Tuesday, January 11, 2011

"Preaching to the choir" and what is in store for 2011

I have been online a lot more the past few days as my son has a fever, so I have spent a lot of time just holding him with my laptop open in front of me instead of cleaning or doing other things. I suspect the fever is a reaction to the Pneumococcal Vaccine (Pc, PCV, Prevnar) he received at his well-child visit on Dec. 30--it was his third time getting the Pc shot, and he didn't have a reaction the first two times, but reactions to Pc are very common, so I'm guessing it would be from that one and not the Hep B. He has been clingy and fussy the past few days, but no digestive or flu-like symptoms--kind of unusual. The fever is responding to acetaminophen, though.

But I see that taking more time away from the internet over the past month or so has been good for me in a lot of ways. I have been reminded of what Courtroom Mama wrote last summer in her call for submissions for the Crisis in the Crib blog carnival (which I participated in) about how time away from the internet can give you fresh perspectives.

I have been considering what the point is for writing this blog. I think, for the most part, blogs are read by same-thinking individuals, creating a "preaching to the choir" effect. What good am I doing if I find just the right words to express the way I feel if the only people who are reading it all feel exactly the same way, they just couldn't find the right words to say it? How much of what I say actually gets outside the circle of like-minded birth and parenting bloggers and onto the screens of women who actually need to read it? Who may actually consider options they hadn't considered before reading?

I would venture to say, not very much. This is why many of my posts in the past have focused not on proclaiming the message of the natural birth movement, but on turning our eyes on ourselves and discussing in what ways we are failing in our efforts to present our point of view effectively--tendencies towards things like name-calling, forgetting that others might see things from a different point of view, doctor-bashing, creating fear of medical interventions, and focusing too much on what choice is made rather than why it is made . I hope to have more posts like this in 2011. Because nobody is perfect the choir still needs preaching to, just a different message than what the congregation needs to hear.

Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Organ
Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Organ (Public Domain)

In 2011, I hope to write to the audience I have, rather than the one I'd really love to have, and perhaps I'll also try to find new ways to reach the people out there I'd love to reach. I also aim to write shorter posts, since they are more likely to be read, and to break up posts into multiple parts if they get too long.

(I was going to schedule this post for tomorrow, but I realized the date, and I wanted to post something on 1/11/11)

1 comment:

  1. I think it's very important to take a hard look at the natural birth movement. It's been around for about 50 years and maternity care in the hospital hasn't improved all that much. Why? What resources aren't we using that we could be? Who are we alienating?

    I feel part of the problem is far too much time spent educating parents and not near enough time spent educating doctors. We need to reach the medical schools while the doctors are learning. We need to reach the hospital administrators. Reaching parents does almost no good at all-in fact it does harm because we set them up to fail. We show them all these wonderful things, and why certain things are 'bad' but then we send them into a broken system that they have no hope of conquering. That's setting them up to fail and to feel guilty.

    I have yet to read a natural birth blog that is dedicated to these issues, very interested in reading what you you have to say to the 'choir'.

    ReplyDelete