moans rising in my throat. I want to hear the child singing in my womb.

In the 1950s a French obstetrician named Ferdinand Lamaze began teaching something he called childbirth without pain. French Catholics were horrified, the Bible said it was supposed to be painful.

9. No delivery table. I am not a plate of spaghetti. Let me give birth on the bed. A table works fine for conception, but it’s way too hard and far too awkward for birth.

“Male science disregards female experiences because it can never share them.” Grantly Dick-Read said this in 1933. No one listened to him.

I know what I want for my baby.

No nursery. No pacifier. No bottles. No crib. No cheerful, white-coated, well-scrubbed, briskly walking, thermometer-wielding nurses, please.

Let the baby sleep against my skin, nurse from my breast, wrap his wrinkled blue limbs in the heat of my body.

10. Nothing intrauterine, nothing intravenous.

I prefer to give birth in simple words. Breathe. Push. Touch. Pain. Wet. Stretch. Bum. Birth. Yes.

For 50 years, doctors have used these terms. Braxton-Hicks contractions. Bradley birth. Lamaze breathing. But a woman knows. The mystery is too overwhelming. We can never name it.

When the baby’s head crowns, I want to touch the wrinkled scalp. I want to cradle the head in my palms while he is still inside of me, his neck stuck in the warm swollen parts of me. My moans will be the guide I need to pull him out of myself.
Hot compresses. Yes.
Dim lights, a bathtub of warm water. Yes.
Hands massaging me. Yes.
My husband lying next to me, solid to lean against. Yes.
The smell and feel of a slippery newborn baby wriggling against my naked skin.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.

http://www.loosechange911.com

Read the details for this class HERE!

Elements of Early Pregnancy

Read the details for this class HERE!

Breastfeeeding Basics

Read the details for this class HERE!

All classes are done private in-home and are available to anyone within 30 minutes of me. Call or email me to find out about availability.

Prenatal Consultations

Read HERE for more information about prenatal consults and about the benefits of taking private classes!

All doula clients will receive 20% off the cost of classes!

Check out my website, Loving Labor Birth Services to learn more about my services.

Haden had a little birthday lunch at his GG’s house the weekend before his birthday but the the day of his birthday he had a Chuck E. Cheese party. He had so much fun! It was nice just to watch him be a kid and play and play. Oh, how he loves his mouse. He is even thinking about being a mouse for Halloween. i guess we will see what he decides on though…:)

You can now download Slacker Uprising for FREE, HERE!

I will be going out to vote, however I will be doing it before November. I will totally being rocking out the early votes! And I think everyone knows who I am voting for…

If you’re not yet registered to vote, here’s a good link: http://www.voteforchange.com/. There’s less than two weeks for you to get registered, especially if you have moved since the last time you voted.

It’s why I support Barack Obama for President. His commitment to change means he won’t take money from PACs or lobbyists, so this campaign is in the hands of ordinary Americans like you and me. Will you help?

Join me in supporting Barack by making a donation to my personal fundraising page:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/crystalbowden

We have a choice in this election.

John McCain talks about his independence, but he wants to continue George Bush’s disastrous policies: the war in Iraq, millions of Americans without healthcare, tax giveaways to oil companies that are making record profits, and relying on lobbyists for political support.

Barack Obama wants to change the way Washington works and change those policies: end the war in Iraq, expand access to affordable healthcare, close oil company loopholes, and cut taxes for the middle class.

We urgently need an honest leader who understands that doing things the same old way is going to give us the same old results. Americans are hungry for real change, change Barack Obama will bring when he is elected.

Help me make that happen. Please take a minute to check out my page and make a donation of any size:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/crystalbowden

Thanks.

Black teen pregnancies? A ‘crisis’ in black America.
White teen pregnancies? A ‘blessed event.’

If you grow up in Hawaii you’re ‘exotic.’
Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you’re the quintessential ‘American story.’

Similarly, if you name your kid Barack you’re ‘unpatriotic.’
Name your kids Trig and Track, you’re ‘colorful.’

If you’re a Democrat and you make a VP pick without fully vetting the individual you’re ‘reckless.’
A Republican who doesn’t fully vet is a ‘maverick.’

If you spend 3 years as a community organizer growing your organization from a staff of 1 to 13 and your budget from $70,000 to $400,000, then become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review,create a voter regstration drive that registers 150,000 new African Amerian voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor,then spend nearly 8 more years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, becoming chairman of the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, then spend nearly 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of nearly 13 million people, sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you are woefully inexperienced.
If you spend 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, then spend 20 months as the governor of a state with 650,000 people, you’ve got the most executive experience of anyone on either ticket, are the Commander in Chief of the Alaska military and are well qualified to lead the nation should you be called upon to do so because your state is the closest state to Russia.

If you are a Demoratic male candidate who is popular with millions of people you are an ‘arrogant celebrity’.
If you are a popular Republican female candidate you are ‘energizing the base’.

If you are a younger male candidate who thinks for himself and makes his own decisions you are ‘presumptuous’.
If you are an older male candidate who makes last minute decisions you refuse to explain, you are a ’shoot from the hip’ maverick.

If you are a candidate with a Harvard law degree you are ‘an elitist ‘out of touch’ with the real America.
If you are a legacy (dad and granddad were admirals) graduate of Annapolis, with multiple disciplinary infractions you are a hero.

If you manage a multi-million dollar nationwide campaign, you are an ‘empty suit’.
If you are a part time mayor of a town of 7000 people, you are an ‘experienced executive’.

If you go to a south side Chicago church, your beliefs are ‘extremist’.
If you believe in creationism and don’t believe gobal warming is man made, you are ’strongly principled’.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you’re a Christian.
If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years with whom you are raising two beautiful daughters you’re ‘risky’.

If you’re a black single mother of 4 who waits for 22 hours after her water breaks to seek medical attention, you’re an irresponsible parent, endangering the life of your unborn child.
But if you’re a white married mother who waits 22 hours, you’re spunky.

If you’re a 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton, the right-wing press calls you ‘First dog.’
If you’re a 17-year old pregnant unwed daughter of a Republican, the right-wing press calls you ‘beautiful’ and ‘courageous.’

If you kill an endangered species, you’re an excellent hunter.
If you have an abortion you’re not a christian, you’re a murderer ( forget about if it happened while being date raped)

If you teach abstinence only in sex education, you get teen parents.
If you teach responsible age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

Meanwhile, McCain, a man who got into the Naval Academy on legacy still only managed to graduate at the bottom of his class. Despite this, he STILL was awarded a prestigious aviator’s position and he commenced to crash numerous planes before being taken prisoner in Vietnam. While his wife stayed at home and faithfully waited for him, she was disfigured in a car crash but chose not to upset him by telling him. How is she repaid? By McCain coming home and abandoning her for a hot young beauty queen. The word from the MSM? Nothing.