Poverty

Growing up I remember hearing the phrase "We don't have the money" constantly, to the point that as a young child I learned to look at price tags before asking for anything. My mom would see me and ask if I wanted that, especially around Christmas when looking to see what I wanted, and I would tell her no. She asked why a lot and I would say it was too expensive, to this day I have a hard time buying anything for myself if I can find it cheaper or can do without.
I do not know how much we could really afford, and how much my dad just did not want to spend. Though I do remember one occasion, when we were on vacation with our Girl Scout troop and I had to use my birthday money to pay for gas to get us home or we would have been stranded. My mom told me that I would get my money back but I never saw any of the money.
China
I spent a summer in China, and saw a lot of poverty. Many people think that since they are communist that they make sure everyone is taken care of, but part of the laws of are that you only have rights in the province you are born in. So if you move to a bigger city to make a better life for your family you no longer have the benefits of the government, including that your children can't go to school.
I saw many homeless families begging on the streets, who had moved from farm areas to the city to get better jobs. 

Breastfeeding

Breastfeeding is a meaningful topic for me, because I wanted my son to be exclusively breastfed until he was at least 1 and planned for him to self-wean. I never thought that he would not latch and that I would end up exclusively pumping, but that is what happened. I noticed when he was 3 months old that he was tongue-tied which is why he wouldn't (couldn't) really latch, I had it snipped as soon as I noticed it. We saw a lactation consultant because I really wanted him to start latching. She informed me she had never seen a more stubborn child in her life, milk was pouring on his head and he was screaming for the bottle. The second he was given the bottle he stopped crying and started eating. I managed to pump for seven and half months, after that I could not take it any longer.

In Ghana a national policy was developed that said babies should only receive breast milk and breastfeeding rates have increased 22% in 5 years. Women are taught to breastfeed the minute that the baby is born. Women are expected to feed their babies wherever, whenever and are not expected to use any type of cover, but the culture is very modest tight pants and low cut tops are not acceptable. I find it very interesting that in America breast can be shown in sexual ways, but it is not as acceptable to openly breastfeed in some places.

I feel that this information will impact my future work, in many ways. For one I am a doula in training, and I would like to be able to help clients be successful with breastfeeding, I have learned how to spot a tongue-tie now which is a very common problem with breastfeeding. I also want to open a child development center, and I want to promote breastfeeding by allowing mothers to breastfeed in the classrooms and offering a quiet place to breastfeed if they would prefer. I also want to be able to offer my staff the time to go breastfeed their child during the work day, instead of just offering space for them to pump.

Birth

I went into labor early on May 4, 2012 I had been going to see a midwife throughout my pregnancy. When I told my husband that I had been having contractions he wanted me to go ahead and call. I made the call, I was told to take a shower to see if they stopped and to call back if they continued and got closer together this was at about lunch time. Around 2pm my contractions were only five minutes apart so I called my husband to come home from work and called the midwife back and told her that we would be coming in to the birth center to be checked. I live an hour from the birth center and by the time we got there the contractions had spaced back out, so we came home and spent the night.

            I got up the next morning still having contractions but they were spaced very irregularly, so we decided to go check our mail. It’s not a long walk but during it my contractions went from 10 minutes apart to under 5 minutes apart. I called the midwife and she said to head on to the birth center. We arrived before she did so she told us to go get some lunch, as you are encouraged to eat during labor there. I was put on a monitor for only 20 minutes but they were the longest 20 minutes of my life, I hated not being able to move and forced to lie on my back. As soon as the monitoring was over, I received antibiotics for Group B Strep, and then I got into the birth tub. I labored in the birth tub for several hours, with country music blaring through the birth center since I was the only laboring mom there. When it came time to push, I had gotten out of the tub to make sure I was dilated enough to push. I was allowed to get back into the tub as I wanted a water birth, however as I was pushing nothing was happening in the tub. The midwife encouraged me to get out and try other positions, I tried getting on all fours, squatting, laying on my back which worked best for me. But I still was not really progressing, they were telling me to go urinate but I was unable. Finally they decided to try to cath me, within three pushing and only minutes my beautiful son was born. He was born at 6:07pm and we were released at approximately 1am.

Germany

In Germany all births are required to have a midwife present with a doctor being optional. A pregnant woman is not legally allowed to be fired and can stop working 6 weeks before the due date and cannot return to work for 8 weeks with full pay. Then there are three years of unpaid leave available, with the third year being able to be taken by either parent. A practice that would probably never be accepted in the U.S. is that parents must choose the child's name off an approved list.