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PaperclipPerfector  6d ago (text post)   26240 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 5, 2025

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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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