The attachment parented kid at our daycare — you know, the one who has never drunk out of a bottle at one year of age, even his own mother's milk, so can't soothe his thirst unless mom is there — is a total mess. Cries constantly because mom's not there. Of course, I can't know he's a total mess due to the AP, but it…

Assumption that any attempt to make your life decent and your child independent is tantamount to abuse: a great way to prove you're an idiot.

I hear you. I'm on the large end of the size spectrum here and my European husband, after a few years in the US, seems to be nearly off the spectrum. We wouldn't be plus sized or even particularly big in the US, but here I was recently asked when I was due.

I wish the women I know who do this have that good of a reason...

As much as I agree with your perspective, I have to say: the catholic church did not invent misogyny. For much of its history it wasn't even the Catholic church in the sense we think of it, it was just the church. But there was plenty of misogyny around before Christianity. Try looking at wonderful, pagan, democratic…

So true... a ton of women have had miscarriages, including ones in their 20's. And it's so little talked about. Miscarriages and/or abortions. But it's the perversity of the way women's experiences are kept silent. That sounds like a 70's thing to type, but I think it's still true to a great extent. If men either made…

I agree with you. I thought she was totally flat in that movie. I'm not sure I once saw an emotion flicker across her face.

:) Take these comments seriously, but not to heart. I think as long as you don't *pay* for the grad school, you should follow your dreams in that direction. (I.e., if you just want a master's, try to get into a PhD program with funding and do the master's paid.) I did something totally impractical and super…

I hear there's good money to be made in type-setting these days.

Agree with the others — "compliant" is great. I will use that in the future.

Not "must". Mine divorced when I was 23 and I was the one who suggested it. It was much harder on *their* parents.

I think the trick here is the information aspect. I, too, support the right of women to birth where and how they will, just as I think anyone should be allowed to refuse medical care if they wish. But... as you and I both experienced, you don't really know what's going to happen during your labour until you go through…

People had to travel for my wedding, and I made it clear that was the present. But just to be safe, I put some $6 stuff and some $15 stuff in case anyone, coming or not, wanted to buy a present without being out a lot of money. One of my friends who couldn't make it bought us the $10 tongs, and we used them…

Thank you! Yes, exactly, the rhetoric around both sides is really awful. I'm an academic, and it really bothered me when I was doing research to see how difficult it was to find any good information whatsoever. You really have to do a lot of weighing. Frankly, even studies on the effects of epidurals from 10 years ago…

Thanks for the reply! I didn't know if I weirded everyone out with my little confessional, or if people just don't like to hear this kind of story. (And mind you, there are worse stories out there — as I said, I wasn't, in this case, in danger. Baby's heartbeat stayed up. That child is made of steel.)

Yeah, I can see. But the correct response to that is to buy a subscription to a real newspaper. Coming to Gawker media for real news is like expecting a dog to meow, or, I dunno, Fox News to give a balanced report on Hispanic contributions to the American economy.

Your comment almost made me cry. It really is amazing how unique each woman's cocktail is, even if there are certain patters. I had a really easy, lovely, energetic, yoga-filled pregnancy, even though it was officially high risk. (The high risk never materialized.) Then I had a hellish, traumatizing, mostly "natural"…

Wise words, yo. I started much the same, but the more I researched, the more I developed expectations and yeah, kind of got boxed into them. So I had the same result as you, except with four days of labour (3 unmedicated), and being waaay to f'in tired at the end of it all to have any kind of feelings at all except…

Thanks for this — it's what I think too. These are most likely women who, coming out of a similar context as I do, are probably a little sick of hearing they won't be good mothers if they don't A and B. It's a different reality than that of women who have no support in bfeeding or unmedicalized childbirth...

A worthwhile desire, I think. But the writers here are bloggers, not journalists. They're not being sent out to cover beats, they're writing about their feelings and reactions. Blogging is pretty much about creating a bubble and staying in it, at least in most cases...