Masochistic Mommy

Pregnancy takes its toll on most mothers – piles, heartburn, water retention, backache – all are par for the course. What you don't expect however, is for pregnancy to deteriorate your bones leaving you so chronically immobile that when your baby arrives, you can’t even carry him. That’s what happened to this mother. Diagnosed with Transient Osteoporosis of the Hip (TOH) during pregnancy, she clung to hopes of breastfeeding despite her health - quite literally - crumbling away. Read on to discover how she coped with the pain, the frustration, and the logistics of nursing a baby through debilitating disease. “Up until 29 weeks my pregnancy progressed without problem, I had mild morning sickness but felt full of energy along the way – even running a marathon at 10 weeks! The pain begins My hips started to hurt so I stopped running and began walking instead for a week or so, until even this became too painful. Hip pain is common during pregnancy but the type of pain I felt, right in t...

If you're a breastfeeding mother with the audacity to step foot aboard the Good Ship Facebook, prepare to walk the plank. For, as everyone knows, treasure 'chests' of the lactating variety are prohibited on these seas. And, because everyone knows this, there’s a good chance a buccaneer from your (so-called) matey list will betray you and hit report. Indeed, the motley crew at Facebook proudly boast that they’ve: “built industry leading technical and human systems” and: “developed sophisticated tools” to help their crew evaluate the reports they receive. “As a result, we believe we are able to remove the vast majority of content that violates our standards” ( Facebook 2013 ). Rightyo. I decided to test these ‘industry leading’ report systems. For the first time in my long and illustrious relationship with the t’internet I hit the ‘report’ button on a load of memes. The results are below. Be forewarned: the results and the content I reported (particularly the content!) fail t...

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