February 22, 2010

Letter to the Editor: Local 'Journey of a Lifetime' program helps reduce pregnant mother's stress

Black History Month is a time for celebrating the contributions and progress of African Americans. But it should also cause us to think about an issue that’s having a devastating impact on the Racine community. Our babies are dying at a rate of almost four times the rates of white babies because they’re born too soon. The experts tell us stress is a major reason.

Last fall, the Journey of a Lifetime Campaign was launched in Racine, and I was happy to be a part of it. Community healthcare providers have information about this program. I participated because I had a lot going on in my personal life. I was in school full-time, working and just trying to maintain my life day-to-day while expecting a child. I was under a lot of stress and wasn’t doing a good job of managing it. As a result, my baby was born too soon. It wasn’t until after I became involved in the campaign that I discovered just how serious an issue this is.

It’s true that a greater number of African American women are diagnosed with diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity. These health issues put our babies at a higher risk of not making it to their first birthday.

Every pregnant woman should see a health provider early and often to make sure the baby’s development is normal and to make sure you are healthy enough to carry a baby the full nine months, even before you get pregnant.

Text4baby.com is a new program I learned about recently. It gives me advice weekly on my cell phone on how to care for my body and my newborn baby. It makes a real difference for me. You sign up by texting BABY to 511411.

So as we celebrate Black History Month, African American women should keep one simple thing in mind. If you want to get pregnant, are pregnant, or have just delivered a baby, be aware that stress impacts an unborn baby and do something about it. Our bodies are our babies’ home so it’s important that we take better care of ourselves. The future generation is depending on us to make the right decisions.


Ebony Varner
Racine Community Advisory Board Member

47 comments:

  1. "Healthy enough to make sure she can carry the baby the full 9 months"? That's code for abortion, people.

    No surprise. Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, started the organization to reduce "unwanted" racial populations.

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  2. Tragic. In most other civilized countries, new mothers are encouraged in their pregnancies because those societies respect the right to life of the unborn.

    You'd be granted paid maternity leave and generous medical benefits to make sure the unborn child was healthy and would not abort, be born premature or even dead.

    Here, of course, young mothers-to-be are routinely turned down for health insurance because they're pregnant.

    Time to pass health-care reform so everyone's eligible for health insurance.

    It's a child, not a choice!

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  3. Anonymous 6:36 --

    Great point. Rarely made.

    In the seven years I've been reading blogs and comments related to Racine, you are the only other person I've ever heard acknowledge this sad truth. I'd love to be able to converse with you sometime.

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  4. Amen! When I think of all the excellent programs for mothers and children in the European social democracies and I compare them with our policy of malign neglect, I am appalled. Here in AmeriKKK, we do as little as possible for our people because a handful of corporate oligarchs and upper-middle class twits won't accept their obligation to help the rest of the populace by paying taxes to fund social programs. (If we eliminated our imperialistic military spending, financing social programs would pose no problems. However, our corporate class profits from a bloated Defense budget and misuses our armed forces to seize other nations' resources and cheap labor for the benefit of the multinational companies as well as the filthy rich clans which control them.)

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  5. Racine's obscene minority infant mortality is no accident. Some of the world's wealthiest private sector predators reside here and tyrannize the town for their esclusive fun and profit. To a clique of WASP Ivy League elitists, the rest of humanity possesses zero value except as low-wage, easily-exploitable labor.

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  6. Since this callous tribe and some of its lackeys love the Gallic tongue and belong to a "Societe" named for a French author (Alexis de Tocqueville), I have a message for them. It comes from another French writer, Emile Zola: J'accuse. In short, I hold these hyper-privileged hierarchs responsible for most of the misery in the sorry city whose people they've oppressed for decades.

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  7. Less art and more heart is the demand that the people's champions must present to the "Fils de Jean" and their Ivory Tower Ivy Leaguers. We know why the poor cry and the identity of their tormentors is no enigma.

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  8. A city full of sick, poorly-educated, downtrodden wage slaves doesn't happen by accident. Our tragic minority infant mortality rate didn't occur by chance. Follow the money trail to Lighthouse Loot Lord and Lucre Lady La-La Land and you'll find the culprits who live high while poor babies die.

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  9. And Brian O'Connell fights urban Gardens in the Inner city RUGN has a great start but few poor blacks or Hispanics can get to that space.
    The old Danish Home would have been great but that area of town with all the slum housing needs more. Minority Kids it seams to me do not deserve Green Space or fresh good food.

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  10. Alas, the WASP oligarchy and its Cornell carpetbaggers don't give a rap about minority children. No, the Carnauba Court must play with art, architecture, aviation and avarice.

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  11. Don't omit arrogance--those crass creatures think they're Almighty God because somebody croaked and left them a bundle which our socio-economic system stupidly allowed them to retain and augment at the expense of the impoverished majority.

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  12. Capitalism brought us poverty and obscenely high minority infant mortality rates. A people's government empowered to seize and redistribute the capitalist oligarchy's ill-gotten gains for the benefit of all will solve our sad land and sick city's healthcare problems.

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  13. Physically and emotionally healthy mothers deliver physically and emotionally healthy babies.

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  14. Mr. Angry - you have the same f--king response to every article - you are so f---ing boring, sad and depresssing.

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  15. Sir, I speak the TRUTH. Whether it entertains you or bores you, the TRUTH remains its sovereign self, serenely enthroned above our petty squabbles.

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  16. Magna est VERITAS et praevalebit.

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  17. Stress my ass. If babies didn't have babies the ratio would be much lower. Tell these babies to keep their legs together and tell their loser boyfriends to get lost.

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  18. And Mr. Angry - continue to address me as Sir. It confirms your position in the stacking order.

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  19. That, Sir, is easier said than done. In view of their history of victimization, downtrodden minority women should not be held to upper-middle class and elite standards of behovior. Also, Sir, never forget the way in which these women are coerced into non-consensual intercourse by brutes of all races.

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  20. So Mr. Angry, once again you say they are idiots as always because that they can't control their own circumstnaces or destiny, it is always someone elses fault. Is there anything you think individuals are responsible for themselves???

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  21. Dear Mr. Arrogant, You, Sir, may address me as "Your Excellency" or "My Lord." Despite some economic challenges, my family belongs to the French nobility. Seriously, regarding the minority women, who often are forced into non-consensual intercourse, lack of power relieves them of responsibility. Grow a heart, Sir! Treat them with compassion and the respect due to your fellow-humans in inhumane circumstances.

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  22. For there to be responsibility, there first must be power. Inasmuch as most minority women lack power due to their gender, ethnicity and economic situation, compassion must be the order of the day.

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  23. We're getting into the class wars here, when it's really unnecessary. Besides, it fosters racial stereotypes.

    How about this? Let's all agree that all expectant mothers with unborn children - whose pre-born lives ought to be protected to the fullest extent of the law - be allowed to buy health insurance.

    We could pass the health-care reform act pending right now in Congress to ensure that, at least, right?

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  24. Nice website you got here.

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  25. With what shall the impoverished mothers purchase the health insurance? Most of these unfortunates possess next-to-nothing and have zero prospect of improving their financial situation or lifestyle. For anyone not born to advantaged parents, the American dream is a mirage while the American reality is an endless nightmare. Needed: government-provided healthcare plus assistance for all citizens ill-situated to cope with, or within, the economic system.

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  26. We don't need more programs. There are excellent programs. WIC does a fine job of helping.

    But, you can't smoke blunts. You can't eat McDonalds and half priced Popeyes. You have to drink a glass of water. Eat something that isn't breaded. I could go on and on.

    This mothers are supposed to text on their cell phones to get advice. They don't follow advice.

    Where is the story on the conditions of these moms who have lost their babies? How many were planned pregnancies, how many were abusing drugs etc, what are their ages, were they in relationships with the babies father, do they have a stable place to live, how much education. This needs to be compiled. Otherwise we are wasting time. You cannot solve a problem when you don't know what is causing it.

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  27. Color has little to do with being Ghetto anymore. I see it from people with light and dark skin. I also acknowledge that there are fine upstanding moral dark skinned women. Color is just an excuse.

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  28. We already have Badgercare which covers low income mothers. We have a clinic. Access do Dr.s is not the problem. Lifestyle is the problem.

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  29. To expect pregnant women with few if any job skills to chase the pathetic nickel in order to purchase private sector health insurance is socio-economic stupration conmingled with stupidity. Let's join the rest of the developed post-industrial world by providing free-to-low-cost healthcare for our citizens. As long as we continue our sick infatuation with the private sector and supply side economics, nothing will be accomplished except the perpetuation of our minority infant mortality crisis plus other poverty-spawned pathologies and pathogenic plights.

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  30. Pushing self-reliance is just the privileged class' way of blaming society's victims for their plight. Most of these women have been so beaten down by the system and their men that they don't have a sense of self on which to rely. Exhorting them to work harder or acquire upper-middle class dietary habits is ridiculous. They'll eat starchy, greasy breaded chicken and fries because those are the foods they can afford and easily obtain in the ghetto. Let's be less judgmental and more understanding in our treatment of capitalism's victims. After all, most of us are just a pay check away from poverty.

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  31. Stress and distress are all that capitalism gives disadvantaged people. Asking them to function well in a system which was deliberately designed to destroy them for the benefit of the elite is disingenuous at best and Sadistic at worst. Until we build a social safety net for every citizen, chronic tension will continue to take its toll.

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  32. Stress is something you bring upon yourself - you can't worry about things that are out of your control. That is wasted energy.

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  33. Tell that to God's poor and then run as fast as your feet may take you. Wasted energy or not, stress bedevils paupers' lives and shall continue to do so until we lift the disadvantaged out of poverty. Once they have no more economic worries our less-fortunate fellow-citizens will enjoy better health.

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  34. In fact, we'd all enjoy better health if the poor were free from economic stress and strain. Think about it--once the less-fortunate were provided with the basics, they wouldn't be out robbing and burglarizing our homes and businesses. Assuming they had a little left over for fun, they wouldn't go around mugging us for cig and booze bucks. Then we, too, could savor a relatively stress-free lifestyle and we'd be a lot healthier too!

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  35. The above message has been brought to you by The Wicked Good Militia and the Waxbashers.

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  36. Viva el Pueblo Unido! Venceremos!

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  37. Abajo con la Casa de Cera!

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  38. Cagamos en La Carnauba! Que el dinero de Fisk se cambie en mierda!

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  39. Au serieux, our tragically high minority infant mortality rate is, in part, the result of Carnauba callousness. The same arty clan of inbred WASP predators whose meretricious members splurge on Deco doodads can't be bothered to care about--or for--poor Black and Hispanic infants. After their vile capitalism collapses of its own corrupt weight and top-heavy maldistribution of wealth, the Waxtrash and the crass class brothers thereof shall be tried for (and convicted of) crimes against humanity.

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  40. Pray for the Waxies' sake that we still possess the Constitution together with its ban on cruel and unusual punishment in any form. As a fifty-year student of revolutionary movements, I can tell you that the lower-middle class men who frequently preside over the trials of quondam oligarchs can be extremely creative when sentencing their fallen foes.

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  41. If you doubt me, please research the systematic abuse which the French Revolutionary regime inflicted on Marie Antoinette during her incarceration, trial and execution. The capricious sentences handed down by Mexican Revolutionary ad hoc tribunals were notorious. On occasion, male members of the quondam elite were stripped naked except for top hats and forced to dance or dodge bullets for the amusement of the peasantry prior to termination. (What the Mexican Revolutionary kangaroo courts did to female erstwhile aristocrats was so terrible that decency forbids me to discuss it.) I could continue ad infinitem, but I'll forbear from further parlous parlance.

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  42. Memo to the oligarchy: It is not only necessary to be wise but also to be wise in time to avert disaster through swift yet appropriate action. Accept higher taxes to fund social programs and you may be able to prevent (or, at least, defer) the destruction of capitalism.

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  43. Spending millions on social programs today could prevent the loss of billions through confiscation tomorrow. (As a historian, I guarantee you that the common man when forced to work excessively hard for too little remuneration frequently morphs into a tyrant once the tables have turned and he, rather than his erstwhile masters, may call the shots. Because the rich have so viciously oppressed him, our working Joe may demand retribution as well as restitution from the former elite.

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  44. Contingent on conditions prevailing during our transition to socialism, our toiler may be satisfied with a guaranteed annual income and safety net financed by new or higher taxes on his quondam exploiters. Then, again, assuming the road to socialism be a rough and rocky one fraught with suffering for our laborer, he and his class brothers may demand total seizure of the plutocracy's assets as well as the termination with extreme prejudice of his ex-tormentors.

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  45. Verbum sapientibus...

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  46. Dear Richie-poos, Just in case you slept through your history classes at your clan's bought-and-paid-for university above "Cayuga's waters," here's something to ponder: most historians will tell you that if pre-Revolutionary France's elite had shouldered its fair share of taxes and hadn't been so obsessed with pricey status symbols, the cataclysm of 1789 could have been avoided. Right now, you and your unkind kind have an opportunity to prevent or, at least, defer the destruction of your vicious capitalist system by accepting higher taxes to fund social programs. If you're smart and part with some of your loot in time, you may be able to buy yourselves and your system another thirty years.

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  47. However, eliteniks, if you persist in living high while poor babies die, the less-fortunate may wise up and rise up against you. Assuming they do so, I guarantee you that coming events won't be pretty. Your aesthetically-obsessed dead-and-damned mentor Mr. Wright and the rest of the beauty-trumps-duty tribe wouldn't approve of what may become your class' extremely ugly exit from this world.

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