Where is the love? (One more political post and then I'm for real done)

For a long time this election was about how much people loved Obama, which if somewhat vapid at times was inspiring and happy-making and fun to watch even from my more conservative standpoint, because honestly as much as I have always admired McCain and have been banging my head against a wall for the past eight years that he wasn't nominated in 2000, I would feel a certain kind of warmth if we were the kind of country that could elect a black person president--not that it would exorcise all our racial demons, but it would be a start. And I admire Obama as a person (his first book especially is splendid) and enjoy listening to him, so even if I disagree with what he says I like hearing it from someone who's a good public speaker. For a long time I thought a campaign between the two people who are the most approved-of members of their respective parties (according to polls that show Bush's approval rating under 30% and Congress' under 10%) would be a decent campaign, one that would not give me the feeling of nails on a chalkboard with every debate, every campaign ad, every soundbite.

Well, that's over.

Now it's about how much people HATE HATE HATE Sarah Palin. And, okay, you are entitled to that. But 1. why use up every possible invective in the first two weeks after she's nominated? You've got seven weeks to go and I don't know what else you can possibly say, although I'm sure you'll think of something. 2. Last time around, you hated the opposing candidate more than you loved your own candidate. And how did that work out for you?

And by the way, rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, McCain is not actually dead yet and he's still at the top of the opposing ticket. You can't run against Bush, because I'm not falling for the "McSame" stuff and I don't think a lot of other independents or pseudo-independents like me are either. Suddenly, after all these years of grudging respect, you hate him and equate him with Bush. Equating BUSH with Bush didn't work out that well, so, again, what the heck? Isn't this the definition of insane? Even if it's not insane, it's annoying and I'm tired of it.

I'm sick of politics already in September, and I'm the sort of person who's interested in politics. That's how bad it is.

Democrats, I know you love Obama. Show the love. The hate-side of you isn't that pretty, and if polls are right I'm not the only one who thinks so.

(A post much inspired by Madame Meow.)

Eleven months!

I did take ten-month pictures, but those are in a black hole along with the reunion pictures, road trip pictures, Vineyard pictures, and Ithaca pictures I haven't processed yet.





This one is not a great picture because she's not looking at the camera, but it is the first picture I have of her STANDING! I put her down on the grass and she just stood there like a real hominid long enough that I managed to take a picture of it.



Her other tricks include playing peek-a-boo (I'm never sure how they define these things, but I mean that she will hide, or do what she thinks is hiding, behind a book or blanket or whatever's handy while I ask, "Where's Auletta?"), clapping, and waving her index finger in the air while delivering orations that have all the cadences and structures of real language, except they're unintelligible. Oh, but probably not for long.

I am gay for Camille Paglia

Read this.

Somewhere in my family's archives there's a picture of my great-grandmother with my grandfather as a young boy, standing on the porch of their ranch house in Montana, looking fierce, like she could get up before dawn, strap my grandfather to her back, go out into subzero weather, birth a calf, slaughter it, and eat it for breakfast.

By request

A picture. A recent picture, even. From today. I have two-month-old pictures I haven't processed, but I'll get to those, really.

Truly important news

In the past few days, Auletta has stood on her own for a second or two at a time on several occasions. She is pulling up on everything she possibly can. She might be walking by her first birthday. I know that's a normal rate of development, but still! Weird!

Sarah Palin rumors

A roundup. Some are true, some are not. For anyone who stumbles on this, please for the love of God try to get your facts straight before perpetuating rumors. There are enough facts for you to have a field day with.

(Via Instapundit, who is giving me a lot to play with. If you're a liberal and reading this, yes he's conservative, but please give him a chance; he's very sane.)

(Drat, I have turned this into a politics blog. If this "Sambo beat the bitch" thing turns out to be verifiably true I will recant everything.)

Palin and sex education, and the horrors of sex ed, one of the lamest parts of a lame period in my life

Since I've been reading a number of posts by other bloggers who take it for granted that Palin is opposed to any other sex education than abstinence only (or opposed to sex education completely), even I was surprised to read that she appears to believe in more comprehensive sex education. And that it's not clear that Bristol received abstinence-only education--no surprise considering Palin's only been governor of Alaska for a year and a half and probably hasn't had time to establish autocratic control of public schools, despite snarky comments like "How did that abstinence-only education work out for you, honey?"

See this article in the LA Times (which I gather is a sufficiently unbiased source, no?) and this article in the Detroit Free Press.

In the past week I've conceived the notion that there shouldn't be sex education in schools at all because either it will be taught without any sort of underlying philosophy about what sex means (which I would oppose, because I think sex means something) or it will be taught with some sort of underlying philosophy (which someone will inevitably oppose, possibly including me because I might disagree with what that philosophy of sex is). So I can't run for public office, because I put that out there and now I'm anathema to everyone.

(By the way, what did everyone learn in sex ed? My memories are mostly along the lines of how I was theoretically supposed to learn Washington state history in ninth grade social studies, which I did not. I remember two films: one with giggly teenagers asking questions like "What's an orgasm?" and one that was like Chlamydia: The Untold Story, and meanwhile I was probably the most unsexed ninth-grader ever and thinking, "Well, chlamydia's about eleven thousandth on my list of worries under present circumstances." So there you go.)

On the Vineyard

Okay, enough politics. This is 2008, which means it's an election year--NO! it means my daughter's growing like a weed and this is a mommy blog, and I have so many pictures to catch up on that you're going to be baby-ed out by the time I'm done.

We spent a week and a half on Martha's Vineyard in August while Justin was doing a research project. Really. So, here is Auletta on the Beach, Take 2. Observe the cute swimsuit from Super-Auntie Dawn.

Chilling on the sand with Dad.



Taking a dip with Mom. Note that she is okay with sand (she was eating it earlier and saying "num," so she must like it) but is not really sure about this ocean thingy.



The ocean is best viewed from Daddy-height.

One political thing and then I'm done.

This is gross.

Three days after only the second woman ever to be nominated by a major party for the vice presidency of the United States is chosen, and other women--other mothers! are getting into these rumors, as if Republican women don't count or something. Stop it. Just stop. If this is the best we can do, we don't deserve the right to vote we got 88 years ago. Criticize her resume, criticize her political beliefs, but don't scrutinize whether she looks five months pregnant in a photo taken from behind and don't be hypocritical judgmental asshats when her teenage daughter gets pregnant and decides to keep the baby. It is none of your damn business, and just because she's "anti-choice" or evangelical or whatever doesn't mean her womanhood or her family is any less sacred than yours, which you (as I would) would defend with your life and teeth and bare hands.

The long, long trip

We are driving home from Seattle. Because.

First night: Bozeman, MT
Second night: Medora, ND
Now we're chilling in Denver with friends.

Why are we doing this? I'm not entirely sure. Justin hates flying and loves road trips. This might be the last time Auletta travels so far without extensive complaining (she's been amazingly good, although the problem with lots of sleep during the day in the car is not so much sleep at night when we need to sleep). And this country is hella cool.

Pictures are forthcoming. Will be back by the end of next week (I have a shopping date in NYC! which required a little additional shopping today so I don't look like a hobo when I do the future shopping. At least that is my logic).

Okay, but here is a preview: Sunset at Buck Hill, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota.

Nine months!

Okay, I wasn't that far off. I took these pictures yesterday, only a day after her nine-month birthday. I'll go back and do reunion pictures soon, Deo volente.



She reminds me a LOT of Grandma Sue when she looks serious like this.







Photos taken in Seattle, where grass dies in the summer.

Westward

We are headed to the west coast for the second time in four months: to visit my family in Seattle, and to attend Justin's family reunion (his maternal grandmother's side) in Lincoln City, Oregon. Here's hoping Auletta travels as well as she did on her first cross-country trip.

Four years!

Since the Best Wedding Ever. Okay, I am biased.



Tiaras for weddings: Because some of us were too cool for prom.

Four down and many more to come, God willing. I love you, honeybee.

Tomorrow, by the way, is the sixth anniversary of the Fourth of July party where we started dating-ish. So Justin and his roommates had this party at their flat in Rome attended by most of our Latin class as well as some of his roommate's friends from the Largo Argentina cat shelter--and the pub by the shelter--including this drunken British poet and his dog whose name degenerated from Gypsy to Nootsy over the course of the evening. Someone put a lock on the front gate of the building, so we were all locked in for a while, and I got jealous of this creative writing major from Columbia who stole Justin's attention when he and I were alone in the kitchen obviously having a private conversation, so I retreated into his bedroom, lured him in somehow while everyone was freaking out about not being able to leave except by jumping off the terrace, and then we expressed our mutual affection for one another. And the drunken British poet's kind of scary companion cut the lock, so eventually we all went home. The end. Or the beginning. Good times.

Sleep

Auletta slept nicely in the co-sleeper next to our bed until she was six months old. Then she went cold turkey after a visit to the Greater Schwabs, and slept in our bed until we set up her crib and Ferberized her into sleeping there. Usually. Most of the night. Sometimes. Not really for naps yet. (Which, like, wouldn't matter, except that she usually doesn't cry when she wakes up from naps, so sometimes I walk in on her and she's awake and sitting on the edge of the bed.)

Naptime:





One night this week I put her down and she just sat there and cried because she didn't think she was ready to go to sleep, even though she was clearly tired. This is how she ended up:

Eight months!

By some miracle of organization, I took Auletta's eight-month pictures, put them on SmugMug, and am posting them here, all on her actual eight-month birthday! Don't get used to it. It won't happen next month, for reasons to be disclosed.

Anyway, here is the cuteness:







One of those dresses I bought a year ago when I found out I was having a girl. It has turned out to be as cute on her as I'd hoped, and good on sweltering days like today.

I signed Auletta up for a program at the library for 0-3-year-olds and their caregivers, which meets three mornings a week, starting today. I keep calling it storytime, but it actually involves like one story and then various songs, rhymes, games, etc., all with a predictable amount of chaos given the age group. Auletta, if I may say, is one of the best behaved children there, probably because she's still essentially immobile. She is starting to crawl backwards but in such situations seems content to sit and watch the bigger kids crawl and walk, and grab them if they get too close. Storytime is as much for me to meet other moms as it is for Auletta to meet other kids, although she is so rarely around children her own age that I think it will be good for her to start socializing, to the extent that infants socialize. Also I am hoping the time spent in the library will make her additionally nerdy.

Aunties and uncles

From our trip to Ithaca a couple of weeks ago for Weath's graduation:

Uncle Harry



Uncle Soren



Auntie Weatherly



Uncle Whitney



Super-Auntie Dawn



And that's not even everyone!

Seven months, and a bit

I didn't get around to taking Auletta's seven-month pictures until around May 15. You'd think now she that she's sitting up on her own she'd be easier to pose, but our apartment is still too unpacked and cluttered to take pictures and the outside can be wet and cold and unmanicured. And the photographer can be lazy. But here are a few from when I finally got outside with a baby and a camera at the same time:







Still hard to keep her looking at the camera with her hands out of her mouth. I suspect she will be a camera hog as soon as she figures out exactly what it is.

NOT COOL.

I don't often post news stories here, but because this could have a direct bearing on my life (not to mention a lot of other women's lives), and because it makes me mad, I'll copy the entire news article here. From NYT.com (but not linked because they always make you log in to view their articles after a few days).

June 1, 2008
After Caesareans, Some See Higher Insurance Cost
By DENISE GRADY

When the Golden Rule Insurance Company rejected her application for health coverage last year, Peggy Robertson was mystified.

“It made no sense,” said Ms. Robertson, 39, who lives in Centennial, Colo. “I’m in perfect health.”

She was turned down because she had given birth by Caesarean section. Having the operation once increases the odds that it will be performed again, and if she became pregnant and needed another Caesarean, Golden Rule did not want to pay for it. A letter from the company explained that if she had been sterilized after the Caesarean, or if she were over 40 and had given birth two or more years before applying, she might have qualified.

Ms. Robertson had been shopping around for individual health insurance, the kind that people buy on their own. She already had insurance but was looking for a better rate. After being rejected by Golden Rule, she kept her existing coverage.

With individual insurance, unlike the group coverage usually sponsored by employers, insurance companies in many states are free to pick and choose the people and conditions they cover, and base the price on a person’s medical history. Sometimes, a past Caesarean means higher premiums.

Although it is not known how many women are in Ms. Robertson’s situation, the number seems likely to increase, because the pool of people seeking individual health insurance, now about 18 million, has been growing steadily — and so has the Caesarean rate, which is at an all-time high of 31.1 percent. In 2006, more than 1.2 million Caesareans were performed in the United States, and researchers estimate that each year, half a million women giving birth have had previous Caesareans.

“Obstetricians are rendering large numbers of women uninsurable by overusing this surgery,” said Pamela Udy, president of the International Caesarean Awareness Network, a group whose mission is to prevent unnecessary Caesareans.

Although many women who have had a Caesarean can safely have a normal birth later, something that Ms. Udy’s group advocates, in recent years many doctors and hospitals have refused to allow such births, because they carry a small risk of a potentially fatal complication, uterine rupture. Now, Ms. Udy says, insurers are adding insult to injury. Not only are women feeling pressure to have Caesareans that they do not want and may not need, but they may also be denied coverage for the surgery.

“You have women just caught in the middle of this huge triangle of hospitals, insurance companies and doctors pointing the finger at each other,” Ms. Udy said.

Insurers’ rules on prior Caesareans vary by company and also by state, since the states regulate insurers, said Susan Pisano of America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade group. Some companies ignore the surgery, she said, but others treat it like a pre-existing condition.

“Sometimes the coverage will come with a rider saying that coverage for a Caesarean delivery is excluded for a period of time,” Ms. Pisano said. Sometimes, she said, applicants with prior Caesareans are charged higher premiums or deductibles.

“In many respects it works a lot like other situations where someone has a condition that will foreshadow the potential for higher costs going forward,” Ms. Pisano said.

Her group has reported that although most Americans with health insurance, 160 million, have group plans through employers, the number needing individual policies will probably keep rising, because more and more people are becoming self-employed or taking jobs without health benefits.

In a letter to Ms. Robertson, Golden Rule, which sells individual policies in 30 states, said it would insure a woman who had had a Caesarean only if it could exclude paying for another one for three years. But in Colorado, such exclusions are considered discriminatory and are forbidden, so Golden Rule simply rejects women who have had the surgery, unless they have been sterilized or meet the company’s age requirements.

“If you don’t work for someone who has insurance, and you have to get insurance on your own, this is terrifying,” Ms. Robertson said.

A spokeswoman for Golden Rule declined to explain how long it had been excluding Caesareans, how it had decided to do so or how many were affected, saying the information was proprietary. The company, based in Indianapolis, is owned by UnitedHealthcare, which collects more than $50 billion a year in premiums and has 26 million members, most with group coverage.

In Colorado, people denied individual health insurance can obtain it through a state program, Cover Colorado, which insures about 7,200 people. But the premiums are high, 140 percent of standard rates, a spokeswoman said, adding that some women had enrolled specifically because prior Caesareans had disqualified them from private insurance.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, which has about 300,000 members with individual coverage, used to exclude repeat Caesareans, but recently began to cover them — for a 25 percent increase in premiums for five years. Like Golden Rule, the company exempts women if they have been sterilized.

“After five years, if there is not a complication of pregnancy, another C-section, or if they get their tubes tied and are no longer in that risk situation, that rate-up goes away,” said Randy M. Kammer, the vice president for regulatory affairs and public policy.

The higher rate is based on a Caesarean costing an average of $2,700 more than a vaginal birth (assuming no complications in either type of delivery). Ms. Kammer said Blue Cross Blue Shield could not provide a tally of how many members were paying the higher rates because of Caesareans.

“The aggravating thing is, there are a lot of elective Caesareans, and that adds to costs,” she said.

Elizabeth Bonet, who lives in Sunrise, Fla., learned about the higher rates this year when she applied to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida.

“I was very angry, outraged, shocked,” Ms. Bonet said. “It made me feel very helpless. These were not Caesareans I wanted. They were not elective Caesareans. I very much wanted natural births with both babies and was not able to have them, and to have to pay for that for years is outrageous, and I feel it’s discriminatory as well.”

Each state’s Blue Cross Blue Shield plan sets its own policies. In Texas, a spokeswoman said, a prior Caesarean will not affect a woman’s premiums or insurability, as long as she has recovered fully.

A spokeswoman for another major insurer, Wellpoint, said the company’s decisions about prior Caesareans varied case by case, but declined to explain further.

Aetna does not treat a Caesarean itself as a pre-existing condition, but does factor in chronic or recurring problems that might have led to the Caesarean, like diabetes or high blood pressure, a spokeswoman said.

A spokeswoman for another company, Mega Life and Health Insurance, in North Richland Hills, Tex., said: “If the Caesarean section was considered by the physician to be medically necessary for the safety of the mother or child then coverage is issued without conditions. If the procedure was determined to be ‘elective,’ coverage would be offered with a temporary waiver or at a higher premium rate.”

Insurers often accuse women and obstetricians of scheduling unneeded Caesareans for their own convenience — to deliver the baby at a certain time, or to avoid labor. But it is not known how much of the overall increase in Caesareans is because of a rise in unnecessary operations, or how many Caesareans are done at the mother’s request, according to a 2006 report by the National Institutes of Health.

“I think it’s really a very small amount, but we need more data,” said Dr. Mary D’Alton, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University Medical Center, and an author of the report.

She said she was amazed to hear that insurers would charge higher premiums or deny coverage because of a past Caesarean.

“I would think if it’s happening, the medical profession has to take a stand,” Dr. D’Alton said.

But to people familiar with the rough and tumble world of individual insurance, the companies’ practices are no surprise.

Individual insurance differs sharply from the group coverage with which most people are familiar. Group policies generally require that the insurer cover everybody in the group, and charge the same rates for all. But with individual coverage, insurers in many states can vary their prices based on medical history, exclude certain services or reject anyone they consider a bad risk. (Several states, however, including New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts, ban such practices.)

Insurers say they need these strategies to protect themselves, because some customers apply only after they get sick or pregnant, skewing the pool toward people with high expenses.

Ms. Robertson said that had she known a Caesarean was grounds for rejection, she would not have even applied to Golden Rule, because the denial may be held against her in the future. Insurers routinely ask applicants if they have ever been denied, and red-flag anyone who says yes.

“My understanding is that once you’re denied it’s hard to get other insurance,” Ms. Robertson said. “Man, is that a scary thing.”

Bah. What's really scary is not just that women would be denied coverage for repeat c-sections, but would be denied coverage, period. This affects a lot of people. I agree the national c-section rate is too high, but a lot of c-sections aren't elective and I'm not sure Auletta and I would even have survived childbirth if I hadn't had one (I certainly didn't feel like I would at the time!). I hope I will never have to worry about this--we have Yale coverage right now (under which we might just have another baby, who knows), which is comprehensive and as far as I know doesn't deny insurance to anyone affiliated with the university, and after that I will hopefully be covered under a group plan, either Justin's employer or my own--but this is still really frightening for women who aren't in such fortunate circumstances.

Oh, ah, oops.

I didn't post for all of May. Wow. Rest assured, Auletta did start solids, although she seems to have forgotten that now as I can barely get her to eat every baby's perennial favorite, applesauce.

We moved about a month ago to a new apartment near Wooster Square, New Haven's Little Italy. Back to our roots, Auletta and I. We are a block away from what's supposed to be some of the world's best pizza and also an Italian deli and bakery. And within walking distance of Starbucks, although that's farther. So Auletta and I have gone on walks every day it's been nice, which is becoming more often. New Haven only has three or four good months, but they're really good.

Auletta is cutting her first tooth now, so she's kind of a pill, at least compared to her normal self. I hope this explains the lack of interest in solid foods because otherwise I am going to be nursing round the clock for a long, long time.

Six months, for real

I finally put a ton of pictures on my Smugmug site, now that I have a new computer and Photoshop Elements to play with.

So on April 10 I stuck my daughter in a dress and plopped her on the grass outside (it happened to be the first warm day in, like, her life). She was not really thrilled about the whole experience, so it was hard to get a picture of her smiling. Also, for future reference, white dress + bright sunlight = photography nightmare, with or without a cranky baby.



Eventually I coaxed a smile out of her.



I also took pictures of her sitting in a chair on the front porch of a little playhouse which is a model of the carriage house in which we live. Actually, it's better than the carriage house in the sense that we don't have a front porch.



And then a nap. The problem with preparing dinner in this household is that the people for whom I prepare dinner tend to take afternoon naps. And Auletta's dinner takes preparation these days. More on that to come.