The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I went in for an ultrasound, and baby #3 is looking good as far as they can tell, and is a boy.
People keep asking if I'm excited, and I just look awkward, because I don't feel excited, but think it's probably the right thing to do, and that I will probably be glad to have a son later on, I hope. Nurses keep having me take depression questionnaires as a matter of course (I am not and have never been clinically depressed, but half the symptoms overlap with pregnancy, they also strongly overlap with sleep deprivation such as just after giving birth, and they like to give it to pregnant and postpartum women multiple times. I give some credence to Abigail Shrier's observation that the medical establishment likes to give depression screenings out too much, and get people who are just feeling neutral but going through physical changes to second guess that). There are no parenting questionnaires, but I can sign up to enroll in a baby brain study if I want. I feel like some of this is related to the current fertility problem.
Did you want a daughter instead?
I'm ambivalent, I just tend not to feel excitement over babies in general. I want the children in the long run, but many of the parts I don't like are front loaded.
You should be proud of how forward thinking you are.
Also:
Do not circumcise. It is a horrific abuse of the rights of a person who is, at the end of the day, not your property, and whose body belongs to himself. Think critically about the arguments proponents give in favor of the practice. Remember that most of the world considers it to be a bizarre and gruesome thing to do. Obviously I could share my full set of arguments for why I believe what I believe, if for some reason you wanted to discuss it.
There is a documentary called American Circumcision which I think is good, and which is available on Kanopy, a free streaming service that comes with any US library card.
My parents say that they mutilated me because no one ever suggested that they might not do that. It supposedly never occurred to them not to do it. You won't have that excuse.
@Gaashk, I wanted to, uh, toss my foreskin into the ring from the other direction and agree with Campire. I'm uncircumcised and it would take at least six figures to buy it off me.
You hear a lot more from people who wish they weren't circumcized than are glad they aren't, so hopefully it counts for something
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link