Letters to the Editor
ThoughtsofSusan
Published Letters: 117 Editor's Choice: 22
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You say vitally reassuring, I say pain in the...
[Read the article: No more periods, period.]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Look. Just because you love your period doesn't mean this is true of all women.
For *some* women, it's a painful, miserable experience that does not in any way resemble "reassurance".
I've been doing this off-label for years, thank God for understanding doctors. When I want reassurance that I'm not pregnant, I'll take a test. If I want reassurance that I'm a real, functioning woman, I have a boyfriend.
If I wanted several days of GI upset, horrific pain and being utterly useless to the world, I'd have a period. Oddly enough, I do not often find this is the case. For many years in my adolescence, I thought I was the only one going through this; my mother told me to suck it up because it couldn't *possibly* be that bad.
But I'm not the only one. For every person who thinks of it as a monthly period of renewal, there's someone else for whom it is a monthly period of hell. For those people, this is a blessing. I don't think anybody intends for it to be for everyone, the same way hormonal birth control isn't for everyone. If you don't want to mess with your body, I absolutely respect that--if mine worked well, I wouldn't want to mess with it, either.
If you're not in this situation, though, don't try to claim that nobody should use birth control this way because you think it's not natural. Pain is very natural, that doesn't mean that it's good. I acknowledge that there may be long-term complications to this, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone just to get rid of the "inconvenience" of having a period, but I'll take a possible long-term complication any day over what I had to go through before.
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How much "opting out" are you planning on?
[Read the article: Do I have to be a mommy to "opt out"?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I read "opt out" as "stay home," to be honest, and if you're thinking about *that* level of involvement, you definitely need to talk to your sibs first.
But if you just mean as far as ditching some concept of "success" for a life where you can live near your family members and spend time with them? Nothing wrong with that at all, and I seriously doubt anyone will fault you for it. I grew up living fairly near my grandparents and one aunt. That aunt would often come and stay with my grandparents on weekends--she lived about an hour and a half or two hours away, generally--and we did a lot of things as a group. I don't know if she ever wishes she'd had a family of her own, but I'm definitely glad to have been able to spend so much time with her, and I wish my other aunts had lived nearer so I could have seen them more than once or twice a year.
But she did still have a career. It wasn't one that was generally thought of as lucrative, but because she had no kids of her own, she drives a nice car, she has a nice condo, she goes on nice vacations. She's not wealthy by any stretch, but she lives very comfortably with her two cats, and my brother and I still see her all the time. It's definitely not what everybody wants out of life, but it's not a bad deal at all.
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Hmm.
[Read the article: Bring on the runts]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I don't have kids myself yet, and therefore can't be described as any kind of "boob nazi" thus far. But... I've already heard people grumbling about how breastfed babies tend to fall lower on the weight charts, usually in response to pediatricians acting like those children need to "bulk up". Okay, let's say we adjust the charts and some infants are really heavier than we thought. Why would we encourage those parents to use formula instead?
Even if adding leptin to formula worked while an infant was drinking formula, I don't see how it could be expected to work long-term except insofar as children who are heavier tend to grow into heavier adults. If you have to *artificially* keep your child slim, I really don't think that's going to transfer all that well. As soon as you're on to Kraft mac and cheese and hot dogs, the benefits will be gone. (I've adored Kraft mac and cheese since I was a little kid, but we all know it isn't health food!)
Even breastfeeding, according to a story I read today, probably won't keep you slim as an adult. The only thing that can do that is eating well and exercising. But if you have to rely on artificial alternatives for weight control from day 1... it really doesn't bode well for the rest of your life.