Interesting Links for 19-02-2012

[andrewducker]

• Neil Gaiman dealing with online anti-semitism
  (tags: Jews neilgaiman )
• Who is, and is not, invited to Cameron's emergency NHSbill summit? A data visualisation.
  (tags: uk politics nhs )
• Why Chrome connects to three random domains at startup.
  (tags: web google chrome )
• The French Government Wants To Tone My Vagina - oh to live in a sensible country
  (tags: exercise healthcare women sex vagina france )
• Education secretary says Equality Act doesn't include schools - faith schools to use homophobic material
  (tags: conservatives bigotry lgbt discrimination education )

Comments

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

I was encouraged to do toning exercises post birth 15 years ago. HOWEVER, I was lucky with my whole maternity experience - at the time Edinburgh was trialling private maternity care - aiming at middle class people who may be interested in paying for a better standard of care. It was all free during the study and we got invited due to the fact we both had good salaries and 'professional' jobs. I got a named midwife from Day 1 who phoned me weekly to see how I was progressing, four weekly check-ups including scans, a private room after the birth, with a proper crib for the baby, a changing station, fitted baby bath etc, and a door I coud shut. There were shared bathrooms between two rooms, but they were fitted with whirlpool baths and bidets and close to hotel standards(this is the only time I've appreciated the benefits of a bidet - ice cold water aimed directly definitely helps ease over stretched pain)

Post birth I had four follow up appointments and one of these included the vaginal muscles - I still have the device I was given to tighten myself up. It's best described as a plastic tampon which screws open and you insert litte weights. I started off trying to keep it in twice a day whilst i did 50 tighten/loosen movements with no weights then had to add another weight fortnightly for three months. I can sneeze and laugh without leaking!

Sadly they decided to discontinue the whole private scheme when maternity care moved to the new ERI as the space four private rooms and facilities take up can accommodate two five bed wards. Nowadays they encourage women to leave ASAP, I think normal births with no complications can go home after five hours. I was encouraged to stay two nights. It's a damn shame as I enjoyed the experience and would have paid for the care if I'd had another baby.

[andrewducker]

I'm really glad you had a good experience. I was shocked reading some of the comments from people who were basically told that whatever happened was normal and they should just live with it.

I shouldn't be shocked by that kind of thing, as so many of my female friends have encountered that kind of attitude about "lady problems" - but it seems ridiculous that it still exists.

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

It's just a shame that they were aware of exercise benefits 15 years ago but they don't continue it nowadays - even if they told women about it. Just looked online and vaginal cones are about £25 for a set, I suppose that's a bit much for NHS use,, but maybe telling women these kits exist? I'd never heard of them until I was given one.

I have no idea what state my nether regions would have been in without these exercises but do know a few friends who suffer stress incontinence as a result of child birth.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

when shown plans for the New Royal, I asked why it was so much smaller. The chap said it's because so many nurses are leaving the profession that they were struggling to fill existing posts. The solution to this was to build a hospital that could take less patients and require less staff.

I was the only person either in that meeting or on the wards who thought this was a rediculously backwards 'solution'. Surely, I said, this would serve only to increase the stress and workload on both staff and patients? Would it not be a slightly better plan to look into the reasons Nurses are leaving, and try to make the job itself more bearable?

Never in my life have I been looked at so much as if I was completely fucking crazy. Including when I definitely was fucking crazy.


I'm glad you and others like you had such a positive experience. The way things changed are precisely why I changed career.


also, £25 is dirt cheap for a kit that can literally change someone's life. Especially by NHS standards.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

when I was at high school - a good 18 years ago - we had a visitor to talk about drugs.
He was a cool guy, and he brought some friends who were also cool.

One of the closing things we talked about was sex and drugs. A very natural evolution, given scare stories of date rape drugs and the like, and legends of cocaine fuelled debauchery. Some brave soul asked about anal sex.

the chap said "I'm not allowed to tell you this, but fuck it, I may save your life: one word. Lubrication. Lots of it. Male of female. Lube. Absolutely fucking essential."

there were a couple of knowing nods, and an unspoken consensus that knowing stuff is far preferable to not knowing stuff - even if you never, ever *need* to know. And that whoever had decreed otherwise was clearly very stupid.

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on the GP, which is the problem with them as gatekeepers into the NHS. I went with problems post child 2 and the first GP I had basically said it was normal and there was nothing that could be done and got annoyed because I asked enough follow questions to find out she knew nothing about the procedure she was saying I might need. A few months later I went back, saw a different GP and got a referral and ended up with exercises from the physio. So in the end the NHS got me what I needed, but it was a struggle getting there.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I hear it from both side - I've got people telling me their GP sucks and shouldn't be in charge of a paper clip, and people telling me their local health authority sucks, and so their GP can't help them the way they should be able to. I don't think there's a right answer there.