Vasectomy Reversal TipsMy Tips on Vasectomy Reversal

There are a few posts in the works, but it has been a crazy week and I want to take time to do the topics justice. Coming this weekend:

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Tonight’s episode of NBC sitcom Scrubs featured a surprisingly straightforward depiction of postpartum depression, as well as breastfeeding and lactation consultants. The character Carla has recently had a baby; her husband notices that she seems depressed, while she struggles with her feelings and insists that she’ll be fine. A friend of the couple who is also a mother eventually convinces Carla that she needs to seek help. Carla and her husband are also shown meeting with lactation consultants, with Carla appearing as though attempting to breastfeed. While the breastfeeding scene was played for laughs (it is a comedy, after all), the postpartum depression issue was portrayed as a serious concern, and neither of these two topics is a common sight on network television. Additionally, the Carla character is a long-time nurse, and her husband is a surgeon; depicting medical professionals dealing with these problems in a serious manner normalizes the issues in a way rarely seen in television or film.

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Women’s Health News has moved to WordPress – comments are no longer being moderated on this Blogger version on a regular basis. Please join the discussion over at WordPress.

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Today’s New York Times Magazine has a lengthy piece on women in war, beginning with a profile of Suzanne Smith, a 21-year-old Army specialist who went AWOL rather than be redeployed to Iraq. Swift claimed to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, and was pressured to have sex with her commander during her previous deployment. The piece reports that “a 2003 report financed by the Department of Defense revealed that nearly one-third of a nationwide sample of female veterans seeking health care through the V.A. said they experienced rape or attempted rape during their service. Of that group, 37 percent said they were raped multiple times, and 14 percent reported they were gang-raped,” and cites findings that women subjected to sexual assault are more likely to develope PTSD.

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Katie Allison Granju, Knoxville blogger and author of Attachment Parenting, is scoping out locations for her upcoming birth. Katie has specific concerns due to a genetic condition, but also has certain criteria for how she’d like to labor, and has hit several barriers in finding what she needs, as described in this post. Katie would like to labor in water, but the hospital only has two rooms with tubs. She suggested renting one and bringing it in, but was told by the head of nursing that they only allow women to labor in water “if their water hasn’t broken and they aren’t dilated.” In other words, they don’t allow women to labor in water. Why a healthcare professional who presumably knows what labor is would tell a woman that she can labor in water if her water hadn’t broken and she isn’t dilated is beyond me. Nurse Cranky took things one step further, telling her she can’t use a birthing ball because she might fall off, and it’s a liability issue. Katie also describes the hospital’s “support” for women who don’t want epidurals – “support” to them apparently means “we won’t push drugs on you,” but doesn’t seem to include any techniques or strategies for helping laboring women otherwise cope with pain.

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The Great American Condom Campaign needs your help to continue to the important work of ensuring that all people have access to condoms and appropriate disease prevention and contraceptive information. To learn more, visit the links at the bottom of this post. Your donation will help support this work, including providing 100 condoms a month to registered SafeSites for distribution to the community. From an email, republished with permission:

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From the AMIA conference, in the liveblogging style, but really posted after the fact. I’ll add links to resources and people later.

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Planned Parenthood of Middle & East Tennessee is looking for teen actors to join its Teen Theatre Troupe and Peer Education Group, the PG-13 Players, a peer education theatre troupe that develops and performs skits on various teen issues such as teen pregnancy, depression, dating violence, etc. Participants must be entering 9th-12th grades in the 2007/08 school year. Auditions are by appointment only on the evenings of March 13th, 14th, and 20th. Contact Kayce Matthews at 345-0952 ext. 218.

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Planned Parenthood of Middle & East Tennessee will be providing free emergency contraception on March 20th at the following locations and times:

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via Feministing, a Maryland appellate court decided that it’s not rape if you consent to sex and decide or need to withdraw that consent during intercourse. The specific court decision [PDF] focuses on what a jury should have been told regarding this matter:

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