Poster design I did for the 7th Street Theatre’s showing of Cool Hand Luke.

See more like this in my Flickr Print Gallery.

What some of you plain blood folks may not know is that we get special calls.

“Is this Ralph Hogaboom?”
“Yes.”
“Hi Ralph, I’m Denise and I’m calling from the Puget Sound Blood Center. How are you today?”
“I’m good.”
“I’m so happy to hear that!”
“Thanks!”
“You’re in Port Townsend, right?”
“Yeah.”
“How’s the weather up there today? I heard you guys are in a rain shadow…”
“Oh, it’s balmy here Denise.”
“Lucky!”
“Yeah.”

Eventually we get ’round to scheduling a time for me to come in. See, when your blood is as valuable as mine, they respect your time a little more.

They also do reminder phone calls, ’cause they want my blood.

They’re also unfailingly nice at the blood center. They know I’m different than others because the check-in lady says “And here’s someone else for you … he has a 10 AM appt.”

That’s code for “He has an appointment, that means he has valuable blood. Treat this one well.”

I don’t love getting treated this way. It’s more accurate to say I looooooooooooooove being treated this way. I’m over a half gallon for the last 12 months; when I hit a gallon of blood donated, I get a new pin! I’m pretty excited.

There’s nothing wrong with hospitals. They’re functional places to have a baby. But a woman’s body was designed to give birth. Unless there are uncommon circumstances with the woman’s health, she has the potential to give birth. Furthermore, I’m a believer that interventions like (here goes my spelling problem) pitocin, epidural / intrathecal, etc often interfere with the birth. They also lead to cesarian deliveries.

Cesarian deliveries are major abdominal surgery.

If there’s a problem that requires medical intervention, we’ll go to the hospital, simple as that. Childbirth isn’t a medical problem, it’s the Lord loaning us his ability to create. If it’s normal for a woman’s body to give birth, then let’s put the control back into the woman’s body. Like any normal body function, if something goes wrong, we’ll see a doctor. Until otherwise, we’ll know that normal delivery*, i.e. home birth, is okay.

In 95% of woman, a vaginal birth is possible. Why does the US have a 27% rate of cesarian? Interventions are part of it. A bigger part is that we don’t really help woman to have a baby.

To put it another way, home birth means taking more responsibility. Kelly’s not just going to get knocked out by some drugs and have the baby surgically removed. She’s educating herself, learning techniques to cope with pain au naturale, and excersizing. She’s making sure that her muscles and body are going to be in a good position when the time comes. We’ve interviewed and found our midwife team, and our doula. We’re preparing in ways we didn’t even think of with our first kid.

Back to the US not helping women have babies. I think about my perception of childbirth before Sophie, and I really knew nothing. It was an eye-opener to see how it’s done. In retrospect, it makes sense to me that there would be a passing of the knowledge, what to expect, like how memes are passed down. Not quite mentor/apprentice style, but serving a similar function. I’m continually surprised I don’t see this.

* I refer to normal birth, not typical birth. In the US, a typical birth is in the hospital. That doesn’t make it normal.