Service Leaning Log

For the past few weeks all I have been doing is helping Maria (which is the Young Women Leaders Program coordinator) prepare things for the events and meetings that YWLP has during the week. Also, there was a little workshop that was held on bullying. It was to encourage students to speak up and speak out if they see any bullying going on. I have set goodie bags, called and contacted some of the community business to see if they could donate some things to give to the children, and seeing if there were any extra things to do. I talk with Maria every week and we also contact each other through email. Some of my successes are just helping out with the little things that need to be done. My major pitfall is that since I live and work so far I am not able to attend a lot of the events that YWLP hosts. Next week what I could do to help complete my project would be to try and attend the YWLP meeting this coming Wednesday and do some more of the little things that I have been doing.

Well I guess I could talk about bullying and how it relates to what we talked about in class on Thursday. Women seem like we have rules to adhere to and men are the ones that tag along beside us because they have to. Women everyday are being forced blatantly or subliminally fit into this type of superwoman type of person. We have to dress a certain way, go to college, get married and have kids before our eggs shrivel up and die. This week’s lecture and the event opened my eyes as how oppressive it is to be normal. We have to fit a certain criteria for us to be good women. And things are changes as time goes on. Some women don’t want to have children, don’t want to get married, and don’t want to the best cook in the world. Some women are content with being by themselves and doing there on thing without having to work around a child or an intimate partner in their lives. My belief of my community partner is all in the name which is Young Women Leaders Program. I’m glad that they take the time out of their busy schedule to mentor young women and let them know that no one in the world could stop them from doing anything that they want to do.

What I would love to get from this is, seeing young children blossom into whatever they want to be. As I was walking by the students at the Leading Out Loud event, I heard most of them having high goals such as being doctors and lawyers. I would love to see them actually reach for those goals and let no one tell them different.

One Born Every Minute

I couldn't really watch full episodes of the series but, the clips that I have seen look crazy. The first thing that popped up was "two grandmothers" fighting because they were getting tired of each other. Then another clip I saw was of a lady in season two that refused to let her husband breathe his "toxic" germs on her. But getting back to business, there was clip that I found that was a bit humorous but serious at the same time. This particular couple was having their second child and the husband said, "I think we could skip out on the epidural this time to lighten up our bill". This made me think of the documentary that we watched earlier in class. Baby birthing is where the big money is and hospitals are milking parents out of their money. From what I've seen, the show portrays women's health as one determined by the doctors. The women don't have too much say either because they're in too much pain, they are too drugged up to even know what's going on, or they're sent on a guilt trip saying that their baby needs this and that. But really it's just something to hurry up the birthing process and fill the bed again with another pregnant woman ready to give birth. The interests and concerns of soon-to-be-mothers are not really important as the doctors who are almost never there until it’s time to push. I'm glad that whenever the baby has complications, everybody is hasty to uncomplicate the situation (I think the just made up that word). Just thinking about the baby, maybe all of the drugs that are given to mothers are what's complicating children. In the documentary, they explained that the drug Pitocin, which is used to induce labor, slows down the baby's heart rate. My question is why they are giving these women these medicines and not telling them what it could do to their baby's health. But, I guess it all boils down to money. The people that are being portrayed as knowledgeable would be the nurses and doctors, of course. Mothers know nothing about their bodies and nothing about giving birth, except for these wonderful doctors and nurses, who according to the documentary never actually saw a natural birth. I would hope that the people that are being portrayed as being strong would be the mothers. They are the actual people that push babies out of their vaginas. In my opinion, that's as strong as strong gets. When I start having kids, I want to look as graceful as those women did in the documentary. I don't want to look crazy and hysterical because I'm in pain and everyone around me is being hasty and not trying coming me down like in the wild pregnancy shows. The pregnancy shows out now, truthfully scare me out of having kids. The birthing process to me was something to be feared, but after watching the documentary, it’s something that I want to experience naturally and peacefully.