Se Hace Camino Al Andar

This was originally posted to the BLW Yahoo group and I am taking the liberty of posting it in as many places as possible. If you feel so inclined, please cut and paste the text below and re-post!

Posted with author’s permission.

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Please forward this message on to all your relevant contacts ! I am
desperate to get my research back, so I am going public with my story.
Hello,

My name is Emma Kwasnica. I am a 30-year-old Canadian tandem-nursing
mother living in Montréal, whose Facebook account has now been
entirely disabled over the breastfeeding photos controversy. The
official petition group on Facebook is called Hey Facebook,
breastfeeding is NOT obscene! . I am reaching out because I think you
might be interested in the Facebook fiasco over breastfeeding images,
and them being classed as “obscene, sexually explicit and
pornographic”. Yes, I said breastfeeding. The most loving, selfless
act on Earth.

For the record, my entire Facebook account has now been deleted, with
no explanation from the administrators of Facebook. While they have
not confirmed the reason for disabling my account, I can only suspect
it stems from the fact that, in the days leading up to the disabling
of my account, I had photos of me breastfeeding my daughters deleted,
and was given a “warning” for having had uploaded “obscene” content
that renders Facebook “unsafe for children”.

Given the amount of obscene, pornographic, and truly disturbing
photos, applications and groups that proliferate across Facebook, I
am stunned that this has happened to me. I am an aspiring
midwife/Childbirth Educator/ Breastfeeding Counselor; I run a lively
discussion group on Facebook called Informed Choice : Birth and
Beyond, and have been sharing all of my summarised research, studies,
links regarding pregnancy, birth and motherhood with a group of
nearly three hundred people, since July 2008. And now, everything
that I ever wrote, all my photos, all of my midwifery-related
research, has been deleted –right off the face of Facebook.
Furthermore, this does not concern me alone, as many (over a
hundred ?) other Facebook users had their posts deleted, too, since
whole discussion threads were deleted into oblivion, if it was indeed
me who began the thread (which, 80% of the time, I had started the
threads, since this was my group/me sharing the most recent research
relevant to the childbearing/-rearing woman).

Facebook has not responded to my e-mails politely enquiring why my
account has been disabled. They remain faceless. Hence the reason why
I am now reaching out and going public with my situation. I am
desperate to get my words back, and most importantly, the general
North American public needs to be made aware of Facebook’s disgusting
double-standards regarding “decency”. I am revolted to report that
Facebook allows the likes of a group called “Dead Babies Make Me
Laugh”, and yet, someone such as myself, who wants nothing but to
inspire and help women on their journey to birthing healthy, vibrant
babies, has her whole account deleted.

I have now done radio station interviews (a Sakatoon one, as well as
Montréal’s 98.5 FM), and was interviewed for ‘La Presse’ newspaper
here in Montréal, the article for which appeared in yesterday’s
edition of ‘La Presse’ (the English translation for which you will
find below). I may be doing another one-hour long segment on the same
Saskatoon radio station at some point this week.

There is a Canadian slant to this whole Facebook fiasco, in that the
tireless organisor of the original online protest is from Ottawa
(Stephanie Muir), the site that is currently the “safe haven” for
breastfeeding photos which have been deleted by Facebook is a
Canadian one (TERA), is coordinated by Paul Rapoport of Hamilton,
Ontario, and now, the only (known) person so far to have had their
Facebook acount fully disabled over this issue –me, a Montreal
mother.

Please help me by spreading the word of Facebook’s appalling actions
(such as by posting this to your blog), and consider this an official
plea to get the word out ! For the sake of the next generation of
babies, people everywhere need to understand that the larger issue of
normalising breastfeeding is deeply important here. In 2009, it is
unacceptable that women feel shamed, or are sexualised, while
providing the most normal, the most physiologically appropriate food
for their babies : breastmilk.

Sincerely yours,
-Emma Kwasnica, Montréal
(514) 656-1560

PS You will aslo find attached the scanned, full-page image from Le
Journal de Montréal, in which I am breastfeeding my daughters. This
is particularly relevant as Facebook has said that no major newspaper
in North America would publish the type of breastfeeding photos that
they have deleted. This simply isn’t true - this newspaper image
(from October 2008) is living proof ! If Montreal, a city of over 3.5
million, can handle seeing this image in a daily newspaper, they why
can’t Facebook ?
http://picasaweb.google.ca/emma.kwasnica/20081011BreastfeedingChalleng e#5261616556288520402
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MOTHERS CRUSADING AGAINST FACEBOOK
Daphné Cameron, La Presse
January 04, 2009

“Cover up this breast that I do not want to see.”

Even though it was written in the 17th century, Molière’s famous
refrain is still à la mode for those who run Facebook’s networking
site.

For several months now, photographs of mothers breastfeeding their
children have been being deleted. The restriction has provoked anger
in women all over the globe. In protest, 11,000 women replaced their
profile picture with the image of a breastfeeding mother.

This online protest was organized for December 27th by Stephanie
Muir, an Ottawa mother outraged by the website policy, that says that
no “pornographic or sexually explicit” material may be uploaded to
the site.

“It is unthinkable that in 2008, such a loving image, one of a mother
breastfeeding her baby, can be perceived as sexual or offensive,” she
said. “It’s because we stigmatise women in this way, that mothers
make the choice not to breastfeed, or breastfeed for a shorter length
of time.”

In additon to the web protest, a few dozen women assembled in front
of the Facebook headquarters in California, and nursed their babies
there.

The response by Facebook administrators was immediate. According to
Stephanie Muir, accounts of several protestors were disabled.

This is the case of Montrealer Emma Kwasnica, who no longer has
access to her personal account, since January 1st.

“Facebook began deleting photos of me breastfeeding my daughters on
December 28th”, stated the 30-year-old who is studying to become a
midwife. “A few days later, the administrators disabled my account
with the only explanation being that I had uploaded obscene content.
Breastfeeding is the most beautiful thing in the world. How does one
automatically associate that with sex ?”

The protest organised by Stephanie Muir has provoked a media frenzy
in the United States. Facebook reacted by publishing a press release
that specified that only photos showing nipple or areola are banned.

Facebook reiterated that it is a private company which has the right
to decide which content it hosts on its site.

Technorati Tags: breastfeeding, Facebook, nursing

I’m just gonna go ahead right now and say that I’m not making any resolutions. This is a refrain you’re gonna read all over the Internet this week, of course and understandably so. The key to making meaningful resolutions is to keep the list short and realistic. In that case, they are just goals, anyway! I don’t need some big, fancy RESOLUTIONS list every single January 1st.
I have long-term goals, some big ones and some small ones. Instead of making a new list every year, I focus on the list I already have. I have no interest in making it longer than it has to be. I’m a five-year plan kind of gal, or ten years, even.
Having said that, here are the goals I’ve been working on for the past couple of years:

1. Buy a house in the country.
2. Have a lot of kids.
3. Find a satisfying teaching position.
4. Be more crafty.
5. Have a VBAC or HBAC with future children.

There are other goals I have like, get out of debt that are just plain unrealistic right now. I’ve downsized my debt quite a bit, to be sure, aside from my student loans but it won’t go away completely unless we get a large windfall, or I go back to work.

Also, this will be the year that I get back to the reading habit. How I went from finishing several books a month to barely being able to finish a 200 page novel, I don’t know but it is a disgrace.

A few days ago, I realized that I never posted my birth story here (or if I did, I can’t find it!). So, I’m sharing it now. It’s been nearly 6 months and I still think about what I could’ve done differently. I’m carrying this experience with me into my next pregnancy, starting with my choice of health practitioner. (If you have your birth story online, feel free to leave a link in the comments so I can read it!)

Alice Ann Cavillones was birthed into the world by cesarean at 9:21 in the morning on Monday, July 7. She weighed in at 6 pounds and 7 ounces, measuring 18 and 3/4 inches long.

Let’s backtrack to the 37th week, two weeks before Alice was born. Henry I went to my weekly check-up together, to have “The Talk” with our doctor. This is the appointment where the doctor tells us when to to call her, when to come into the hospital, and so on. “The Talk” was rendered moot when Alice’s breech presentation was discovered on the ultrasound. That one word, BREECH, completely changed the tone of everything. In the doctor’s office, following the examination, we discussed our options, and an appointment for a cesarean was immediately scheduled, along with an appointment for an external version. The doctor suggested several homeopathic techniques for turning a breech baby, answered our few questions and sent us on our way. We left, a little shocked and surprised. The natural birth we’d been preparing for and envisioning was suddenly and abruptly shut down. After much discussion, we opted not to do the external version. The reported success rate had a range both too wide and too low to suffer such a painful and invasive procedure. So, we pursued homeopathic remedies. We were lucky enough to have Edith and Tany in our neighborhood, and visited them several times for adjustments from Tany. We also tried the breech tilt, an old midwives’ technique that involves laying on the floor with one’s legs and torso at a 30 degree angle, the idea being that such a position would help the baby disengage from the pelvis and turn around. Acupuncture and homeopathic remedies were suggested but at this point, I was feeling too tired and cumbersome to schlep around. We also tried singing songs to Alice involving the idea of turning, like “Turn Turn Turn,” “Spin Me Round,” and the Hokey-Pokey.
In the meantime, I was running the gamut of emotions, almost as if I were going through the stages of grief–feeling shock, sadness, anger, denial and finally, acceptance. In a way, I did lose something. It was the death of an ideal, a vision and I had to find a way to reclaim that vision, to regain my ownership over Alice’s birth. Taking a page from Birthing From Within, I did some visualization exercises to help me sort through all those emotions. There’s also a theory that babies turn breech to comfort the mother, putting their heads close to mom’s heart, in an attempt to soothe some unspoken anxiety.
I had my last check-up on July 3rd and Alice was still presenting breech. At this point, I was focusing on the positive aspects of the situation, number one being that we would get to meet our baby sooner! I went home to wait out the long July 4th weekend, trying to relax as much as possible. My sister, who’d had a cesarean with her first child for the same reason (as did my other older sister, prompting the doctor to surmise that it was genetic, having to do with the shape of our pelvises), dutifully and patiently answered all my questions. I don’t deal well with unknowns (that’s why I’m an English teacher and not a science teacher!) and so, I tried to clear up as many unknowns as possible.
The morning on the 7th finally arrived (after what felt like the LONGEST weekend of my life). We left the house early to be at the hospital by 6am, to prep for the OR. We were immediately taken into the triage room, after filling out the paperwork. I was poke and prodded by a friendly nurse, while Henry sat by my side, listening to a laboring woman in another room curse out her husband, dropping F-bombs like there was no tomorrow. While waiting for the anesthesiologist, we had a visit from our friend, Maureen, a nurse manager on the hospital’s PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit) ward. When my younger sister arrived, we sent Henry off to get himself a badly needed coffee. In the meantime, another ultrasound was done, just to be sure (I hoped against hope here). Henry made it back in time to see my shuffle off to the OR (that was weird– I’d envisioned a gurney ride).
I was poked and prodded again, this time for the spinal, which I’d requested for it’s short life, and contained a 24 hour pain medication (no itching! yay!). As my body went numb, I had the surreal sensation of being out of my body, watching all this activity, aware that things were going on, and also beginning to feel an overwhelming sense of loneliness, as I lay there, naked and vulnerable, waiting for Henry to appear at my side. I suddenly became stricken by the fear that they’d forgotten him out in the hallway and I began asking for him. I was badly trying to hold myself together but as soon as Henry’s face came into view, I was so relieved, the floodgates open and I cried throughout the procedure. Henry was fantastic. I couldn’t talk because of the oxygen mask, and I couldn’t read Henry’s lips because of his mask but we maintained eye contact the whole time, and I could imagine what he was saying underneath that mask. He told me over and over again that he loved me. Before we knew it, he was called to take a picture as Alice was lifted up and out. It is an AMAZING picture and if you’d like to see it, please ask. (It’s a bit graphic so I won’t include it here.) Henry left my side to be with Alice. We had made it clear that we didn’t want her bathed, nor did we want her vernix wiped off. Henry intercepted a nurse just in time, prompting another nurse to declare it “gross,” which made me laugh when I heard the story later. After Alice was bundled up, Henry brought her to me. I nuzzled her face, my arms still encumbered by needles and tubing as I was carefully sewn up again. My doctor was adamant that I be able to have a VBAC, so my stitches were double-layer, at the bikini line (this is standard now, except in the case of an emergency cesarean.)
Henry stayed with Alice while I was wheeled to recovery. We were reunited shortly and I was able to feed Alice in the recovery room with help from my mom and sister. Before I was transferred to my room, Alice was taken to the nursery to be warmed up when her temperature was discovered to be on the low side. Again, Henry stayed with Alice the whole time. She joined me in my room 20 minutes later, quelling my biggest fear–being apart from Alice for an extended period of time. We roomed together for the next four days, with the exception of a night under the bili-lite to treat her mild jaundice. We finally brought Alice home on Thursday, July 10th. We’ve quickly settled into a routine while I recover and learn the fine art of breastfeeding (an emotional and frustrating but ultimately rewarding experience). Henry has proved to be a Master Burper and fussy baby soother. We’ve done skin-to-skin and the belly crawl (AMAZING–TRY IT!), and we’re co-sleeping with Alice. This form of attachment parenting has helped me begin the emotional healing that I need to make up for the sense of detachment I felt as Alice was birthed into the world by the hands of others. Those who say they prefer C-sections, I will never understand but I’ve come to accept my experience, thanks to the tremendous support Henry and I have received from our doula, my mother and my older sister.

Technorati Tags: birth story

Hey, Twittermoms! Want to install the new TM network widget on your Wordpress blog? Check out this screencast I made. I hope it helps! (Leave feedback in the comments and I’ll tweak it to make it more useful/less confusing. Please note that there is no audio in this screencast!)

We have extra special stuff cooking this week! Instead of buying expensive hors d’oerves from Stew Leonard this year, I’m making some snacky things and indvidual pizzas. We’re hosting my little sister and her boyfriend this year, so I think it’ll go over well.

Tuesday: Sauteed chicken with tomato relish and spinach, and baked sweet potatoes (EF¹ Jan/Feb 09)

Wednesday: NYE!!

• Sliders
• Shrimp Cocktail (Ina Garten)
• Spinach and artichoke dip (EF Jan/Feb 09)
• Crab Salad in Wonton Cups (Ellie Krieger)
• Individual pizzas (EF Jan/Feb 09)
• Olives, Salumi, Cheese, etc
• Some kind of sweet thing to wrap it up

Thursday: Parmesan-Carrot Risotto with cod or salmon (EF Jan/Feb 09)

Friday: Salmon with escarole and lemon (EF Jan/Feb 09)

Have a great new year eve’s celebration!

Technorati Tags: New Year's Eve

Hey hey hey. The 2008 NYCWP Newsletter is finally released! You can download it from our website: 2008 NYCWP Newsletter

As usual, it makes for excellent reading!

Technorati Tags: NYCWP

So, help me out here. Clearly, Alice has something VERY important to say but we need an interpreter! Go ahead and listen to Alice, then in the comments, leave me a transcript. I’ll pick my favorite and send a little something-something in the mail to the winner.

I’ve known about One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a low-cost, connected laptop for the world’s children’s education, for awhile now. When the laptop, called XO, came out a few years back, the teacher blogs were abuzz. But I’d never seen the laptop, and didn’t know too much about the organization other than they gave away laptops to kids who might otherwise never have one.
Around Thanksgiving, Kirtsy ran a promotion called “Thanksgetting,” in which they held several giveaways in the spirit of the season. One of the giveaways was sponsored by OLPC. OLPC gave away an XO laptop to 4 lucky winners, and matched the give-away with laptops for 4 lucky kiddos. All I had to do was a leave a comment about the giveaway on Kirtsy site, plus spread the news somehow. I posted the giveaway details on my Facebook page, and tweeted about it.
Then, I forgot about it! I’ve entered so many giveaways this season and I hardly ever win anything anyway, so I put them all in the back of my mind.
This afternoon, as we drove home slowly through the snowstorm after a morning of errands, I got an e-mail saying that I had won! Exciting!! One, because, like I said, I NEVER win anything. Two, what a cool thing to win! Three, it sounds like a great organization and I’m psyched to spread the word about OLPC. (Disclaimer: Talking about OLPC on my blog is not a condition of the win. I’m just spreading the word because I think it’s a worthy organization.)
Poke around OLPC’s website and you’ll be impressed, I think, with their vision and with the technology they’ve developed. If I were still in the classroom, these laptops would be on the top of my wishlist.
My laptop is enroute. I almost feel a little guilty about winning it, because I know I’ll be totally selfish with it! The XO is definitely designed for kids but we’ll see if I let my nieces play with it…

Technorati Tags: Kirtsy, OLPC, one laptop per child, Philanthropy, XO

Hey, hey, hey. It’s Sunday morning and time for another edition of Days in Sentences, so put down that Sunday Times and peruse these links instead.

Kate was busy in Brisbane this week and invites you to “Wonder, watch, listen, talk, link” as she podcasts AUC Create World 2008.

Gail says “Energy levels are definitely on the rise as the winter approaches,” and invites you check out her latest blog post, but check out this tweet she recieved this week, from her friend Mr. Losik out of Fennville, Michigan. It’s pretty neat!

Kevin joins us this morning with this epiphany:
We were sitting there in the two hour session, hammering out a conversion of our report card system to one that is standards-based, when it dawned on me that very few of the things that I value in my work with students — multi-modal composition, connecting with the world, cooperative group projects, creative vision, social action — would end up being reflected in this new report card (nor is it reflected in the old report card, either). Check out this cool graphic from Edutopia that Kevin’s shared in his latest post.

Mathew has the new year in mind this week, being “full of optimism at the coming year and the conclusion of this one.” He didn’t leave a special post for you to check out, so here’s his blog.

Anne took a whirlwind international tour this week! She writes, “As reports have been completed and our school year nears its end, it was time to ‘play’ with virtual classrooms and connect to so many wonderful different countries - Antarctica,Russia (ending up on Russian TV),USA,Bangkok and the Phillipines to give my students a realistic taste of a flatclassroom. ” You can read all about it!

For Ken, a slideshow is worth 1000 words and so is this lovely, brief poem:
wings over island
rocks break clear- water, foam, white
sails, dazzle, beyond.

Bonnie is bursting with pride, as she reports, “This week for me, has been all about getting to yesterday and watching my 8th grader of old, Christopher Carley push Clint Eastwood in GRAN TORINO. I am reading the lead article in the Sunday NY Times Arts & Leisure section and its continuation on page 13. And yes, that’s my boy! What a joy it is to teach and patiently wait sometimes, to reap the rewards.” She didn’t leave a particular link for us to read, so go ahead and read her latest post.

A greeting from Gail:

Hello Nancy and DIAS community,
The high part of my week was being invited into 3 fourth grade classrooms to introduce these young students to the blogosphere - which has me thinking about my last week’s post.

Ms. George better be careful– payroll might hear her say, “Getting students’ toes wet with poetry by reading, listening, and writing makes me realize yet again how I have way too much fun to get paid.” She was probably having so much fun, she couldn’t narrow it down to any one link for you, so go have a good time at her blog.

Have you ever heard of a Slowblogger? Me, neither but T-Dawg is “Slowblogging on a snow day.” He explains it here!

And though I’ve forgotten time and time again to submit my own DIS, it’s kind of hard to forget this time. So, we can sum up my week with the *cough cough cough* that has been a constant refrain around here, thanks to Alice’s cough and cold. In between all the *cough cough cough*, I managed to write a bunch of food-related posts this week, like this one.

Thanks for joining me, everyone. You can go back to the crossword now and refill that coffee mug. Unless we hear otherwise, DIS is back at Kevin’s blog next week!

(You can see the original comments here.)

Op-Ed Columnist - Obama’s ‘Secretary of Food’? - NYTimes.com

Nicholas Kristof wrote an op-ed the other day that calls for taking a long, hard look at the industrial farming lobby in the United States and the damage it’s done to our collective health, physical or otherwise.
You may remember that earlier this year I read What to Eat by Marion Nestle. Nestle, in that book, also calls for reform of the food industry in our country. It’s an idea whose time has come (albeit late), and we have an excellent opportunity to confront this issue head-on, in the shape of our new President-elect. I am currently reading An Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, and continue to be enlightened and appalled by the way industrial farming works in this country.
I’d like you to read Kristof’s op-ed (link above), and sign the Food Democracy Now! petition, which can be found here.

Technorati Tags: Food Democracy Now!, Kristof, nestle, Pollan