baby gear

[updated for 2015] okay, so by now you know, we're not huge babycrap consumers. we don't have the disposable income nor the sheer consumerism that is intrinsic to corporatized popular culture. most of our stuff is used, hand-me-downs, home-made and/or uh, well-loved.

there are a few kid things though that we would be willing to pay full retail price for (while scouring the internet for coupon codes & discounts of course!). for parents who ascribe to a parenting values that fosters humanity over materialism (sometimes called "continuum concept" or "attachment parenting"), it may seem a conundrum to find a list of consumer goods. and yet, here it is, in all its glory. yours for free (rather than to try & encourage you to shop in my WAHM store. that would be my next project.)

firstly, i recommend Alternative Gift Registry (relaunched as SoKindRegistry.org) where you can "register" for gifts of your choice whether homemade, used or non-material.

Baby Hammock-(that is not my chunky monkey over there). A mini-hammock plus a lambskin is what coaxed my baby to nap sans parent. Now, you can buy the European fancy pants ones (like the La Siesta Yayita which I got for baby #2) for beaucoup or make your own (like here), but for sheer efficiency/ingenuity, you can't beat a Việt hammock. This is 4 feet long and can take up to 100 lbs or 4 yr old. We have the adult sized one, but space is precious. The smaller footprint and portability works for us. If you can find someone who likes you enough to lug it back from Việt Nam, it's less than $20 plus the exasperation of an import favor. If you live near Little Sài Gòn (OC) or San Jose, it's $35-45 depending how well you bargain. Trung's parents got us the Trường Thợ which would not pass a child safety check having lots of sharp edges and bolts/screws that like to wiggle loose (and they are now out of business see DL link below). The Ban Mai (pictured above) which we've picked up for friends at the Buddhist votive store, is nicer (caps on the ends of the pipes, curved brace) ; all the BM imports I've seen have gender-neutral (for VN) PINK frames. Though I heard that the hammock was too taut/too shallow but it could be we bought a bad imported batch. Duy Lợi is the original shining beacon-to-3rd-World-entrepeneurs-David who took on Goliath (Japan & Tai
wan bootleggers) in 2 international patent cases and WON. oh and Duy Loi won against the other VN bootlegger TT too. whoa! Vinamese bootlegging is like the Cửu Long|9 Dragons of the Mekong Delta--widespread, impossible to circumnavigate or dam, and integral to the economy and yet Duy did it, making him the mackdaddy of entrepeneurs. DL has some awesome space age designs. Funny that in the 21st Century, Vinamese ingenuity can be patented. Anyways, I haven't seen Duy Lợi baby in the San Jose shops but it could be different now that TT is shutdown. Now that we have a dog, we got La Siesta Yayita organic hammock for the baby #2 that we are mounting to the ceiling and when s/he is older, we'll look for a toddler one. We are going DIY with the hanging hardware.

And of course the the almighty European wood convertible highchairs that go from baby to adult; I do like me multi-functionality (Stokke Tripp Trapp is the OG, Svan is nice, as is the Keekaroo and my new obsession is the Minui HandySitt). The family value with this is having baby be an integrated part of the family dinner table instead of held at a distance; though trying to eat the dinner at the same time as feeding the baby is a whole nutha matter. this thing is like a jeep; it's bluebook value never depreciates. it's a scandalous $170-250 new (I rationalize high ticket purchase by Quality, Use-per-wear, and Resale Value). and you can sometimes find good quality used ones on craigslist going for half the price. we got a tripp trapp knockoff, the eurochair I used (about 8 years old) off craigslist for $22. and i can say though it's some life left in it, the quality is not that great. it really cannot take adult weight; the foot board and back bars have cracks from over-tightening, the framing is coming apart on the bottom so I gotta gorillaglue it, and the varnish is rubbed off on spots. luckily, a little olive oil & vinegar puts the shine back in. (hey natural parenting means natural cleaners.) Recently I discover the HandySitt which is a Danish

portable highchair that goes from infant to 5 years (*bought out by Stokke and now sadly, discontinued). It's really a clever folding booster that attaches to your regular adult chairs so that means not having to displace your regular dining chair. Given our small space, the footprint of baby gear matters.

sophie la giraffe oh yes, its geneology is pure french colonization, but this rubber giraffe is the only soft teether not made from some form of petro-plastic. $20  I no longer recommend Sophie because of the nitrosamines controversy. Currently I am using a Natursutten pacifier and trying the frozen wet washcloth. I avoid silicone as it has been shown to leach.

Hoppediz Bondolino it's a German Oeko-Tek certified soft structured carrier (SSC)--a mei tai with ergonomics and velcro. I love the ease in adjustment to each parents' size and the lack of muffin top that you get with all the buckled SSCs, but this is really a 2 season carrier. With all that padding, it won't get you through warm springs and hot summers. They now have lighterweight Bondolinos but they are difficult to come by on the US market. It's no longer available in the US market, which is a damned shame so I'd recommend looking at other mei tai inspired soft structured carriers.  The Ergobaby 360 is a comparable SSC but I have not tried this. I've gotten the regular Ergo and the Beco Butterfly II and it didn't work for my 95th-percentile-in-weight thick baby and on my petite, busty frame. I'm currently loving the Babyhawk Oh Mei which has a buckle waist. I love the buckle which makes a huge load bearing difference for my giant baby. I actually got the Babyhawk mei tai as a hand-me-down which I retrofitted with a Beco buckle. My biggest criticism of this brand is that the panel is not contoured for baby's body so there is gapping on  the sides.

HUGS selendang--Indonesian batik baby carrier. Lovely and practical and it can get you through all seasons but the worst of winters and even then as long as baby was bundled inside your ginormous parka, you'd be okay. I still use this one with all 37 lbs of VL with the knot at my shoulder now. It's only $29 and it benefits women in Bali. You can also make your own for only a little bit less with quilting cotton or habotai silk but you'll have to hem it. 35" width is perfect for use as a sling so if your fabric is wider and you hem on the long side of it, I've noticed that the it'll have less give/elasticity unless you use loose stitches.

WOOL anything--particularly for stuff that involves bodily fluids or fire--breastpads, biobottom wool diaper covers (I like now-discontinued biobottoms and loveybums as well as aristocrats & disana soakers), wool puddle pads, wool pillowtops, and wool mattresses (did u know your mattress doubles its weight in 7 years from sweat, dustmites & skin oil? and that you cannot buy an organic cotton mattress without a doctor's prescription? true story. your mattress by law has to contain flame retardent carcinogenic chemicals unless your doctor says otherwise OR unless you buy wool. because wool is naturally absorbent, water repellant, anti-bacterial, and fire retardent. because how often do you see a moist, mangy sheep on fire?)

PUDDLE PAD Also, whether you have baby in crib or in bed with you (and at least while you have a newborn, keeping her in bed with you is less tiresome for those all night feedings) you will want a puddle pad. I tried a regular "cotton" one from carters and it made me sweat all night because they have to put some vinyl or something in it to keep it from leaking. So I switched over to wool which absorbs, is anti-bacterial, etc. If you wanted something soft that you can lay baby directly on, I recommend Organic Caboose Puddle Pad (go for the thicker one).

For the family bed, if you want a puddle pad that will go under a sheet or to cover your mattress, I recommend this organic Foam Order one on clearance. It's scratchy so it goes under the sheet and you'll want 2 to have a double layer guarantee but it's still cheaper than buying organic full price anywhere else.

LAMBSKIN Those germans and their purity--history has shown us the down side, on the up side that means they make great children's products free from harmful chemicals. Sheepskin pelt was perfect for naps and travel. I was crazy enough to buy an organic, eco-friendly, mimosa-tanned Kaiser lambskin pelt the first time around; it's practically unwashable without destroying the leather. I should have gone with the Kaiser machine washable one. both are Oeko-Tek certified). And when we needed a second one, I was saner and just got a typical Oeko-Tek certified New Zealand Bowron Infant for a fantastic price of $65 on overstock. Whatever brand you go with, make sure it's for infant use; they won't use the more toxic tanning agents and will shear the pelt to a safer, low level. You can also find these used on BPN or CL.

After experimenting with a few types of diaper covers (Aristocrats & LanaCare pull-ons, Wool Stacinators), I settled on BioBottoms Bikini Cut as being the easiest for nighttime changes since it has velcro, not buttons that you have to count, which is a good thing at 3am. Being wool, you can use them thru several pees without washing them. Just change them out to dry in between. You can machine or handwash on lukewarm but you must use a lanolin-rich soap like Eucalan (decent & you can use on other handwashables, but not a lot of lanolin), Sheepish Grins (*I like) or Kookaburra or Imse Vimse (haven't tried). I have learned when it comes to wool diaper covers (some of which are NOT machine washable) that it is better to buy new than used. I can't trust that someone else will take care of the covers like I would. If you are going to buy used, check for shrinkage and check the elastic!

We used a diaper service for the first 4-6 months. Then I started to gradually buy our own cloth diapers. DSQ cloth diapers (that's Diaper Service Quality) for reasons unknown to me are extra long. Maybe this is for boy babies who need the extra foldover for absorbency? I don't know. But I like Clotheez which are exactly the length of of the diaper cover. No bulky foldovers. Cloth diapers are bulky enough as it is. American baby clothes are not made for cloth diapers so I found that baby outfits were useless and VL always had to wear up several sizes on the bottoms. Of course she's been out of diapers completely since she was around 18 months (elimination communication method!) and still has to wear several sizes up but that's because she's got such a juicy tush. I will say I am eyeing the Disana tie on diapers. These go from newborn to toddler. I saw a disana starter kit on eBay but since we have most of what we need already, it wouldn't work for us.

Evenflo glass bottles. A classic. Completely safe from harmful chemicals. And you can just freeze your milk in the bottle so no need for the breastmilk trays (though if you do end up needing breastmilk trays, Sensible Lines 1-oz actually fit into the bottle mouth. It's BPA-free which means that the tray and lid are always challenging to snap shut without spillage)...

My kid outgrew the Radian seat at the crotch and seat base. We're currently using a Britax Frontier Clicktight. These go on sale annually in September. Sunshine Kids Radian 80SL or XTSL (This is now rebranded as Diono.)
It's convertible so you use it from birth to 80 lbs; used rear-facing to 45lbs which is important because kids don't whiplash so much as internally decapitate. (PSA: Keep your kids rear-facing as long as possible. The youtube crash test dummy videos of rearfacing carseat vs forward-facing are chilling.) It comes with all the infant cushions, so you don't need to buy additional. It is made of steel alloy has a great crash test rating oh and also, it has one of the lowest toxicity ratings. oh and it folds flat, and has the leanest profile so you can fit 3 in a backseat in a sedan! The difference with the XT is it has an adjustable head rest for taller kids, and Side impact protection. Carseat.org has reviews of how it fits in different make/model cars, If you travel alot, then you'll want to get the carseat carrier. Although this thing advertises itself as portable, it only comes with one strap and it's heavy (hello, steel) but it folds up and therefore is less hard on your back than those car seat bucket seat monstrosities which will cause a hernia if you have to lug them around. Diapers.com sometimes has a 10% off coupon for new users and can be combined with 10% off from a friend's account. Or you can wait until Nov or December when this year's model goes on sale for 30% off. 

I happened to get a good deal on Zoobies Pet on BabySteals.com for half off retail. It's a 3-in-1 stuffed animal companion, pillow & blanket. VL loves her orangutan even if everyone else hates it. It is a little hairy and it sheds. So if I had a do-over I'd get the giraffe or zebra or tiger or bear. But of course those CUTE popular ones are not the ones that you get on a discount site. The only drawback is I think the owners are Mormon and of course it's made from synthetic fabrics. some SAHM/WAHM needs to innovate one with cottons/wool.

After resisting for 2.5 years, I have succumbed to the highly priced allure of the Learning Tower. We got one from the grandparents (we chipped in). VL loves to bake and help with cooking. When she was in her two's, she fell from the stool/step ladder with sad frequency. This thing is great for the paranoid parent and doubles as a playhouse (multi-functionality!) Costco has it for way under retail including a playhouse kit! She even uses it to wash the dishes. Yes, I make my toddler wash dishes. Of course those dishes are all enamel coated metal. After years of getting annoyed at the wood bowls from Asian stores & Ikea which cracked, varnish rubbed off, etc. and were hecka pricey, we got a set of enamel dishware for camping which was way cheaper than those "eco" kids dishes flooding the market now. It's camping season so we got it for $25. Maybe your local big box retailer will have it on discount when all the camp gear goes back into storage...

Other than a dresser and clothes that we got as a hand-me-down, that was it for our baby gear. Now that we are gearing up for baby #2, we've only added a few things to the list.

Cloth diaper changing stations. First time around we used a basket. This time I am going to hack/repurpose a painter workbag for the cloth diaper changing station--cloth diapers, flannel wipes, snappis, homemade baby wipe spray and/or hot water pump, homemade butt balm. We still are planning on doing diaper-free baby/elimination communication but since we started from 4 most last time, we don't know how that'll be with a newborn. I am eyeing the Raskog kitchen cart as a hacked diaper trolley but hubby is a little resistant.

Stroller
We didn't use a stroller so much with baby #1 as we carrier/wore her a lot. When we finally did get one, we mostly used it to haul the diaper bag and crap rather than the kid. So for this time around, I have specific requirements. At almost 7 yo, my 1st kid is too big to ride along so that leaves out all those double/2 seat/buggy board options. I need a one-hand push, mid-weight/not too heavy, singleton stroller with wheels that can handle some terrain (okay, like the park lawn and unpaved trails), and decent storage capacity. After lots of consideration I settled on the BOB Motion stroller with we got on year-end sale at REI. I added the BOB sun shield option and a Zen Kids stroller organizer/console.

We definitely need a new dresser for just the baby which we'll most likely buy used.

And my husband just made a new shelf/headboard for platform bed using lumber, brackets, milk paint, and tung oil.

See my pinterest for baby gear pins and wishlist.

The Other Blog

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

--Lewis Carroll

Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There 

1872 

I am a terrible correspondant.  I don't journal (having two grandparents, a mom, 4 aunties, 3 uncles, 4 cousins, an older brother & sister that have converging living arrangements kinda ruins it for you early on).  I infrequently facebook (it's a verb now).  And I am a luddite when it comes to the rest of social media and its etiquette (or lack thereof).

But, I do eat.  Every day as a matter of fact, three times at least, sometimes, 6 times a day.  And because I am frugal, and want to be self sufficient and healthy, I cook.  And occasionally, I write about it.  Every once in a while, I'll remember to take myself out of the moment of consumption and I take a picture.  Usually there are already several bites missing, but who cares?

So without further ado, I introduce my other blog.  Real Food, Real Phở.  I--I'm sorry you had to find out about it this way.  It's not you.  It's me.  Can we still be friends?  Maybe meet for drinks and rediscover our connection.  Do you like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain?

A Mother's Love Transcends

Earlier this year, I heard a story on public radio about from every pregnancy, children's cells live on in their mother, protecting her. I think it is the best and most incredible science story that I've ever heard. Rarely does Science affirm Mothers' intuitive knowledge and solace her loss.

Yesterday at a child's birthday party, I met an elder who was admiring one of my memorial tattoos dedicated to my father who died when I was 12. This wisewoman shared with me her stories of loss and giving the incredible gift of Love which is to be with someone when they die. She then went on to share her experiences of babyloss; her two sons who died at birth. She still felt their presence with her as divine beings.

I told her about the science discovery of our children's continuing presence in mothers to give her solace. I related how a Viet shaman (who is also scientifically trained as a psychologist) once told me "Spirit is the ancestor of Science."  What the soul knows intuitively, science will spend decades studying and trying to "prove".  Now, through science we can take someone's voice, project into outer space to a satellite and relay it back again to earth to a recipient through a cell phone device. Shamans have been doing that for thousands of years to the disbelief of Science.

Science is not objective; it has an objective rooted in a Western way of knowing (Cartesian logic). There are many other ways of knowing which Science can only fumble at comprehending as a blind person feeling an elephant's trunk. Scientists can never get to the Truth of a Mother's Love;  a microscope will never reveal the spirit. 

This research only demonstrates what mothers have always known to be true: All of our children are with us always as we are with them.  We transcend.  Love is.

For Dafina, Uyen, myself, and all mothers who have been through joy and sorrow...

This explains it better than I could... http://www.workingmomsbreak.com/2012/01/31/advice-you-will-never-hear-from-a-career-counselor/

goddess of grief

[N.B. I originally wrote & posted this poem for a dear and lovely friend of mine many moons ago. After standing at the threshold of Life and Death and losing mine own, I (re)view it anew with raw eyes and a womb that weeps blood.  This poem has since been published in SQUAT! Birth Journal Spring 2013 http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/536994]



wind water earth fire
blood salt tears
hands cupped to receive
tasting of the bitter
salted with loss
sorrow for what was
and glimpsed could-have-been’s
of a vanished future
of a seed within
ageless from the beginning of Self
dandelion filament
borne off to the elements
wind water earth fire
blood salt tears
moon wanes in grief
womb betrayed
bereft and laid bare to the core
wind water earth fire
blood salt tears
a Mother’s wisdom borne
intuitive
a Mother’s power borne
betwixt Life and Death
a Mother’s Love borne
infinite
forgiving
wind water earth fire
blood salt tears
hands cupped to receive
cleansing breath
cleansing blood salt tears
hallowed for blessings to come

for 10

resume

I've lead an eclectic, esoteric, mercurial journey through life and as I reach my reflective midlife, sometimes I wish my life-resume showed a little more... direction. Meandering is just another way of not planning.

And then sometimes, I look over everything I've experienced in my late-blooming adulthood--speed reading teacher, mariachi band, poetess, martial artist, self-defense instructor, youth organizer, crafter/artisan, ballroom dancer, teacher sometime write of poetry and prosery, procrastinator, anthropologist (all the former while being in a doctoral program and being a terrible student, obviously), CBO researcher/info activist, trainer, facilitator, interviewer, popular educator, screenwriter & production designer, midwifery student, doula, gala planner, blogger, itinerant CSA heritage pork dealer, homesteader, priestess, bellydancer, mother ( I actually became a goddess but folks have issue with honoring the sacred feminine...), working mother, finance director, communicator, campaign researcher, union elected, negotiator--and I have enjoyed the journey, friends gained and the myriad life lessons earned, even those steeped in sorrow and inscribed in ink.

While I'll always wish I made more of the opportunities (should have traveled more, should have found a new Wing Chun dojo), I'll never wish that I made less.

Is it just the third decade that thinned out my creativity or is it birthing myself as mother? Working mother is another way of being absent for the hours that matter most to my daughter.

As I prepare to embark on a sabbatical, I anticipate the prospect of being without boundaries and a safe job to define myself and my time.  I am trepidatious.  I want to make the best of this breathing period. I want to find my calling, pursue my dreams and passion. I want to be a mother whose absences do not define the week.

Home

The decision to walkaway from our house & O-town feels an awful lot like the decision to quit grad school. Agonizing, emotionally fraught, tangled feelings about our substantial time/financial investment and an unhealthy, unsustainable situation. Scariest choices I've made and the most freeing. In six months, I will pay off my grad student loans; 8 years to finally shrug that off.

Despite the tens of thousands of dollars that we've put into our property, we'll be relieving ourselves of a debt that would have hung over us until we retired. It feels like for the last few years, we've been treading water while it just kept rising. And now we've stopped treading and realized we could just stand up and stop drowning.

We'll be renters again and that requires an emotional/mental adjustment, but to be free of the cumbersome "joys" of home ownership is liberating. In two years, we could buy again, if we wanted.

It helps of course that my neighbor, former trusted boss, elder is buying our property fulfilling her family's dream of building a community retreat center founded on principles of compassion, justice and aspiration. It was not all for naught. We are contributing to a higher and better purpose...

We move out this weekend, to the burbs (though more diverse than burbs outside the Bay), to the edge of wildland, sienna hills. The opposite end from our urban existence. I look forward to being in a quiet place where my ears don't prick up with every loud bang, trying to decipher whether those were gunshots, and which street they must be coming from, was it a semi-automatic? Was anyone hurt?

A place where we can take long walks in the glimmering dusk, where my peripheral vision can ease up a little, where i have to fend off wildlife trying to survive not life gone wild trying to survive. Where my child can can play without being within arms reach. Where i can bike again, maybe even bike with my kid and not have my heart in my throat. A place wheere i can hear the wind, where the constant shushing roar in the ambience isn't the hum of traffic, but the rhythm of nature. I am perhaps idealizing and romanticizing. The burbs have no culture that cannot be conveniently sited in a mini mall with a Starbucks and Panera on the corners. An actress I like said, the suburbs are where bad things happen. She perhaps was overdramatizing, but I know as sleepy as O-town was, where we are headed is even more domestic and somnabulent.

I shall probably be the only mom in the PTA with tatts *and* a Masters degree. I shall try not to be a snob or an outcast. I've been plagued by a secret dread that something will happen before we leave. Something tragic. I know it is only anxiety and superstition. And i know that one of the neighborhood drug dealers was caught violating parole and is back in the clink, but still, i am tense. Reading the news everyday with its pornography of trauma doesn't help.

I've been looking forward to the fresh start, release of burden so much that I've almost forgotten about the important things I'm leaving behind as well, many of my friends. These last 5 years we've been so wrapped in our Household concerns that we've sometimes forgotten to appreciate our community. I've made efforts in these last few weeks to make time for my friends though the housing search and then move prep made it hard. And i promise to myself to make time to see them still. At least once a week, twice a month, i will try to stay later in oakland and hang out with a friend.

Where in the world is

Facebook has no soul, only soundbites. It is one's stream of consciousness distilled into a pithy fleeting haiku constrained by the disappointing affect of propriety to one's audience. Facebook is observation.

I long for engagement and connection. I long for soul.

http://www.naturalnews.com/032362_grief_illness.html
http://www.homeorizon.com/homeopathic-articles/psychiatry/grief-reactive-depression-and-its-homeopathic-approach

too tired to write more. articles say it all...

I dreamed a dream

I dreamed a dream in times gone by
When hope was high and life worth living..

Dreams lie below one's subconscious, guiding our desires, crafting our motivation. Did I know it? When did someone else's dream become mine own? When did I, the critic, the cynic, the optimist, become a believer? This American Dream. With its promise of home ownership as civic duty and self. When did a home have to be a house?

Then I was young and unafraid
And dreams were made and used and wasted
There was no ransom to be paid
No song unsung no wine untasted

Yes, the euphoria that preceded the fall, the mythic illusion sold to us. Starter homes were for trading up. Soothed by the emotional hook, the lie, the "natural" cost of living in the Golden State. Naive.

But the tigers come at night
With their voices soft as thunder
As they tear your hope apart
As they turn your dream to shame

We gambled. Double down on black in a game where we knew only what we knew. "The only rule you may be told is this one." We didn't know the rules. Nor the flawed rules behind the rules. Nor the avarice behind the rulers of the rules.

Securitized and resecuritized to secure profit.

And so we pay the price. Our dream teetered on the unsustainable fact that house prices should be sky high, in the red, not by red line, but by greed line, to line the pockets of the usurious. To hope for breaking even means hoping that housing becomes unaffordable again. Who would hope for such a heartless thing?

I had a dream my life would be
So diff'rent from this hell I'm living
So diff'rent now from what it seemed
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed

--lyrics by Andrew Lloyd Weber

In losing our security, we found... freedom.

salty memories
saliva, tears, breasts swell by reflex
mothersmilkmotherslove retained
holding breath against the pain
but breath, like tearsmilklove comes anyways

for naima, beloved child embraced by her ancestors

Checkmate, Mama

After watching the movie Black Swan, I don't do the "If you don't do XYZ, I will throw it away" consequences anymore. And also because 2 weeks ago, my daughter called me out on the bluff. She didn't want to clean up her kitchen toys and so I gave the usual consequence that I would throw them away. And she said OKAY! and then helped me to put them in the recycle bin that I pulled out in my attempt to escalate. Finally I tried saying I would give the toys to her baby cousin K8 (archnemisis) and she said OKAY.

Checkmate, momma.

Fortunately the next day, I asked her to make me something to eat and when she had no toys to do so, I reminded her that we were giving it all to K8 and of course she flipped out. So after age 3, don't say "I will throw it away" unless you mean it mean it.

mother's milk

my 3 year old is a poetess-in-the-making

sữa mẹ dúng:

mother's milk is like

dúng trái cam

like oranges

dúng trái dâu

like strawberries

dúng sà lách

like lettuce

dúng cà rêm

like ice cream

war on germs

I think the reason that the debate on vaccines is so heated on this is because it's an intensely personal parenting decision that is also intensely political. My take on all this is philosophical. The dominant metaphor and paradigm for larger Western society is warfare. The medical industrial complex is steeped in that framework, treating disease and bacteria as enemy combatants, and valuing profit over evidence-based protocols. So that's the context in which the billion dollar vaccination industry was developed.

When we look at the mortality rate associated with any given disease, let's say polio, we'll see that the mortality rate was dropping with the advent of industrialization and better sanitation--prior to the introduction of a polio vaccine. The early polio vaccines were "live" and many people who were vaccinated contracted polio from the vaccine itself before they recalled it. Most pro-vaccine lit only looks at the period immediately after vaccines were introduced as "proof" that they work. Without that larger historical context, yes, it's easy to attribute the salvation of the human race to vaccines.

Even with the recent pertussis outbreak, if you look at the population dying, it's typically very poor children, and in Cali, undocumented Latino immigrant children, who are more likely to have poor nutrition and poor health. Yet rather than address the underlying factors of poverty and anti-immigrant health policies, the DPH is telling the general population to vaccinate.

Let's look at Gardasil as another example--this vaccine for females which supposedly prevents genital warts, an STD, which can lead to cervical cancer. This was fasttracked onto the market and is the controversial subject of mandatory vaccination laws. It's been around a few years now and the deaths or sterilization or other vaccine injury of young girls is only beginning to make the FDA take a second look. What is manifestly clear to me, is that vaccines are a massive human guinea pig experiment funded and fueled by the pharmaceutical industry.

Anyways, I recommend Aviva Jill Romm's Vaccinations book over Dr. Sears. She is a midwife, herbalist and now MD. She actually explains the fine print of what are the benefits, risks & adverse reactions to vaccinations (i.e. what your doctor is supposed to tell you) AND how the disease manifests and it's risks so that one can make a truly informed decision. It's the only book I found to discuss the disease itself.

Final tangent (sorry there's no returns in here): It's only very recently that it's become profitable to understand the immune system and commodify non-invasive healing modalities (i.e. indigenous or traditional healing systems). Hence the sudden commercialization of probiotics as the "friendly" bacteria after decades of vilifying bacteria and creating the self-perpetuated problem of "super-bacteria" which are immune to antibiotics. From a holistic standpoint, the human body exists because of bacteria; we live in symbiosis with bacteria and it's not until our body is out of balance that the bacteria become harmful. In that context, we need to re-evaluate the supremacy of Western medicine and its paradigm over all other traditional modalities.

And as parents, we have to weigh and balance all those personal, political, social, financial factors and make the best decisions for our families. (As a side note, in true service of humanity, India patented their traditional system of healing under Creative Commons license to prevent the continued theft of "intellectual property/patent" by pharmeceutical corporations.)

growing pains

Babies are very smart and every thing they do has developmental purpose.

Having an experienced family chiropractor who worked with pregnant women and babies was my maternal salvation from the first time parent anxiety. My chiro mentioned to me how much the cranial plates shift in the first few years as babies' heads make fantastical growth. Sometimes, the cranial plates get a little stuck.

Ever notice how one eye seems smaller than the other at times? It's because the cranial plates near the ear of the smaller eye are a little stuck. Creating pressure in the cranium helps to alleviate the pressure and move the plates--so breastfeeding/nursing/sucking is physiologically and developmentally critical for babies in their cranial development. Sometimes when cranial plates get stuck and sucking doesn't help, the pressure of those cranial "growing pains" causes them to bang their heads or suck on random things or other "odd" repetitive behavior that the medical profession dismisses as phases or meaningless. So headbanging can sometimes help get the cranial plates get unstuck as a last (frustrated) resort.

Teething can also cause similar behavior. If you have access to a craniosacral therapy (chiropractor or massage therapist) it is very gentle and can really help babies to transition through all those growing pains without banging their heads in frustration. I highly recommend going at least once with your infant and asking them to show you how to do some of the techniques if you can't afford to go alot.

If you don't have access to craniosacral therapy, try giving her/him a light scalp/cranial massage. Feel for the grooves between the cranial plates above the ears, around the fontanelle (soft spot in back of head) and with your two thumbs gently gently move them apart. It won't feel like anything is happening or actually moving, but can help get it unstuck. Letting baby suck on something while you do this helps baby to move those cranial plates. I would do this while breastfeeding. There are other specialized techniques as well (like the ear tugging thing which I've been shown how to do but don't really know how to do so I leave it to the trained expert).

parenting equity

We live in a patriarchal society, so in a hetero family even a progressive family, gender is still going to be a struggle. I think white feminism (Stanton, Cody) did a huge disservice to women by demanding equality with white men (legal, political, biological) rather than equity. Historically, white women were emancipated based on the Stanton argument that white women could counteract the freed black male slave vote. Also, those white suffragettes and subsequent white feminists distanced themselves from motherhood as a form of unremunerated bondage and not coincidentally, the wage work of freed black women.

While that is all centuries ago, its legacy is this--Mothers are not valued in the mainstream power structure; the US is the ONLY 1st world nation that does not provide mandatory paid maternity leave. FMLA is a watered down approximation of a well meaning thought. If you are on welfare, you can only take of other people's children for pay, you cannot be paid to raise your own children. So the rallying cry that a "women can do anything men can do" is mostly true, but more importantly, men CANNOT do everything women can--give life and sustenance--and that is exactly what remains unacknowledged, unvalued, and unremunerated.
(ASIDE: the New Yorker had an interesting article a while back about the "liberating" American invention of breast pumps and how it forced mothers to go back to work sooner because now biology wasn't a barrier for women to be like men in the workplace.)

SAHM label is an effort to reclaim the degraded "homemaker."

All that to say that I don't take the gender dynamics as solely an individual couple's relationship problem, but a social problem. I struggle with it too, not because my husband is a patriarchal narcissist (far be it from true!), but because we live these socially imposed power dynamics and norms. And this all without bringing in other dynamics like race and culture.

Motherhood is still unpaid work.

The patriarchal nuclear family structure and the ruptures in extended family networks from immigration and American nomadic existence makes it so much harder; no grandmothers and elders live with us to raise our babies.

Dennis Brutus once gave met Tstsi Dengaremba's novel Nervous Conditions. And I think it gets exactly at the tension between Western feminism/norms and cultural roles.

Having exclusively breastfed and coslept until 1yo meant that my daughter was squarely attached to me which created its own cycle of emotional dependence. It wasn't until ~2.5yo that VL would ask for her Ba when she needed comfort or nurturing. Now this wasn't my husband's refusal or irresponsibility; he picked up the slack on all the household chores and other non-BF parenting so that I could nurture our child. When he was back at work FT, I voluntarily did all the diaper changes at night while I was on maternity leave in equitable appreciation of him working outside the home. For SAHMs, the household chores do fall on their shoulders more, because that is what is equitable. For families where both parents work outside the home, chores and parenting may be more negotiated in the 3 hours we have with the offspring before they go to sleep.

Until males start lactating (physiologicaly possible, if socially/cultural taboo. google it), the first few years fall squarely on the mother's breasts. I still struggle with what mainstream feminism enculturated in me and traditional/cultural roles.

January 7 at 10:12am

Act of Love

I used to joke that the Learning Annex has classes on things only rich people know like how to hide your money in overseas accounts.


Knowing about how to protect your family in the event of death, catastrophe, is one of those cultural capital that so many immigrant/low income families don't know and so get screwed over and remain in poverty. We went to a parents' workshop about it at Bananas Inc (Oakland).

My biggest take away is "A Will is an act of Love; it shows your children you love them enough to take care of them even after you die."

A Will is for when you die; a Living Will is for when you are incapacitated, establishes power of attorney; an Advance Health Directive is re: your medical care if you are incapacitated.

Other things we learned--if you write your own will it must be entirely HANDWRITTEN so that your identity can be verified through handwriting; if it is typed, probate court will disregard it even if you have notarized witnesses. Everything you own is your Estate including property, cars, life insurance, etc. Unless your Estate is in a Trust (a fictional company that your family are the "tenants/employees of"), it will go through probate court to ultimately decide even if there is a Will and your heirs will have to pay heavy taxes (something like 40%). If your Estate is in a Trust and you die, it does not go through probate court, your personal debt will be forgiven. If you don't have a Trust and die, your debtors have first right to claim everything in your Estate before your heirs see a dime and they will still have to pay probate tax on your entire estate, not just the remainder.

Guardianship of minors always goes through Probate court, but your Will can influence placement. No Will means the Court decides what is best for your children. We bought the Nolo book on DIY Wills until we can save up for a lawyer but each state also have different probate laws (it costs something like $500 to do a Will and $2500 to set up a Trust).

wretched of the earth

My ong ngoai passed away very early this morning. He had a heart attack at home, called all his daughters, and accompanied by my youngest uncle and my mother, he died without prolonged suffering. One of his last wishes because he had already a lifetime of suffering. His heart was broken after my ba ngoai died two years ago. The had been married over 60 years.

He was a good man who lived through a lot of hardship. Born a Catholic peasant in 1925 in a tiny hamlet called Lien Thuy under French colonization, though he was chau dich ton--the patrilineal heir, the firstborn son beget of the firstborn son beget of the village chief and so on and so forth, he tilled the catholic-ceded land land under peonage to his own grandparents for his disowned father's gambling debts; his mother left him at age 7 and a baby brother behind to become a wet nurse in the big city Ha Noi. He minded the water buffalo, ploughed & harvested the rice paddies and fished in Ha Long Bay and learned to be self-sufficient though unloved. He never gave up the hope and faith that his father's family would love him and perhaps even restore him to his rightful place.

As he grew of age, he was conscripted as coolie labor to the colonial Army and learned to build bridges and to hate the French. He had an customary arranged marriage with my ba ngoai. In his teens, he survived the Japanese invasion and their torching of the granaries and their deliberate famine that took 2 million lives. When armistice was declared, he joined the Viet Minh to prevent the French from regaining colonial power. And when it became clear that religion and Communism would never reconcile, he left behind his what ought o have been his ancestral lands, uprooted his family--ba co|his mother, ba ngoai, my eldest aunty and mother--to enter the South where he tried to find a small piece of earth to call his own. Roaming through the Mekong for many years, they finally settled in Quy Nhon in the Central region where my parents grew up.

My ong ba ngoai, my parents & siblings (& me in the womb), 4 aunties, 3 uncles, all left Viet Nam to join my oldest aunty in Honolulu where land was scarce to be had and jobs even scarcer. My grandparents, 3 of my aunties and 3 uncles tried to make a go of it in Missouri but the winters and the chicken factory were misery.

We were all reunited in San Diego; we all lived together until I was 12. I still mark time not by years but what street we lived on--Reynard then Ohio (ong ba, aunties, & uncles on Whitmen) then Auburn (then ong ba and 2 youngest uncles on Alta Dena), then mom & us separately Oro Vista, and finally Jason; for peasant stock, we were awfully nomadic.

I learned so many things from my ong ba ngoai. My ba ngoai of unconditional maternal love, spoke the love language of food. My ong ngoai though had only his stories of loss and perseverance to give to us grandkids, and at Tet, his handmade banh chung and his sesame candy gooey and almost scalding. I am one of the only grandkids who is fluent enough and was around enough to have listened to his stories. Ong ngoai secretly loved my siblings and I best he once told me years ago because he said, my mother suffered the most from my father's heroism and fate; and perhaps too, because we were his only full Viet grandkids and he had not the prospect of a chau dich ton|patrilineal heir to carry on the Phamily name and to remember his legacy. He taught me to be proud of being Viet; that was my first day of kindergarten when we lived on Reynard Way, when I came home proclaiming I was American, he took me by the hand, squatted down beside me, and told me that to Americans, I would always have yellow skin, black hair and eyes. I would always be Viet.

I learned to love tools and making things from watching him make banh chung|pork sticky rice cake every Tet, building non-permitted additions to our rented houses (Ohio & Auburn and later their house on 54th), and making flapping wooden angel harnesses from scraps of wood and cloth for the Christmas pageant (Auburn Dr).

I don't grieve very well. I tattoo.

I lost my father when I was too young to understand and taboo to speak of it. And so, I write. I feel so bereft to have lost my roots in this world. There were so many more things I wanted to learn from them, about them. And with the narcissism of youth and American-ness, I marked not the time until too late.

My grandfather wore 3 piece suits, fedoras and pocket watches, loved cognac and good food, made the best banh chung and keo me every Tet up until very recently, and lived to play with his great-grandchildren. In his elder years, he learned to forgive (not the French nor Japanese) but certainly his paternal family, and to love. He still dreamed I think of water buffaloes and rice paddies (and thit cay on occasion) but he and my grandmother had their garden, family, and Church. And now he has peace and rejoined my ba ngoai in the either.

An era has passed. I am disconsolate, desiring what is in the past, a byproduct perhaps of being partly raised by my grandparents. I feel in this modern society we lose our rituals and I feel it the most with death. We've lost our rituals of death and honoring our loved ones by being with them as they die and our hands that loved them so well, preparing them for their final resting place. I am bracing myself for the artifice of mortuary preparation and the dullness of performance.

mangalitsa

dreaming of pork part 2

I think I remain on the Heritage foods listserv just to torment myself.

Last year around holiday time, Trung and I braved the mega-hipster crowd to get heritage pork from the Pork Prom over at Blue Bottle in Jack London (that's hipster to the third power!). We were in self-snaking lines for an hour. But, we ate Mangalitsa. That's right, the hungarian curly pork I salivated over.

my fave is still Red Wattle. Nyum nyum.