The Wellness Bitch

There’s a lot of discussion and griping about how wellness is only for the wealthy.

That the poor are so desperate to feed their families, that they have no other choice than to buy cheap imitation grape drink and Dollar Store brand cheese doodles. That the poor don’t have the benefit of spending time in Barnes and Noble browsing through Michael Pollan books. That the poor are so tired from working two jobs that they can’t summon up the strength to do more than throw some canned franks and beans into a pot to warm.

I’d like to know how those people– those compassionate champions of the working poor — how do they explain it when middle class Americans…or even upper class americans with nannies and luxury cars …make those same choices? Because they do. I see it all the time.

I walk into a $1 million home to pick up my kid from a playdate and find him eating rainbow goldfish crackers.

I see nannies pushing overweight kids in stroller. And moms in designer shoes handing their two-year-olds mocha frappaccinos to sip on.

I’m not a cold-hearted bitch. But I don’t think eating or living well really takes much money, brains, or higher education. Clearly, if that’s all it took, we wouldn’t be seeing commercials for Abilify, alongside ones for Macy’s One Day Sale.

Hey. Come a little closer. I’m going to let you in on a little secret.

I’m not rich. I put on a good show with my nice house and leased mini-van. My kids in their hand-me-down Old Navy clothes. My mock designer hand bag from Target.

But we’re struggling. We have debt. We count our pennies.

I don’t have the money for a gym membership or a trainer or even to go to weekly yoga classes. I take books out of the library or buy them second hand on Ebay.

But don’t cry for me. And don’t think I’m complaining that my life is so hard.

But, I think that bad lifestyle choices aren’t reserved for the poor.

And it’s about time we stop having that conversation and move on. Frankly, it bores me.

Your sympathy and your outrage would be better spent WAKING UP our government. And our schools. And your neighbors.

I’ve had three C-sections. And while I’m grateful to say I welcomed three healthy children into this world, I’m less than thrilled with the manner in which they arrived.

None of my C-sections were by choice. Sure, I signed my name to a consent form each time. No one literally forced my hand. But they might as well have.

With the first, I was told by my physician that inducing me at 41 weeks would lessen my likelihood of a C-section. I didn’t have enough information at the time to know that was bullshit.

With my second, I searched high and low for a midwife backed by an OB who would “allow” me not just a trial of labor, but the chance to go into labor on my own. My mother had three children, all post-term (and all by normal vaginal birth). I knew my kids needed more time to bake. Do you know how hard it was not only to find a licensed practitioner, let alone someone who would “let” me go to 42 weeks without forcing me into a repeat C-section? Practically impossible.

By the hair of my chinny chin chin, I went into labor on my own at 41 weeks 6 days. (A repeat C-section was scheduled for me the next day.) I labored for 15 hours, but when the baby stopped dropping, I was given a window of two hours to show any sign of progression. When there wasn’t within that window, I was sent to the operating table. He wasn’t in distress; neither was I. It didn’t matter. Rules were rules.

As I laid on the table awaiting the surgery, the OB on call said to the intern before he cut me, “She’s a failed VBAC.”

When I got pregnant with baby #3, there were even less options. The only way I could even contemplate having a trial of labor after two Cesareans was to find an unlicensed homebirth midwife. No hospital in NJ would take me unless I scheduled a Cesarean. And not even the most VBAC-friendly OB or midwife in the state would entertain the thought of allowing me a trial of labor as a “VBA2C.” Repeat C-section it was.

Now, new guidelines supposedly seek to reduce the C-section rate in this country, which have risen to obscene rates. I appreciate with pleasant surprise the honesty displayed by writer Denise Grady in this recent article from The New York Times, when she writes that decisions to insist upon scheduled repeat C-sections are due largely to fear of lawsuit and liability. You won’t hear those words coming out of a doctor’s mouth, though.

What will you usually hear instead?

“Risk’s too great.”

“Your pelvis is too small.”

“You make babies a little too big for your frame.”

“The hospital is not VBAC-friendly.”

And it’s not just doctors who practice near me. Almost every single one of my female friends who had a C-section with her first (and it’s a frightfully high number), chose a repeat C-section for her subsequent pregnancies. And most did so out of fear. (A handful did so out of convenience, but that’s a bitch of a different color.)

It’s not easy too chose VBAC. Even the most natural-minded woman needs to be very brave and very sure of herself to consider VBAC when her doctor tells her she risks killing her baby by doing so.

It’s once again the medical industry pressuring patients to make fear-based decisions. Sharing some of the facts, but withholding those that don’t support their case. (My doctor never told me about the increased maternal death rate for a woman giving birth by C-section. I had to learn that fun fact on my own.) And it’s once again, individuals placing blind faith in what their doctors say.

A holistic approach to childbirth? It’s not natural vs. epidural. Nor VBAC vs. C-section. Nor hospital vs. homebirth.

It’s taking the time to know each woman and each pregnancy. It’s providing all the facts, not just some. It’s allowing women the time and opportunity to labor on her own, while also supporting her in the case of a true, medical emergency.

Educated, informed choice is not too much to ask for.

TIPS: International Cesarean Awarness Network. Choices in Childbirth. BOLD.

I can’t resist a good 80s reference.

Now, when B.A. Baracus said “I pity the fool,” he usually meant he was gonna unleash a great big can of whoop-ass on whichever “fool” messed with his car or kidnapped Face. Not much pity there.

But I really do pity the fool. And by fool, I don’t mean idiot. I mean a person who might not know better.

I keep meeting people who are exposed to toxins through their work and I wonder (a) if they know they are poisoning themselves by handling these toxins and (b) should I tell them?

Tobi Indyke, a talented artist, just guest blogged on Mindful Living NJ today about her experience getting ill from 18 years working with petro-chemicals and paints. I think about how lucky she is she lived through the experience. And wished that someone could have told her sooner what was happening to her body in response to the chemicals she was handling every day.

Yesterday, I got my haircut at the salon I should have left three years ago, but haven’t because I love my stylist. I noticed the swollen, red hands of the regular hair washer and frowned. Imagine how many heads she handles each day? Applying toxic chemicals with her bare hands no less.

There are the workers in the meat and poultry factory getting lung cancer from being in closed rooms with the ammonia they wash the meat with. (Don’t believe me? Watch Food Inc.)

And what about the farmers and the children of farmers handling and working in pesticide-laden fields?

Uch. The worst work hazard I have to deal with every day is carpal tunnel, which is nothing to sneeze at, I know, but in comparison seems wimpy.

Who’s going to rescue these folks from a “crime they did not commit?”

If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find her, maybe you can hire… The Wellness Bitch.

I know a lot of people who deal with some form of mental illness. No one I know is in the crazy house, per say, but I know a bunch of people with diagnosed or undiagnosed depression or obsessive compulsive disorder or anxiety. It’s gotten to the point where “mild depression” should be listed as a synonym for “creative” in the thesaurus.

I’m not trying to make light of what can often be a serious illness and life altering condition. I can speak from experience as someone who has walked out of a shrink’s office with a prescription for an SSRI and an anti-anxiety med.

On the other hand, I’ve gotten fairly fed up with the careless drug dealing that’s going on and lack of responsibility, as I see it, on the part of practitioners who are not holding their patients accountable for making lifestyle changes that may make as much of a difference as meds (if not more) on emotional wellness.

The most obvious (and one that is backed strongly by research) is exercise. IMHO, practitioners should write a script cocktail for an anti-depressant + three days a week of aerobic exercise. AND, hold their patients accountable for the exercise or else no refills.

Less obvious, but just as significant, are dietary changes. For example, if you suffer from anxiety and you’re popping three atavans a day, and you’re still drinking your double skim capp every morning, WAKE UP. You are working against yourself.

Or if you suffer from depression and you eat a diet heavy with refined sugar and processed foods, you are only contributing to your despair. I am not making this up.

It drives me batty that people with mild depression do not first casually research the food-mood connection, nor do they consider how our 9 - 5 sedentary schedules impact our emotional and mental state. Obviously, each person needs to be responsible and accountable for their own health and well-being. (For the record, I’m not talking about suicidal individuals or schizos or psychotics or bi-polar).

However,

Psychiatrists who basically serve as drug dealers: What do you have to say for yourself?

Psychotherapists who do not hold your clients accountable for their diet and exercise: What do you have to say for yourself?

Readers who are medicated, but keep eating sugary foods with no nutritional value and don’t exercise: What say you?

I’d like to know. Because the state of affairs as it pertains to mental health in this country just makes me sad.

When I was pregnant with my first, I was enamored with this woman I casually knew who already had two kids. She seemed to have it all together and her parenting choices came easily. She was the first person I knew to take on an elimination diet (she did it while nursing a baby with severe eczema) and the first mom I heard suggest that watching TV was bad for kids. Her reasons made sense and her implementation seemed manageable. I went home to my husband and said, “No TV on in our house while our baby is awake, okay?” He said, “Yeah, I’ll do it.” (Secretly, he rolled his eyes because he knew there was no way I was giving up Buffy and The Bachelorette.)

He was right. TV turnoff during baby awake time lasted about 15 minutes. Since our baby was not a sleeper, and we were TV addicts, this baby was exposed to some prime time from the get-go.

That being said, I was very careful about what he watched (no cartoons, not even Dora, for the first three years) and how much, until I was pregnant with number two and would do anything to make sure I got at least one nap a day. Then it all went to hell. Seven years later, he’s watching TV and I walk into the room and say, “Is this appropriate for you?” If he says yes, I’ll usually pause, glare at him like I mean business, and walk away.

I’m actually less annoyed about the TV shows these days then I am about the commercials. As if it’s not bad enough to feature young kids hocking anything from artificially-colored crap masquerading as breakfast to processed shit masquerading as lunch, now they have kids warning their friends on the other side of the screen that their dad might die from cancer.

“Dad? Are you going to get cancer?” my 7-year-old asked us this morning out of the blue. What?!? Where did that come from?

“The TV just said 28,000 men die of cancer every year and then they showed pictures of kids who don’t have dads to play with.”

As you can imagine, I am very much in favor of WAKE UP CALLS. And maybe it’s my own fault for letting my kid watch the Cartoon Network before school. But that is a low blow. Clever campaign? Perhaps. But still very much straddling the line of inappropriate.

WAKE UP CALL. While we can all thank the Heavens for Noggin and remark on how our child learned the days of the week from watching Zee, TV goes from bad to worse after preschool. And, the violence and inappropriate language are only half of it.  That crap my kid’s already learning at school from friends whose parents have no boundaries at home.

What’s scarier to me? What they’re subtly learning about love, life, death, and relationships. What they’re learning about other people and about themselves.

It’s time we tune in.

For those of you who don’t know, I have a day job. I’m the founder of an organization called Mindful Living NJ, and I do a lot of the same work over there that I do here. Attempt to educate and empower people to make healthy, holistic choices.

For a while, I was blogging only as “Mindful Girl.” A like-minded, yet understated version of The Wellness Bitch, Mindful Girl attempts to change minds with information, reason, and compassion. I’m her. And she’s me. 

The Wellness Bitch was born of my innate need to scream in people’s faces. Because as good as I’ve gotten at sublimating my rage,  it still lurks deep within my petite, inconspicuous exterior.

Mindful Girl doesn’t scream. She nudges. She intimates. She chants. She cheers. The Wellness Bitch, as you know, takes no prisoners.

So, I have mixed feelings when I see the mainstream media reporting on “news” that those of us in the know have been discussing for years. When my college roommate and lil bitch Linnea posted this article from MSNBC.com on her Facebook status today– “Pesticides in kids linked to ADHD” –I chuckled.

Mindful Girl jumps up and down, cheering that our message will finally make it onto the desktop of Average Joe. Wellness Bitch, on the otherhand, snorts at the fact that MSNBC.com reports this as if it’s “just in.” A more accurate headline to this article would be “My Editor Finally Let Me Write This Story About The Connection Between Pesticides and ADHD Because Our Medical Advisory Board Approved the Study.”

Kudos to health writer JoNel Allecia for doing her part to educate the public. But her first sentence suggests she’s still unsure or answering to someone. “Exposure to pesticides used on common kid-friendly foods — including frozen blueberries, fresh strawberries and celery — appears to boost the chances that children will be diagnosed with ADHD,” she writes. (Emphasis is mine.) Really? We can’t just use the verb “boosts?” We have to soften it with “appears?” What’s the point of backing your story up with a scientific study if the credibility it lends doesn’t even allow you to use a nice active, direct verb? Jesus Christ, people! Grow a pair of balls!

It’s clear that even educated folks still have a little ways to go. I nthe article, one mom is quoted as saying she’d been feeding her child organic strawberries for a while, knowing that they’re on the “dirty dozen” list. But she hadn’t given frozen strawberries “a second thought.”

Mindful Girl would smile and make a mental note to add frozen fruits to my lists when explaining which conventional fruits and veggies are the most toxic.

The Wellness Bitch would say, “Think people! Think!!!!!”

Since my two personas attract two different audiences (with some overlap), I will likely continue to straddle both worlds. One leg in the peaceful realm of Mindful Girl “making connections that make a difference.” And the other kicking you in the face in an effort to wake you the fuck up.