We also did saplings (it was 15 years ago, though) and we got them cheap through PA's department of... something. Whoever is in charge of tree planting. We got dogwoods!

Hey-o unpopular opinion: the final episode did nothing to dissuade from my initial feelings that this show is not as deep as it thinks it is and way more exploitative than it (and its fans) think it is.

lol no not just yours. I have so many blurry pictures of Baby Tashkent (now Toddler Tashkent). Like maybe when he was still in the larval stage? But once sitting up was an option? Fuhgeddaboudit.

It doesn't really work with dogs, either. It's just that dogs are more socialized to humans and will take a lot more shit before they snap and lash out.

Um. That's my name, actually. It is a real name. It's more common in the UK than the US.

At this point in my life, none of these shows exist in a vacuum for me. I've been imbibing the same male-focused narratives for nearly 40 years and I just sort of woke up a couple years ago and realized: I am at quota. My giveafuck bucket is empty. It's not personal and has nothing to do with artistic merit. I'm just…

God people are defensive about this show. There was a nearly 300 comment thread on Gawker yesterday all started by one person saying they didn't like it because it was just too male-focused. INTERNETS 'SPLOSION

As someone who was just beginning to be aware of the world beyond my house at the height of the AIDS crisis, I'm also a little... cane-shakey? about how younger generations view HIV/AIDS and how little general awareness there is of the intense, fierce struggle that was required before anyone gave two shits about a…

I will never understand the hard-on commentors here have for the Duggars. They're a huge part of a misogynist, homophobic cult. I don't understand why anyone ever wants to line up to defend them.

A better thing is to not make the campaign about YOU and what YOU would do but to make it about the breastfeeding mother and what she needs. "If I could, I would" is a pointless message. It doesn't convey any information and it focuses the attention on the person who doesn't need it. A better message would be "What…

For me it's not that I hate breastfeeding (did it for over a year) but that the pictures just kind of miss the point of what women need from their partners while nursing. I love the idea of raising awareness of the partner's role in breastfeeding, but relegating it to "I would if I could, but I can't so I won't,…

Yep. He also attended lactation consultant appointments with me so he could hear and remember the same information I was hearing (and probably not remembering), and did everything-but-the-nursing during nightwakings. And then many months later when it was time to nightwean and sleep train, he did all the heavy lifting…

These pictures should be of a dude delivering a tall glass of ice water and rubbing the feet of his nursing partner. That is actually, you know, helpful.

None of this is bad advice in the abstract but what the fuck is this horseshit:

I think it's not that we're behind, it's that there's a perfect storm of our dual preferences for All The Bells and Whistles Health Care combined and regulations-are-bad-you-can't-tell-me-what-to-do libertarianism. So those become your only two choices, with nothing in between. You can either go the full distance with…

A couple times I forgot my pump at home and had to hand-express. It's ineffective at best, and caused me a painful rash on my breasts from all the friction. I was able to express just enough to not leak all over my business clothes, but more than 8 hours of that would have been a one-way trip to mastitis for me.

Yep. That whole Jan Tritten thing was a clusterfuck of epic proportions. I think there is a case to be made for the possibility of relatively safe homebirthing, but what we've got going on right now in the US is not it.

Yes, all the research points to a tear healing better than a cut, statistically speaking. If your OB practices up-to-date evidence-based medicine, they won't do routine cutting. A lot of what you hear homebirth advocates talking about is like 1970's-era obstetric care. And yes, some OBs are still living in the 70s…

The anti-vax circle probably is mostly within the home birth circle in the Venn diagram, but the home birth circle is much, much larger than the anti-vax one.