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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   35126 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025

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I recently came across this article that really cemented your view for me.

This woman lives with her husband and two side pieces and she's on her own for a startling amount of time while she's giving birth. Her husband is in no rush to make it to the delivery room:

My water broke at 5am. Plot-relevantly, I had gone to sleep only two hours prior...

I woke up my husband as the very last step – I went into his room and said “my beautiful love,” at 5:30am, which we both know full well is a crime. By nature, we keep similar hours.

He emitted a quarter-awake “you are inflicting horrible crimes on me and you are not forgiven” moan.

When I said, “I think my water broke,” he sort of flipped. Like a pancake but on its own.

“Oh!” he said.

“Nothing exciting is going to happen for a while. So I think you should get more sleep. Partners A and C are driving me to the hospital and getting me checked in.”

Later that day:

In the window where I should have eaten, the boyfriends who had brought me to the hospital had gone home to sleep, and my husband was on his way.

I had the bagel because my husband was near a bagel place and mentioned he could pick some up. It sounded like a treat, so I said yes. At the time he and I were coordinating on what he should pick up, my contractions were very slow, or hadn’t started yet. I had no idea how close the epidural was. Once he started picking things up, I watched his map location, was surprised by how slow he was, and decided not to ask for more things.

He agreed, and I went to the hospital... My husband arrived with some snacks at 1pm.

Husband goes home at some point. Next day:

Around 7am I was really panicked. I needed to course correct sharply to something else. I told my boyfriend to wake up my husband and explain to him what was going on.

To sum up:

But I cry uncontrollably when I think of how the actual moment my daughter came out of me feels like a bad drug trip. I have a blurry picture of that moment, only a few details crisp (like seeing the glowing rod coming out of a metal refinery). I remember being confused, misled, tricked into hurting myself, experiencing the birth of my daughter as a great alien rush of self betrayal, with no awareness of her, and full awareness of the people who had surrounded and outnumbered me, who did not seem to deal with me as an intelligent subject, who demanded my attention by shouting at me throughout the whole thing, barraged me with questions afterwards, questions I had already answered. I remembered the array of uniformed medical personnel around me a bluish blur of enemy forces who had worn me down and conquered me.

Indeed, managing the medical staff is the proper role of the husband in this situation. But I guess he was too tired to fully attend the brith of his child!

> going back to sleep after your pregnant wife's water broke

> lollygagging around buying snacks before showing up at the hospital

Surprisingly Chaddish attitude for someone who literally has a wife's boyfriend. Actually, two wife's boyfriends. But then again, as @HereAndGone mentioned, perhaps there was some confusion and motivational issues due to lack of paternal certainty. three_spidermen_pointing_at_each_other.jpg or Braun-Westbrook-Murray-almost-losing-uncontested-rebound.mp4, which could very well be a fresh meme from yesterday.

the people who had surrounded and outnumbered me, who did not seem to deal with me as an intelligent subject

Hmm... surely the hospital staff had no probable cause to proceed under such an impression?

Regardless of the author's particular cognitive ability (I suspect it's materially higher than average, especially higher than that of the median woman giving birth nowadays), I imagine hospital staff are trained to give clear, concise directions when things are chaotic. I suppose where the hospital staff may have failed, was to flatter and indulge her self-perceived intelligence during the birthing process.

To return to a basketball reference, if I'm coaching a basketball team and one of the players gets the ball unguarded in a corner, I'd be yelling "SHOOT IT! SHOOT IT!" and not saying "Please shoot the ball. Your true shooting percentage suggests you're a good shooter and analytics have long shown that corner three-pointers are one of the most valuable shots in the game from an expected value standpoint. This ask to attempt a field goal from your current location on the floor is time sensitive. Thank you for your understanding."

Particularly if the hospital had to deal with three different guys showing up with her - "so you're family?" "oh no" "spouse?" "he is, we're just her significant others". And then all three of them bugger off and leave her on her own.

If you're a nurse on a maternity ward full of women about to give birth, in the middle of giving birth, or just after giving birth, you don't have time to deal with all that drama.

Author certainly does think she's smarter than the average bear, but given the way she describes how she and her partners acted, and how none of them seemed to have researched "having a baby: what happen when?", e.g. "I have gestational diabetes, what does that mean when I go into labour?" for one, I think she's not that much more clever than the ordinary woman.

I told my boyfriend to wake up my husband and explain to him what was going on.

And today I finally understood the meaning of this verse in the Gospel of Matthew:

Truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town.

The only thing I can think of is that Dear Love Husband isn't 100% sure the kid is his, so he's letting Boyfriends A and B pick up the slack, and they feel the same ("it might or might not be my kid, no need to knock myself out about this"). This is why you have your mother and sisters around for the birth of your child, not the husband/boyfriend/guy you picked up and banged in that shopping mall parking lot.

Oh boy, that article is an entire trip around the solar system. That woman sounds like she did approximately zero preparation reading up on what would happened during labour and delivery, what she should do, etc. She's kinda blaming the hospital, but I bet the hospital imagined "this is a grown-ass woman having a baby, presumably she has her shit together". They weren't expecting her to be trailing three separate guys who couldn't be arsed to figure out "should I get food for the woman having a baby?" or doing anything like "stick around and be helpful", plus she wanted her Ritalin in the middle of delivery? Yeah, no, that's not gonna happen.

The type of person who's on Ritalin for the ADHD (read: to help her push her grades up) and then of course she's on Soylent and gabapentin and coffee and and and... I'm surprised the hospital didn't just leave her in the corridor to get on with things seeing as how she took no responsibility at all in finding out what the hell she should be doing when having a baby. "Oh, you mean I can't get my venti soy latte espresso while my baby is in the birth canal? how unfair!"

full awareness of the people who had surrounded and outnumbered me, who did not seem to deal with me as an intelligent subject

...If I could do it over, I would argue hard to take Ritalin (which would have bought me 3 hours of physical energy) and gabapentin (which would have halted the serious anxiety I was having, and would not have put me to sleep if I’d also had Ritalin). I had both in my backpack. I had been taking both about once every 7-10 days throughout pregnancy with my psychiatrist’s blessing.

Gosh, they didn't treat her like an intelligent being? Could it possibly be because she didn't act like one? I mean, with the amount of preparation for the entire birth that she and the Three Stooges showed, why would they think she didn't have the brains God gave a doorknob? And newsflash, your psychiatrist is not an obstetrician, they don't and shouldn't be telling you what you can take during pregnancy, her psychiatrist probably just agreed "yeah, whatever" because otherwise she would have bitched and moaned unbearably about it.

What are the risks of using methylphenidate in pregnancy?

Some studies have suggested that there is an increased chance of miscarriage and some types of heart defect in the baby following use of methylphenidate in early pregnancy. Overall, it is very clear that most babies exposed to methylphenidate in the womb do not have a birth defect. It is also uncertain if these problems are due to methylphenidate itself, or to underlying factors that are more common in women taking methylphenidate.

Methylphenidate and similar drugs have been linked to reduced growth of the baby in the womb. This is thought to be because they can affect blood flow through the placenta.

Methylphenidate can potentially cause short-term withdrawal symptoms in the newborn baby if taken in the weeks before delivery. For this reason, a baby may be monitored for some time after birth to check for symptoms such as jitteriness, difficulty sleeping and breathing problems.

Gabapentin and pregnancy

Gabapentin is not generally recommended in pregnancy as there is not enough information about whether it's safe for your baby.

However, from the small amount of information that is available, there's no clear evidence that it's harmful. It should only be taken if the benefits of the medicine outweigh the risks.

If you take gabapentin for epilepsy, it's important that this is well treated during pregnancy, as seizures can harm you and your baby. Keep taking gabapentin, but talk to your doctor urgently. They may recommend you change to a different medicine.

If you're trying to get pregnant or have become pregnant while taking gabapentin, it is recommended to take a high dose of folic acid (5mg a day). You can get this from your doctor or midwife.

Ideally you'll take high dose folic acid for 3 months before you start trying to get pregnant and for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Do not worry if you have not taken it before you get pregnant, but start taking it as soon as possible once you know that you are pregnant. It helps your baby to grow normally.

If you take gabapentin around the time of giving birth, your baby may need extra monitoring for a few days after they're born. This is because they may have withdrawal symptoms from gabapentin.

We do not know what the long term effects of taking gabapentin in pregnancy may be on childhood learning and development. For safety, you'll usually be advised to take it only if the benefits of the medicine outweigh the risks. Talk to your doctor about the benefits and risks.

I think that anyone halfway sane who gets pregnant while being in a non-exclusive relationship would go out of her way to carefully select the father and then have the fatherhood confirmed through DNA testing. The alternative, "I just stopped taking the pill and continued to fuck my lovers, and it does not matter who is the father because we are all one big happy polycule" seems rather terrible.

To be fair, the risks of Ritalin or gabapentin are obviously much smaller when the baby is about to be born. This in particular:

Gabapentin is not generally recommended in pregnancy as there is not enough information about whether it's safe for your baby.

Is the typical medical CYA nonsense. There's not enough information about whether bagels are safe for the baby either.

This is the part I'm more concerned about:

If you take gabapentin around the time of giving birth, your baby may need extra monitoring for a few days after they're born. This is because they may have withdrawal symptoms from gabapentin.

Ms. Smartie wanted "I need my uppers, I need my uppers, and then I need my downers so the uppers won't make me too high" while in labour.

As per the linked information, taking Ritalin is a lot riskier:

Methylphenidate and similar drugs have been linked to reduced growth of the baby in the womb. This is thought to be because they can affect blood flow through the placenta.

Methylphenidate can potentially cause short-term withdrawal symptoms in the newborn baby if taken in the weeks before delivery. For this reason, a baby may be monitored for some time after birth to check for symptoms such as jitteriness, difficulty sleeping and breathing problems.

But her drug pusher psychiatrist said it was okey-dokey for her to keep taking her fixes during pregnancy, so what do I know?

And I would have argued to fuck the blood glucose numbers and have as much apple juice as I wanted. Maybe Soylent too, especially small amounts.

And that's not a good idea because...

Monitoring during labour

It’s important that your blood sugar levels stay in the target range during labour. This will help to prevent your baby’s blood sugar getting low in the first few hours after they’re born.

Take your testing kit with you to the hospital, so that you can monitor your own blood sugar at first. Once you are in active labour, the hospital team will monitor your blood sugar every hour to make sure it stays at a safe level. You might be given insulin and glucose through a drip to help with this.

I'm finding this stuff after some cursory Googling. She surely had an ob-gyn or other doctor during the course of her pregnancy? Who she could have asked all about this? But she seems to have just floated on by in a cloud of "me smart, me not need to figure this out" and then blamed the hospital staff for all being dumb and not even knowing what Soylent was. Four alleged adults in the house, the husband couldn't even be bothered to wake up for his kid being born, and none of them had a clue what to do during the labour and birth.

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