This just in: childbirth can be traumatic.

This afternoon I participated in a press conference call hosted by Americans United for Change, featuring a group of people all supporting bills within the Advancing America's Priorities Act. Speakers included:

Today, America's mothers, infants and families have reason to be encouraged and to reach out to their state senators to again request their support of The Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act in its final push to passage. YOU HAVE BEEN HEARD and this morning, Majority Leader Reid introduced a package of bills called Advance America's Priorities Act which now includes The Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act.

I've been struggling with a secret, which is this: I'm really, really not in love with my body right now. I have, been keeping it secret for two reasons: 1) it's totally new to me - I've never really struggled with my body image, even after my last pregnancy, which added padding where no padding had hitherto existed, and so it just feels foreign and weird and (obviously) bad, and 2) it also feels so, I don't know, anti-feminist or anti-woman or anti-me (which, really, collapses into a kind of counter-womanism, to be anti-yourself as a woman) and I just so don't want to be that.

I've come to realize that for some reason, there are a lot of booksellers out there who just don't feel it's important to offer a single book on postpartum depression or related illnesses for sale in their stores. I don't know why. I think that's a major disservice to women everywhere.

As I keep reminding anybody who will listen to me, I will - gods willing - give birth in the very near future. It will be my second time 'round the childbirthing block, but I gotta say: this part (the preparing to give birth part, and, I assume, the birthing part itself) is none the easier for having been there before.

It's time to talk about the Melanie Blocker Stokes (MBS) MOTHERS Act again. I know, I know. We've heard this all before, you're thinking. I already called my Senator, you're thinking. I already wrote about this on my blog, you're thinking. Sheesh!, you may even be thinking. Well, apparently everything you and I have done so far in support of this bill hasn't been enough.

One area I don't like to talk about is hospitalization. I don't know why. It's like the ultimate embarrassment for me or something that at one point I had to be hospitalized in a mental hospital (UGH!) for depression. It was only for a few days, but it's one thing of which I have to say I still feel slightly ashamed. If our society considered mental illness a physical illness, then of course I wouldn't be ashamed, because there is nothing at all wrong with being sick and having to go to the hospital.

There is a ridiculous campaign being waged through petitions and blogs right now to block passage of the Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act for postpartum depression. I am truly peeved and disappointed at the breathless, hysterical ranting going on about the MOTHERS Act. Many of those who oppose it seem to have done LITTLE to NOTHING to inform themselves about the actual bill and the organizations that support it. Falsehoods are being spread. Here are some examples:

FEBRUARY 14, at 10am, the Senate's HELP committee will mark up the new Melanie Blocker Stokes MOTHERS Act Bill ... Let's ask the HELP committee to send a Valentine to America's mothers by finishing up the bill and sending it to the Senate floor for a final vote. 

Tuesday marked the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that ruled that women are people who have the right, under the rubric of privacy, to decide whether or not we will give birth if we find ourselves pregnant. Ever since the ruling, opponents of women’s self-determination (i.e. – those who champion the rights of a fetus over those of the actual born and living) have worked tirelessly to revoke this right. They’ve been doing an excellent job with campaigns full of misinformation (for the record, fingernails do not develop until the 12th week of gestation, according to the Mayo clinic, and about 90% of abortions take place before that stage…), intimidation (not very life-affirming to stalk the children of doctors who perform abortions), and outright murder, so for the last few years, NARAL has asked bloggers to use the anniversary of Roe to set the record straight on why they are pro-choice.

So I'm sitting and drinking the first of my two daily half-caf no-foam lattes and reading the newspaper the other day, when this headline catches my eye: Daily Double Can Be Fatal To Fetus. Which, seeing as my own caffeinated fetus was just at that moment tap-dancing on my ovary walls, alarmed me, just a little. I sipped my latte, and read on: