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Post by Vyckie D. Garrison on Apr 23, 2010 10:14:24 GMT -5
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Post by freefromtyranny on Apr 23, 2010 10:47:33 GMT -5
Great post! I just want to say that telling your grandmother that you won't be visiting unless she can call your son by his given name is not manipulative. That's good boundaries.
When do we get to find out what happens in Missouri?
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Post by gardenkatz on Apr 23, 2010 11:13:51 GMT -5
Tapati! Glad to see you back!
Excellent installment of your story. Does your son still go by his Hare Krishna inspired name?
Good for you! Setting boundaries with grandma was not in the least manipulative.
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Post by humbletigger on Apr 23, 2010 13:17:27 GMT -5
I love your stories, tapati! They have helped me gain a better acceptance of the sincerity of my neighbor's faith- not the stories of your abuse, but the way you still worship and believe yourself.
Though I must confess, I am hurting reading your birth story. Owie , owie, owie! My niece just had her first- at home, delivered by the father.
I don't think she's allowed to contact me, since I didn't get an official birth notice. Her mother didn't even contact me, so since they are patriarchy I am sure it must an edict from the father. *sigh*
I think I'll send a gift anyway, maybe it will soften her heart a little.
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Post by dangermom on Apr 23, 2010 16:09:18 GMT -5
I'm glad to see more from you, Tapati; I'm very interested in your story. I agree that you did a fine thing in setting boundaries with your grandmother. And, cute baby!
How old is he now? Is he still Lakshmana, maybe Lakhi?
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Post by Sierra on Apr 23, 2010 16:13:46 GMT -5
I agree, Tapati - I wouldn't call what you did manipulative. She overstepped her bounds by attempting to rename your son, and you told her there would be consequences to her actions. Nothing manipulative about it.
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Post by nikita on Apr 23, 2010 16:37:49 GMT -5
You manipulative? Other way 'round I think. She was being manipulative by trying to rename your own child. When my sister first met my husband she shortened his name to a nickname he hated but he was too polite to say anything at the time. So she persisted and got other of my family members to start calling him that. I quickly told her that he hated that name and not to call him that and she smiled and just said, 'But that's how I know him now so I'm not going to change at this point.' and just walked away. It had been a week! And she did it on purpose, just to mindf**k with me. She's a terrible person, honestly. So to me the person who tries to change someone's name against their will (or their parent's will) is the one who has clearly stepped over the boundaries, not the person who tries to push them back over that line. Great posting Tapati. I love hearing your stories from another religious culture. Same problems, different garments.
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Post by tapati on Apr 23, 2010 16:52:31 GMT -5
Good points about it not being manipulative to push back--but that's how it felt at the time. My aunt Gin similarly had to refuse to come to Christmas Dinner unless her then husband, an African American, could come too. It doesn't work to just say "I would be really hurt if you choose to ignore the name I carefully chose and use George in its place." I knew I had to push it further. The next installment does take place in Missouri and Iowa and involves a lot of the family dynamics and the culture clash I was having with them. Lakshmana does still use his birth name, the full thing, after a stint of calling himself a regular name in Jr High and High School. (I encouraged that, knowing how that age group is.) None of us remains in the Hare Krishna faith these days. If I had to choose a label, I'd call myself a Unitarian because it's the only official religion big enough to encompass all of my beliefs. (Atheists are also welcome there, btw.) I'm still pushing through migraines but do hope to have the next installment very soon. This one was mostly a set up for that one.
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Post by krwordgazer on Apr 24, 2010 17:25:48 GMT -5
What a story, Tapati! I agree about Grandma and the name thing. My parents tried to do that to me about my son's name. We didn't let them get away with it, either.
But that hospital! What's up with not letting you keep your newborn baby with you? Just because he hadn't been born at that hospital! That's the stupidest thing I ever heard-- except perhaps that jerk of a doctor getting impatient with your roommate's grief over her lost breast. How would he like it if he'd had his you-know-what cut off? Would he have consoled himself with "at least I'm not blind!"
Makes me want to slap him.
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Post by dangermom on Apr 24, 2010 17:57:16 GMT -5
Yeah, I felt the same--so bizarre that you couldn't have your son, and the treatment your roommate got.
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Post by nikita on Apr 25, 2010 3:01:05 GMT -5
There are really only two places an infant can go in a hospital (to stay). A brand newborn can go either in neonatal nursery, birthing mother's room on the floor, or NICU unit (if they were born there or transported immediately after a sudden birth outside the hospital). If they are not immediately newborn then they would go to the pediatric ward but only if they are admitted as a patient. Since he was ten days old, hadn't been born there even, and was not ill, there was no place for the hospital to keep him. Sending him home and admitting his ill mother was the only real option the hospital had. Home or foster care while his mother is hospitalized. That's So Cal hospital reality any way. If there are different rules in other states I am not aware of them, but I don't know a hospital in So Cal that would have handled that differently.
I am so sorry that happened to you, Tapati. Being separated like that would be so hard.
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Post by krwordgazer on Apr 25, 2010 16:19:34 GMT -5
Ok, Nikita, maybe that's reality, but what kind of sense does it make, really? I know, he's not a patient, and the hospital would want to charge him like a patient, to be there. They'd probably even have to let him use one of their little cribs. So then the insurance company would refuse to pay for him to be there since he wasn't sick. I'm not challenging you-- I know you didn't set the policy. But The Rules just don't make any sense, and they seem to be to be more about Who's Going to Pay For This than about what's best for the mother and the baby. Which is the American health-care system in a nutshell.
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Post by nikita on Apr 25, 2010 17:01:57 GMT -5
Hospitals are excessively about who's paying because they generally operate a skin tight budget. But the real problem is disease and infection. Hospitals are dangerous places and if you don't need to be in one it's best to stay out. A young healthy baby is not served by being placed in a very germy diseased environment for other than his own health reasons. If there's some place else for him to be he should be there instead. I understand the psychological hurt involved here -- and the milk issue -- but the hospital has a very valid reason for sending the baby home. If the mother is so ill she needs to be hospitalized she is not in any condition to care for him and he does have a home to go home to.... It makes sense. It hurts emotionally, but it is a reasonable and necessary decision to make. Now, the situation with the mastectomy patient, that was just cruel and I wish I could say that it is so uncommon but especially where women's health is concerned some hospitals and doctors are very unfeeling. I know of a case where a woman became so infected after birth that she was in excruciating pain and her agonized cries upset the other maternity patients so they just moved this woman to another floor to keep her moaning and crying from distressing the other new mothers. No one addressed her infection, however. Her doctor was not on staff and he would show up and look at her chart and stare at her and walk away and the hospital staff were upset but not so upset that they did anything more than call her doctor up and ask him to do something which he never did. After five agonizing days she died of massive infection, totally unnecessarily. He was brought up on charges to the Calif Medical Board and all they did was order him to take come refresher courses and he changed from ob/gyn to work comp medicine. But his case is still public record, as is the hospital's record, and if anyone researches him (as I did) they will find this on his record. So I am not defending bad medicine or saying that hospitals don't do bad and uncaring things, just that sending this particular healthy baby home overnight was not one of them. Again, Tapati, I am so sorry for all you went through and I really find your story very interesting. I hope you post more soon. Happy Malaria Day!!
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Post by tapati on Apr 26, 2010 1:28:15 GMT -5
From my point of view, I was taking care of him just fine at home and didn't see why I couldn't have him with me in the room, but I was just nineteen and no one explained the reason behind the policy to me. So it just seemed cruel, especially when my breasts became hard as rocks.
The doc in question was fairly young so I hope he learned something about empathy as he continued practicing medicine. The lesson in not comparing relative hardship stayed with me forever, though.
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Post by krwordgazer on Apr 26, 2010 22:27:33 GMT -5
Ok, those hospital policies do make sense the way you've put them, Nikita. But-- I don't know so much how things are now-- but it used to be that doctors and hospitals didn't feel they needed to explain things like this to anyone, least of all a "nobody" young woman with a baby. In addition, Tapati was risking engorgement and infection, since she couldn't make the breast pump work-- plus she was extremely uncomfortable, which could have had an effect on her healing process. It would have been better if a nurse or someone had given her some practical assistance, don't you think? (I never could make breast pumps work either. I found expressing by hand much more effective.
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Post by tapati on Apr 27, 2010 2:17:09 GMT -5
This breast pump was really frustrating, with some bulb thing I was supposed to keep squeezing but nothing seemed to really happen and my milk just wouldn't let down. It was driving me bonkers. Since I was admitted late at night I guess they didn't have much staff to help me and it was kind of embarrassing for me to admit I wasn't making any progress.
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Post by humbletigger on Apr 28, 2010 8:09:29 GMT -5
I always expressed using the "cow method".
It wouldn't work well if you wanted to store your milk, as standing up and expressing into a Mason jar can really do a number on your back after awhile. (I did try!)
But to relieve pressure and just get the milk out, I would stand in a hot shower and milk that teat like an old farmer. (It helps if you have actually milked a real cow before ;D)
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