A right to refuse to cooperate?

There has been some conflict in recently times over how much people in society should have a right to refuse to cooperate with any health care or social service they disagree with.  For example whether insurance companies or employers can refuse to provide medical insurance for contraception or whether pharmacists can refuse to dispense the "morning after pill."  In a perfect world everyone would have so many options for their employment, doctors, and pharmacies that it would be easy to only form relationships with people you already agree with.  But its not a perfect world.  Sometimes because of work constraints there many only be one or two options in insurance companies you can deal with, only so many employers you can work for, and pharmacies you can visit.  So a right to refuse to cooperate can easily translate into a right to make it nearly impossible for someone else to receive what they believe is desirable for themselves.  For example, while a pharmacist who believes the morning after bill is infanticide might feel very uncomfortable or conflicted about dispensing it, a rape victim may only have a short period of time to find someone who will give it to them before the drugs effectiveness starts to fail.

So where does my perspective fall on all of this?  Its hard to talk about this much in detail because at my job its considered that they can fire you if you mention online all the details of your employment.  But lets just say I provide customer service and technical support for a company that is a household name, someplace that normal everyday people do business with because they have to in order to function in our modern society.  And occasionally my job involves helping people purchase or troubleshoot their ability to access pornography.

First off some might question whether this is awkward for me.  And the answer is it can be at many levels.  Including:

• It can be heartbreaking to take a call for a mother or a wife who is desperately trying to find out if their spouse is secretly using porn when we were the company that is selling the stuff to their son or husband.  
• Its a fine line to walk when they are certain their family members couldn't possibly have betrayed them that way and I have to break it to them that even if I don't know who was at the controls we have proof that it was ordered and I can't credit back the hundreds of dollars that were ran up.
• Occasionally customers ask that I give recommendations on which porn they might enjoy or if I have any suggestions on what they should purchase.
• I've had to explain to people that just because I'm here to help doesn't mean that I can help them figure out which titles will include lesbian vs heterosexual sex acts or possibly be produced by one porn company compared to another.  Other than reading through large numbers of titles (which is time prohibitive) and making educated guesses, I honestly don't even have that sort of information most of the time.
• I even had an illiterate man call in once who explained that because he could not read he needed me to read him all the porn titles I had one by one until he found one that he liked so that I could place his order for him.
• I seem to recall once even having a customer ask me something along the lines of whether we had any sex videos involving Asians and then proceed to ask me if I was Asian.  Just because I'm tolerating talking to you about your pornographic preferences doesn't mean I moonlight as a professional porn actor, thanks for asking.  Lets not even get into how they misjudged my accent and possibly my gender (somehow a male tenor voice comes across the phone call sounding like as female a good part of the time no matter how many times I tell them my name).

There are also some ways that this is not uncomfortable which might not occur to people imagining this situation for the first time, so I'll list those as well.

• I am almost never exposed to the actual content other than in the title of the item in question.
• Most customers are willing to make their purchase and move on without expecting me to have an extended conversation with them about it (couldn't say if my female coworkers have the same experience).
• Many callers express that they are perfectly ok with their adult sons visiting them ordering this stuff as long as the son coughs up a contribution to the bill to make up for it.
• Very few of my customer interactions center around this
• Most people are o.k. with me not reading every porn title on their bill to them.  They don't mind just me mentioning what kind of movie it is if the title didn't make it obvious enough.
• Most people self service their own purchases and often only need me to troubleshoot their ability to complete such purchases.

So how do I handle it?  Mostly by just doing whatever the customers ask me to do and doing it promptly and with courtesy.  When customers call for customer service they want a representative of a company to answer the phone, not a representative of a specific church or belief system.  And the company who pays my bills expects me to represent them, not my God, my priesthood leaders, or my own personal tastes or preferences.  Being a representative of the company and not myself actually answers most of the questions involved in handling the issues I described above.  It doesn't matter if I'm helping a customer watch Finding Nemo or the latest X rated video claiming to show teenagers doing who knows what, there are certain policies and expectations involved.  Since I represent the company and not myself I'm not obligated to express any opinion good or bad on the shows they ask about.  Since the security rules for accessing accounts controls whether the wife can find out I don't have to make a judgement call on which spouse I'll hold allegiance to.  Since the company only provides a bare minimum of information about the different shows and with almost no useful ability to sort them by anything beyond what is strictly needed to place an order (title, price, where to find it), I can reasonably refuse to assist people in finding the show that fits their fetish best.  Truthfully, trying to assist people any further would involve unauthorized internet browsing to porn provider websites that would quickly get me fired.  I'm just as prepared to assist a family in setting up parental controls as to help someone find out why an error message is showing on the screen instead of their favorite porn show.

So what do I think about a purported right to refuse to cooperate?  I don't think it would make my job any easier.  Even if it was technically legal for me to refuse to help people watch porn or R rated movies that I thought were too risque, I'd have to deal with a lot of angry customers whose lives would be made more difficult by having to call in that many more times just to get a customer service representative who would offer service instead of a sermon.  Can you imagine having to call through an automated system that asked you "to ensure the fewest transfers as possible, please take this survey so we can match your customer service need to an agent who is ideologically affiliated with you"?  Logistically it would blow up so fast that I probably wouldn't even be able to get the job unless I was willing to sign a document agreeing to service anyone no matter what they needed, just like many employers won't hire employees who refuse to work on Sundays.

Many might argue that medical professionals are more morally culpable for their involvement with a patients body than I am involved with what my customers do in their spare time.  And perhaps that isn't unfair in some cases, but that is why doctors and professionals are expected to select services they are willing to perform.  You can't be a pharmacist without the possibility of dispensing many different drugs.  A OB/GYN occasionally might have to perform an emergency abortion to save the life of the mother but normally has the option to avoid specializing in abortion procedures.  An insurance company can hardly expect to be able to only service people whose ideals match their CEO (anybody want an insurance company executive who belongs to Scientology or Seventh Day Adventist dictating what gets covered?).  And while employers might offer health insurance subsidization to attract employees, they shouldn't expect to be able to exercise financial leverage over their employees religious or medical choices.  As I said earlier, in a perfect world everything would be so flexible that you could immediately be perfectly served only by people who agreed with you.  That kind of perfection doesn't exist.  We live in a world where people are free to make up their own minds and part of dealing with that is not always agreeing.  Sure there is room for compromise and flexibility in how we all live together, but not much absolutism.

I am reminded of a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. where he said, “Whatever your life's work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.”  When I go to a hospital I shouldn't have to worry if the nurse is worried about being fired if she puts my wife's life ahead of a pregnancy.  When I go to the pharmacy I should expect the pharmacist to represent that role, not his opinions about whether birth control is against the will of God.  If I have to constantly worry about which service provider might have which opinions so that I can be free to exercise my privilege to live as I choose in a free land, I'm not free, and the service providers aren't doing their job well.  Meantime, I'll keep processing orders for my customers porn with a polite smile on my face.

Exploring the conflict between Science and Religion

As an introduction to this post, most of what follows I actually wrote as a response to a discussion prompt for a class two semesters ago, as have several other blog posts I've done.  So if this seems kind of out of the blue it is.  I just really like what I wrote up so I figured I'd re use it.

The real point of incompatibility between science and religion is the type of logic used by each.  Since 1620 when Francis Bacon wrote Novum Organum science was reoriented to be based on inductive logic where (simply put) you take observations, make tentative assumptions based on observation, and then test the assumptions by more observations.  Previous scientists had made observations but the scientific method didn't really start to be worked out till Bacon.
Religion, on the other hand, is based more essentially on deductive logic as developed by Aristotle.  A series of spiritual experiences or beliefs are taken as assumptions and then conclusions are made based on those assumptions.  Occasionally the assumptions might be revised by a new spiritual experience or from some other cultural source of information but generally speaking the foundational assumptions are not supposed to change.  If anything is encountered which seems to contradict the assumptions then the typical doctrinal response is to ignore it as invalid on its face because it contradicts the assumptions, contradict it by interpreting the assumptions in a more complicated way, or to make more and more complicated interpretations of the assumptions to allow the apparent contradiction to disappear.
Science using inductive logic never assumes it has a completely true and exact assumption but by testing and revising the assumptions a lot over time they become useful or probably mostly true.  Religion using a more deductive style of logic assumes it has achieved at least some things that are completely true and exactly correct.  It is more or less assumed that given time that other truths can be discovered by exploring the complexities and consequences of those original assumptions.
At least as far as traditional biblical interpretation is concerned we have many cases where there is apparent contradiction between science and religion.  How individuals handle that can vary a lot.  I don't have any easy answers.  Over my life I've had a lot of people who tried to reassure me of my faith by telling me a folklore version of science that was easier to disbelieve or where the contradictions didn't exist.  Like claiming neanderthals and humans didn't overlap in time and that humans don't appear in the fossil record till the time that the bible says they should.  I think that's a practice that we should try to avoid.  It seems almost unavoidable that such folklore sciences will show up because as long as normal people try to figure out science they are bound to make mistakes or make stuff up to fill the gaps in their memory or understanding.  But as much as we can I think we should avoid putting words in scientists mouths to reassure ourselves.
There's no easy way to tell science and religion to make nice and stop fighting because a typical religious doctrine system has no inherent logical path to rapidly reform itself when new evidence shows up.  Science has no inherent logical mechanism to adapt to new religious ideas nor any way to judge which religion's ideas should be incorporated.  They are based on two completely different logic systems so it wouldn't really make sense for them to immediately cross fertilize each other.  If you aren't supposed to contradict the assumptions it takes a lot of time for the assumptions to disappear before you can ignore them.  It wasn't until 1822 (per wikipedia ) that the Catholic Church stopped the ban of printing "heliocentric books in Rome".  That's a grand delay of nearly 300 years after Copernicus published in 1543.  Granted its not always that slow, I think when I read one of Stephen Hawking's books (sorry I can't say which I read several) that he said the Catholic church almost immediately gave doctrinal support to his work on the Big Bang because they thought it was easy to reconcile the big bang with the idea of God having created the Universe.  Having already dismissed biblical literalism from their astronomy they were open to further change.  On other subjects literalism is still more or less the official interpretation (depending on which religion you adhere to).  Its always possible that science on any given subject will turn out to be partially or extremely wrong.  Science isn't supposed to give us absolute truth so we can never rule that out.  Its always possible that the range of subjects on which religions will judge their traditional beliefs to be unsupportable will expand and that in 100 years our descendents will look back on us and laugh with scorn about how crazy we were and how we just didn't realize that a few more parts of our belief systems were obviously expendable.  I think the best thing to do would be for each side to be tolerant of each other and pick their fights as respectfully and as humbly as possible.  Science is most certainly not representing absolute truth because its not meant to do so.  On the other hand, there is probably no belief system with a long history where we couldn't look at the early history and find beliefs contradicted by their later history.  Just take the Old Testament statements about what to do with people with contradictory beliefs and behavior and compare that to the time immediately following the Reformation (lots of religious wars-kill the heretic and force them to believe) and then again with modern practice of Christians.  Or look at New Testament statements about the spirituality and worth of women (1 Timothy 2:12-15 for example) and compare it with recent statements by LDS church leaders (I won't bother linking any, the statements that women are spiritually superior is so frequently repeated it doesn't bear citing).  No matter whether you think its good or bad, no true contradiction, or happened for valid reasons and that both were right in their times, some doctrines change.

"Family Life" education

A while back there was a bill proposed in Utah  that would have allowed school districts to opt out of teaching any sexual education and prohibit (if I recall) any mention of contraception.  After a great deal of controversy, it became clear via polls and public outcry that the plan did not have public support.  It was passed by the legislature, vetoed by the governor, and in the following election the man who introduced the bill lost his re election bid.

To put context on this, Utah law already bans encouraging contraception use (though not mentioning that it exists) and parents are allowed to opt their children out of sexual education as it exists.  The sexual education as it exists will depend on the school district, I believe my wife stated that the only sexual education done in her school district was a quick meeting where they told you to anticipate the development of secondary sex characteristics.  And that was it.  Not much to opt out of.

The debates on the subject of how much sexual education to put in school often seem to come back to the idea that we are afraid of "giving kids ideas."  The thing is, kids have dumb ideas all the time without any adult having to tell them about anything.  It reminds me of a job I had doing customer service for a cell phone company.  There were countless parents who called in shocked that there was an enormous charge on their bill showing that their child had been using text messaging.  They often tried to claim that their child didn't know how to text message because they hadn't taught them how.    My coworkers and I used to jokingly tell these parents that if their kids are in school, have friends, and have a phone they know how to text.  Nobody has to show them how for them to figure it out.  Similarly, teenagers have all the relevant anatomy, the correct hormones, and coed environments.  Even if nobody tells them "how" to go about getting pregnant reliably, teenagers inherently have all the ingredients necessary to have lots of clueless sexual interaction.  On top of that we live in a rather sexually obsessed and saturated culture.  Not talking about sex only makes it so that the doors of communication between the school or parents and the child on the subject are shut, it doesn't actually keep the child from receiving lots of sexual communication, much of it unhealthy and attached to negative social stereotypes and roles.

Certainly sex ed is awkward.  Even though I never attended it in public school myself (parental opt out), I had to deal with classmates who were trying to find a way to relate to all the new information that was dumped on them and in a poorly disciplined classroom this led to several awkward moments where students sat around discussing whether their bodies were mature enough to achieve ejaculation or drew pictures of penises (with smiley faces) on the blackboard.  The solution to awkwardness isn't to run away though, and in the situations in which I grew up, better discipline in the classroom could have solved most of the problems.

I tend to view sex ed for teenagers like drivers ed.  We expect children to grow up and probably use a car daily in navigating their world.  Learning to drive isn't automatic like learning to breathe, so we have drivers ed requirements where society does something to help make sure everybody knows the basics to help keep them safe.  Similarly we hope that children will grow up, form relationships, and have families (or shall we say it, we hope they will have sex) as part of a normal emotionally healthy life.  Overwhelmingly, the human goal in life isn't celibacy.  There is nothing automatic about learning to have healthy relationships with emotionally and physically satisfying sex in them.  There are plenty of parts the schools certainly can't help with, but plenty they can.  Just like we don't raise children with a goal in life that they should be unable to drive, we should stop talking about sex ed as if the goal for our children was for them to be celibate.  Sure there are limits on that.  We don't put toddlers in drivers ed and we don't include nascar driving or drag racing in the list of skills for teenagers to master for their drivers license.  Similarly, we can choose what information to give to teenagers in sex ed.  There is no reason we need or want teenagers to be able to recite the Kama Sutra or recite all the sex tips that were talked about in last weeks grocery store magazines.  But some basics are a good thing to help them form safe and healthy relationships that we expect some day will be sexually satisfying.  Since in our culture families and friends haven't been reliable sources of information (too scared, too embarrassed, too whatever it is) some teaching in schools can be a good thing. 

Truth is hard to say

Watching General Conference has been a reminder of the humanity of the General Authorities.  Errors of emphasis routinely occur, doctrinal mishaps spring up in statements, and in general there are just things that are hard to say correctly.  By error of emphasis I mean statements that are largely true but by making them without a variety of correcting statements what comes out is a problematic overgeneralization.  Some doctrinal mishaps are about as important as spilled milk.  Remembering some from this last conference (Elder Perkins, Priesthood session) King David likely didn’t have an ‘eternal family’ that he lost because there is no scriptural indication that eternal family sealings were being performed at the time (especially since the Melchizedek priesthood was not held broadly or commonly, if at all) nor did King David “squander” his ‘priesthood’ because he wasn’t a priest.  Othertimes the mishaps may not be really meant, but taking statements as literally true could only drive one into bizzare doctrinal “off roading” like a previous conference where a man stated that he was the final arbiter and judge in his family of what right and wrong were.  All he meant to say was that he should have the right to read his children’s picture books the way he liked, but what came out was something having a lot more to do with cultural expectations of the past rather than LDS doctrine that would even stand a basic comparison with, say, the covenant structure of the temple.

Overall, truth is hard to say.  There is almost no basic practice or idea that doesn’t have some obvious counter example.  Take the church principle that one can only receive revelation for those under your stewardship.  This is a well established church principle whose effect is that not any person off the street can tell the church what to do and that personal revelation doesn’t give you power to undermine church power structures.  Seems well thought out, logical, even inevitable.  But to whom did Jesus first give the revelation of his ressurrected person?  To a woman not part of the priesthood power structure.  He told her to carry this revelation to the twelve.  They dismissed her and Christ had to reveal himself multiple times to get the point across, when the original revelation had come outside the power structure.  Knowing this counter example, there is no way we can say the principle of limited personal revelation is TRUTH in an absolute sense.  If it is TRUTH in an absolute sense, it comes along with a bunch of rules and intricate exceptions that just haven’t been revealed and honestly 99% of the time probably don’t matter.

Or take the example of the infallibility of the president of the church.  This doctrine came fairly early,  with the basic premise being that if the President of the church ever lead the church astray God would essentially kill the prophet to allow him to be replaced.  Seems logical, I mean there has to be somebody with whom the buck stops.  There is even a scriptural example to go along with it of a prophet who has received an injunction to not eat any food during a particular journey, but partakes anyways and is almost immediately killed, I think by lions.  However, that is not the only example.  Moses misleads the children of Isreal by misperforming the designated ritual to bring water to the people in the desert.  God doesn’t kill him, but ensures he does not enter the promised land.  It suggests that the whole do it perfect or drop dead rule has a lot of ins and outs and grey area.  Generally speaking we can accept the inspiration of the church leaders and trust what they say.  But, given the counter example it would be rediculous to consider every word of the President of the church as absolute TRUTH as if it has just falled from the lips of the God.  When it comes down to it, TRUTH is as hard to say completely as individuals are unique.

Why I think

The recent article on the LDS church's financial holdings was very interesting.  There are several reasons why I'd like the church to be a little more forthcoming on the subject of their finances.  It all boils down to eliminating a financial mythology of the church that seems to float around quite a lot.

Examples of the such mythology include the belief that the church has no professional clergy (many General Authorities have salaries from the church).  I actually attended a Stake Conference once where a speaker tried to claim that members of the church should strive for financial strength because General Authorities must have generally been able to retire early to be able to donate so much time to the church.  When you consider that they are actually paid employees whose job it is to minister God's word and administer his kingdom, that little myth falls to pieces.  Also, when one thinks about how many general authorities have salaries it really takes the wind out of some of the holier-than-thou-we-don't-have-priestcraft talk.

Another example of financial mythology is the idea that the church welfare program is somehow magically immune from overhead costs.  I've heard it claimed in various Sunday school meetings that since the church is obviously a volunteer only church that it must be impossible that any of our fast offerings or tithing money might be getting drained off to pay employees or to keep buildings running or build anything.  Sometimes this belief seems to be coupled with a belief that any non church run charity is somehow tainted by evil, typically in having operating costs that are so large that hardly any money is spent on doing good.  Sure you can find a fake charity anywhere you look if you try, but that doesn't mean the church doesn't have operating costs in its welfare program.  Every bishops store house in the world has to pay for its utilities, probably rent, and probably has at some level a core staff of paid individual who keep the place running.  Volunteers helping to reduce costs is wonderful and certainly a big part of the picture.  The trucks and planes that transport our charity goods are operated by paid individuals, their vehicles use gas, and have to be services by mechanics.  Those costs are not totally eliminated by donated time.  Or take LDS family services.  Their psychologists and counselors are paid professionals.  When you visit them (even to complete a church mandated missionary evaluation) you pay them money (unless the Bishop is footing the bill with the ward welfare money).  Sometimes the church even takes its welfare money and sends it as international aid channeled through other international charities based on which ones have the best access to an area.

There is also the mythology that church officials are above suspicion for the handling of church funds because a prophetic system of church governance would weed out any incompetent's before they could do any serious damage.  Early church history clearly shows a pattern of money not being handled well and priesthood designated channels for money being accepted or spent being occasionally unskilled or unscrupulous.  Elders would go abroad seeking donations for building the temple that often never made it to the temple building committee because the Elder in question would borrow it for his own use before it made it to the church.  I believe there was even an incident where the church proposed that little oversight needed to be exercised over a group of individuals handing church funds because they were men of good character.  Later in a General Conference they were brought up for trial before the church because they had allegedly mismanaged funds.  The charges were dropped on the basis that it turned out no malevolence was involved, the people in question just weren't skilled accountants who couldn't have kept the books right if they tried (the only skilled one having left to do something else and abandoning his calling).  This history makes it clear there isn't something heretical about questioning whether church funds are being put to the best use or wishing to know what the church does with the money it has.  A divine institution is still filled with normal people who often do the best they can.

Certainly there would be difficulties in having more disclosure and there would be limits and procedures in place to determine what should be disclosed.  But that is no different than any non profit organization that has to publish the basics of its finances because of tax laws.  Disclosure could even lead to its own set of mythologies as members of the church might start making purchasing and financial decisions based on the church's financial posture.  But disclosing the church finances in the proper tone could prevent the worst of such problems.  If Joseph Smith hadn't advertized with Kirtland Bank with scripture quotations it might not have been a big deal.  Similarly, if church financial enterprises are explained in a sober and low key manner in which it is clearly stated that the church's stock market holdings and trades shouldn't be considered as a prophecy it should prevent a lot of people assuming that the church's financial dealings are somehow doctrinally binding.

Some publicity might result in the church membership pondering whether certain industries and financial arrangements even make sense as part of the mission of the church.  This shouldn't be faith shattering to anyone if its handled right.  Instead of fighting to keep the church's financial dealings as private as possible, having to clearly explaining why a church enterprise fits into the mission of the church might help the church refine its focus away from things that might not matter.  The real faith quelshing problems aren't generally ones where church members might be hurt by the truth (unless someone in church administration has made mistakes that are made unmentionable by the unquestionable authority of priesthood power).  Generally its a lack of answers to questions that is faith shaking.  If making Salt Lake downtown more beautiful and culturally vibrant is financially more important (worth more of the church's money) than feeding the hungry in Africa, I'd like a good explanation why from church leaders I can trust.  A "trust us we're doctrinally authorized to do whatever we want" spurs more questions, not faith.

Natural Childbirth

So Bonnie Jean and I had been looking more seriously at natural childbirth.  Our first child had a very long wait between induction and the epidural being given because labor was progressing too slowly for the epidural to be given.  We had little training for the labor process and didn't know what we were doing.  It ended up being a lot of pain until they gave up and decided that even if she wasn't dialated to a 3 she should still get the epidural.  As soon as she had the epidural the pain went down, she relaxed, and the labor proceeded quickly.  She couldn't walk around or really do anything about the pain because they felt strongly that the moniters should be attached at all times unless she was going to the bathroom, she had an IV, and as a result was essentially tethered to the bed.

So we really wanted to know some options to allow us to work around the stuck phase before an epidural would be possible.  We did do some self study on the bradley method.  The basic concepts he talks about seemed nice, but the nicest parts of them seemed to have been incorporated into the other methods that are widely promoted.  The stats supporting the method seemed encouraging but lacking scientific rigor (like giving a high percentage success rate when only measuring the people who decided not to change and get an epidural half way through the process).  The supposed bad practices being railed against, as far as we could tell, had more to do with the past than the present.

Labor woke my wife up at somewhere between 3-4 AM.  She woke me up around 4:23 when contractions were about 8 minutes apart.  Before we could finish gathering up to go they were coming at 4 minutes apart.

When we got to the hospital they insisted on keeping her hooked up to the monitors during most of the intake and medical questionnaire process.  She wasn't feeling so great at that point.  Once they were done they let her walk around, which felt much better, but she still was feeling like she might probably want an epidural.  We thought we'd try the hospital hot tub next.  That was marvelous, the water helped take the pressure off her back, the heat relaxed her, and things went along swimmingly.  They insisted on checking her again with the monitors since no one had bothered hooking up the portable monitors they had available.  Then, frankly I think they forgot about us.  It was only supposed to be a quick stop for a short monitoring and then back to the tub.  Bonnie Jean was feeling so miserable I went and asked someone if they couldn't hurry up and let us back to the tub.  They checked her again and discovered the hot tub and worked so nicely that she had gone to an 8.  The OB/GYN had another surgery waiting on her so she wanted to break the water in hopes of causing the labor to finish up rapidly.  They moved her into a classic birthing table posture, and being stuck on the table on her back being unable to move around made things miserable, hard to relax, and progress kind of ground to a halt.  Because the anesthesiologist was in surgery, the epidural wasn't an option and narcotic painkillers have a history of making Bonnie Jean feel nauseated and loopy.  So with the exception of some local painkillers injected in anticipation of stitches etc we were pretty much a drug free childbirth.

She started to feel like she needed to push very badly, but was still only between an 8 and a 9, not really ready to give birth.  Eventually it got to a point where there was only one edge of the cervix on the side that hadn't gone anywhere.  They kept telling her to bear down a little bit so they could watch what happened to see how likely it was the baby could get past that little bit of swollen cervix that was left, which left neither Bonnie Jean or I certain whether we should be working on relaxing or pushing because we were being asked to do both more or less at once.  That part of labor was extremely painful because we essentially lost control of the relaxation.  Eventually, the doctor felt that she could just hold that part out of the way and the baby could come past it.  The final part of labor was again very painful, none of the "if you push hard enough you won't feel a thing except a mini orgasm as the baby's head clears" the natural birth promoters were promising.  The doctor injected a painkiller on the part of the cervix that was refusing to retract, which helped some, but it was still some of the worst pain I'd heard my wife go through.  Perhaps if she had been given a more realistic option to stand or move around during the final part of the labor process she wouldn't have been in so much pain, but who knows.  Encouraging her to bear down a little bit to see what would happen when they weren't really wanting her to bear down was NOT a good idea from a making sure the contractions actually accomplish something perspective.  They only stopped telling her to do that when they decided that keeping up their little experiment was going to tear her cervix.  If she had an epidural perhaps that method would have been fine because she would have been in less pain and better able to relax or bear down at will.  But when the relaxing has to happen against an extreme backdrop of pain the whole thing was making it harder for us to do anything useful.  And breaking the water might have been ok if Bonnie Jean could have moved around.  They were just hoping that labor would become so rapid at that point that they wanted to be ready to catch the baby.  Perhaps in most cases that would have worked.  In this case, because it involved having to hold still on the labor table it kind of backfired.

In general I'd say if you are considering natural birth go for it, but be ready to be forceful about not being forgotten about stuck to the monitors for any longer than necessary.  If you have a hot tub at your hospital definitely try it out, it was amazing for us.  Don't let anyone promise you a painless paradise of the baby gliding into sight.  If the pain is managed right and there aren't complications forcing you to do things that interfere with the techniques it can be much more comfortable than it might be.  But don't be surprised by or disappointed by a painful labor.

Since the contractions became less productive as soon as we were out it made us wonder about water birth.  We don't care at all about the theories that supposedly since a baby is in a water type environment before birth exiting into a water environment will be better.  We did like how being in a hot tub allowed Bonnie Jean to profoundly relax in a way that she wasn't achieving elsewhere.  The contractions were so effective in this state of relaxation that she moved from a 4 to an 8 in something around three and a half hours.  We don't know if this would be the case at any typical center offering water birth.  But that hot tub, combined with vigorous massage, verbal support, walking, and moving around was a good ticket to effective labor.

Contractions

They were 15 minutes apart she said, but gone now.  We hope they stay gone for another few days.  Work won't reimburse me for my classes if I take off work for my son being born.  Granted, given that we are about to add another human being to our household that almost seems like the least of the worries.  I try hard at work, but sometimes I worry about making it another month without being fired.  Getting sales involves a lot of person skills on the emotional level that I simply don't have, the product isn't really all that unique, the market is saying just about anything I'm touching is borderline obsolete, and they just doubled the official sales requirement.  After we stashed away the last tax return this is the first time since we've been married when the emergency savings fund was fully funded.  Would be nice to keep it that way, for a while at least.  Now we're about to have a baby with a HSA account making sure we pay up through the nose for anything they do.  Granted, the math seemed to say that once the coverage actually kicked in it would be so much better that we'd be better off in the long run.  Meantime, I guess I can kiss the emergency savings fund being fully funded goodbye for a while.  Maybe next year's tax return will fill it up again.  The government seems to think that if we are this poor we don't deserve to pay many taxes.  Maybe in a year or so I will have completed enough classes to get some kind of job that uses the skills I'm building with all these classes, and I can get away from customer service work.  Not that I mind helping customers, but sometimes I feel like I'm less helping them and more giving them a guided tour to a house of horrors.  Yes Mr. Customer I know you think its nothing to do with me personally but you hate our collective guts.  And if you could please hang up soon I'd appreciate it because whether I can put food on the table another day is partially dependent on being able to get you to go away quickly before my average call length goes through the roof.  Occasionally I simply know the answer to their problem off the tip of my tongue  and I can bask in the admiration of callers who enjoy having their problem solved fast.  But its equally likely that the solution is one that goes beyond their technical skill to implement and somehow that is our fault.  From a service perspective I can see why they'd feel that way when they don't have anyone else they can think of to turn to, but there is sometimes nothing I can do about that.  If only solving my life problems were as easy as claiming that it was all the fault or responsibility of the first group that came to mind.