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	telegramsam 2011-06-30 03:29 pm UTC (link)
	Probably the same people who have forgotten how many children used to die from measles, polio, etc and scream at parents who choose to vaccinate.... (Reply to this)(Thread)

	telegramsam 2011-06-30 03:46 pm UTC (link)
	(And I'd also be curious to hear just how these idiots would explain away the fact that this same disorder also sometimes happens in horses, pigs and several other animal species if nature is so damned "perfect"...) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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rosehiptea, 2011-06-30 09:50 pm UTC

	misachan 2011-06-30 04:05 pm UTC (link)
	Was it Anne Boleyn who some researchers think may have been Rh-? I know I've read that theory but can't remember now whether it was about her or Katherine. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	issendai 2011-06-30 08:24 pm UTC (link)
	Huh! Given Henry VIII's wives' ongoing fertility issues and the troubles that his daughter Mary had after him, is it possible that HE was Rh-? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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	littleshebear 2011-06-30 04:24 pm UTC (link)
	Speaking as someone who's Rh+ with a Rh- mother? Hooray for Western medicine, I probably wouldn't be here without it. (Reply to this)(Thread)

sgaana
2011-07-01 02:37 am UTC (link)

I was going to say...

My mother is Rh-. My father was Rh+, therefore... They had my older brother with no problem, but there is a brother and a sister who came between us, who were stillborn because of this syndrome. (I still can't quite imagine how my mother went through 2 stillbirths within 2 years of each other.) And when my mother became pregnant with me, it was *just* around the time when medicine had figured out how to save a child from this.

Even so: born by C-section 1 month premature. Put immediately into an incubator and rushed across town in a police car with the siren going, to the Children's Hospital. I had 3 complete blood transfusions before I was 1 month old. (Which, when you think about, is not talking about a LOT of blood, but still.) It wasn't until then that they were sure I'd make it, and they could bring me home from the hospital. My mother kept a copy of the tearful letter that my father wrote to the doctor who pioneered the methods that saved me.

So, you know? Western medicine? FUCKING YAY.

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littleshebear, 2011-07-01 01:53 pm UTC

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fern_on_fen, 2011-07-01 06:04 pm UTC

	rhiannonmr 2011-06-30 06:11 pm UTC (link)
	I'm Rh-, I have an Rh+ son and an Rh- daughter. You better believe I had the shot. It's no inconvenience to have and it saves you from a buttload of problems in the future. I don't get why anyone wouldn't do it. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	vorpal_blade 2011-07-02 04:18 am UTC (link)
	Ditto. It was a real no-brainer for me. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	mirhanda 2011-06-30 07:19 pm UTC (link)
	How stupid. This has saved thousands, maybe millions of lives! (Reply to this)

	lady_ganesh 2011-06-30 07:32 pm UTC (link)
	I'm a bit skeptical of this. The only place I can find advocating this is a 'vaccine truther' site, and even they say you should be tested. Naturalchildbirth.org has several answers saying Rhogam is healthy and you should take the shot. The blogger seems to be someone with a real hate-on for midwives and home birth. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	sevendeadlyfun 2011-06-30 07:45 pm UTC (link)
	Well there's at least one group of midwives who seem to agree that Rhogam is bad for your health and may even cause autism - http://mountainviewmidwives.com/prenatal_rhogam.html (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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lady_ganesh, 2011-06-30 07:49 pm UTC

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sevendeadlyfun, 2011-06-30 07:53 pm UTC

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telegramsam, 2011-07-01 01:48 am UTC

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rosehiptea, 2011-07-01 08:19 am UTC

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issendai, 2011-07-01 02:39 pm UTC

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telegramsam, 2011-07-01 08:48 pm UTC

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telegramsam, 2011-07-02 06:35 pm UTC

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ruslan, 2011-06-30 07:55 pm UTC

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chibikaijuu, 2011-07-02 09:01 pm UTC

	khym_chanur 2011-06-30 08:24 pm UTC (link)
	Searching for Rhogam ("change * rh" OR "change * blood type") Raspberry tea gives 81,900 hits. Besides, even if it was only one site, the idea that you can change your blood type through diet is so crazy I just had to share. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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lady_ganesh, 2011-06-30 08:26 pm UTC

	varkias 2011-06-30 08:37 pm UTC (link)
	That was my impression as well, idk. My sisters have all wanted as natural births as possible, but they've all worked with midwives that were up front about complications and risks. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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vorpal_blade, 2011-07-02 04:59 am UTC

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varkias, 2011-07-06 11:12 am UTC

edana_ni_emer
2011-06-30 09:04 pm UTC (link)

I noticed his hate-on myself. I've got a friend that's very interested in having a homebirth herself when she has kids, and she's done *staggering* amounts of research, and not just on the granola-crunchy sites.

Part of the reason? She's not scared of modern medicine, she's scared of modern medical *practitioners*. There's a lot of good doctors out there, but the bad ones tend to be *really* bad.

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lady_ganesh, 2011-06-30 10:44 pm UTC

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ruslan, 2011-07-02 02:39 am UTC

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chibikaijuu, 2011-07-02 09:09 pm UTC

Sorry about the tl;dr...

vorpal_blade
2011-07-02 04:45 am UTC (link)

I did notice that. Her repetition of midwives and home-birth advocates being wrong "as usual" was kind of grating, and I say that as someone who had Rhogam, which probably saved my second kid's life.

Now, you couldn't possible pay me a buttload of money to do a home-birth, but that's because I like options, and when I was in the hospital giving birth I had nurses, a midwife and my OBGYN docs, no pain meds and two vaginal births, one a little early and one a little past the due date. I also received pitocin to help bring on the contractions during one birth, since my water had already broken. I couldn't get the first kid to nurse in the hospital but the second one took to it immediately. Except for the nursing thing, no one tried to judge me for any of the decisions I made. (Once we were home the kid nursed just fine--he just wasn't hungry yet. Despite this the nurses were VERY judgmental about his not nursing, blaming me for his lack of interest, which didn't last once he was, you know, ACTUALLY HUNGRY.)

I feel that too many women are sold too quickly on things like epidurals (which make it harder for you to push, since you're not feeling anything below the waist) and C-sections (which some people just schedule for convenience, not because it's medically necessary, like the people I know who've had emergency C-sections). And it really is healthier for a kid to get breast milk; I know a distressingly large number of women who never even try to either nurse or pump. However, I'd never walk up to a woman (whether I know her or not) and start lecturing her if she's feeding a kid formula. That's just obnoxious, but I've heard of it happening.

This doctor is having a bit of a reaction in the other direction on all of these things, not considering that maybe there's a middle road between being a totally pro-all-natural zealot and an anti-all-natural zealot, that you can talk to women about the pros and cons of each choice and let them decide which combination works for them rather than pushing them all to one side or the other.

I know that right now the all-natural zealots are being pretty one-sided and inflexible about this, but doing the same thing in the opposite direction will only take us back to the days when a woman was strapped down to a bed the moment she was admitted to the hospital in labor, stuck with an IV and given an anesthetic to knock her out while the baby is removed with forceps or during a C-section, whether she wants any of these things or not. A birth that includes choices for each woman should be any doctor's goal, and this one seems to be forcing her agenda on women as much as any of the zealots she's trying to counter, rather than making the labor room a safe, nonjudgmental place for each woman to make informed decisions (even if she previously made other decisions, during prenatal care, and is now changing her mind).

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Re: Sorry about the tl;dr... -

rosehiptea, 2011-07-02 05:03 pm UTC

Re: Sorry about the tl;dr... -

jujubee, 2011-07-02 10:24 pm UTC

	sevendeadlyfun 2011-06-30 07:40 pm UTC (link)
	What is this dumbfuckery? Changing your blood type with tea and herb capsules? Sweet fancy Moses, that is some ridiculousity. There's no tea tree oil mentioned and everyone KNOWS that only tea tree oil has enough crunchy naturalness in it to change your blood type. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	littleshebear 2011-06-30 08:06 pm UTC (link)
	What I want to know is this: If taking "certain herbs," cutting out sugar and white flour while drinking raspberry leaf tea can change your blood type to Rh+, does eating shedloads of flour and sugar while eschewing the speshul herbs and tea change your blood type to Rh-? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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rosehiptea, 2011-06-30 08:13 pm UTC

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khym_chanur, 2011-06-30 08:26 pm UTC

	lil_miss_stfu 2011-06-30 11:09 pm UTC (link)
	I'm going to go somewhere else, take a few deep breaths and calm the fuck down. Because right now I want to beat the ever loving SHIT out of these idiots. (Reply to this)

	evilsqueakers 2011-06-30 11:46 pm UTC (link)
	Well, I learned some information in those post and a reminder to eventually figure out what my blood type and stuffs is. My mom doesn't remember her own, much less mine. And Daddy is a O-. I remember that from his dog tags I used to wear as a kid. (He didn't stick to the Reserves, got out because mom had a very difficult pregnancy.) (Reply to this)(Thread)

	quantumreality 2011-06-30 11:53 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah. I don't know my own type let alone the Rh factor. It's so stupid, it can be done in like 10 seconds with a high school biology kit only I'm paranoid about needles and pointy things anywhere near me. FML. Should get it done though. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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	twinno 2011-07-01 02:13 am UTC (link)
	If you're at all a candidate for doing this, you can find out via blood donation. If you donate to the Red Cross, for example, within a few weeks they'll send you an ID card for next time you donate, and it'll have your blood type on it (or at least they did when I started donating). (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

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	b_jellybean 2011-07-01 03:17 am UTC (link)
	Dear Mommy- Thank you for carrying your little Rh- card and taking Rhogam. I really like being alive and not severely anemic. Love, C (Reply to this)

	ladyvyola 2011-07-01 04:04 pm UTC (link)
	My mother still tells the story of how her doctor congratulated her for marrying a man with the same blood type as her (A neg) to cut down on complications. Given that I know they had at least one miscarriage before I was born, I congratulate her, too. (Reply to this)(Thread)

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	sandglass 2011-07-01 11:36 pm UTC (link)
	I want to start some kind of yay Western medicine blog. Because damn, if it hasn't both saved my life and made it a lot better in many, many ways. (Reply to this)(Thread)

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felinephoenix, 2011-07-05 08:07 am UTC

snarky_bix
2011-07-02 01:44 am UTC (link)

As someone who makes RhoGAM for a living, I can only shake my head. We had a big celebration a few years ago to celebrate the 40th anniversary of RhoGAM, and women who had lost babies to hemolytic disease of the newborn came to speak about how important RhoGAM is. To this day, these women who have lost babies are among our most dedicated plasmaphoresis donors. It breaks my heart and makes me very angry that someone with both head and heart in the wrong place would set other women up to experience the tragedy of repeated miscarriages and stillbirths. Once you have been sensitized and start producing anti-D, you can't undo it.

As an Rh- woman, you better bet I rolled up my sleeve for my RhoGAM shot. Damn skippy.

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ruslan, 2011-07-03 04:14 pm UTC

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