Can We Get Another Doctor in the House?

Has anyone seen the new Dr. Phil-spawned talk show, The Doctors?

It's a show where people who look like real estate agents but apparently went to med school sit on a huge stage and offer solicited medical advice.

According to the Global website:

This medical dream team will be the "must-go-to" source for information on the latest medical breakthroughs and cutting-edge practices and procedures, providing a valuable resource for viewers who might not have access to the most updated medical advances.

In other words: Fear not, uninsured Americans. Why face an unfriendly HMO when you can just turn on your TV and assume your own hot doctor diagnosis?

The medical legitimacy of applying this crew's diagnoses to oneself is up there with the psychotherapists quoted in US Weekly, the ones who "have never treated Angelina Jolie but believe she is suffering from post-partum depression."

I suppose it was only a matter of time before self-help spilled out from the puddles of talk therapy and began applying itself to other pools (justice, medicine).

So what specific "medical condition" did I catch being addressed yesterday afternoon?

Labia mis-matching.

Apparently a viewer thought her one inner labia fold was larger than the other and wanted to get surgery to correct it.

The Doctors were eager to let viewers know about surgical options and were very reassuring that plastic surgery of the labia is an increasingly popular procedure.

There was no mention of the fact that there is nothing abnormal about large or un-matched labia. Nor was there any mention of the dangers involved in snipping away unnecessarily at a part of the body that is riddled with nerve endings.

In fact, the Doctors underscored how if the woman wants to surgically alter her body it's a reassuring sign, since most plastic surgery candidates are driven to change themselves based on requests from their partners.

I am not sure what is more depressing: being so insecure that I'd spend thousands to mutilate my lady lips, or being so insecure that I would be involved with a partner who'd even think it was an option.

No Matter How Cute They Are...

When you're pregnant, this insane maternal instinct kicks in where you can actually be brought to tears at the sight of a baby animal in jeopardy.

The first time I witnessed this was two-years ago, when my friend was pregnant and a group of us were watching a YouTube video of an alligator attacking a lion cub.

My friend backed up from the computer and waved her hands in front of her face. "Turn it off! Turn it off! That's horrible!" she shouted as we contined to watch the safari-gone-bad moment with wide eyes.

I found her sensitivity humorously touching at the time.

Then, three months ago, I saw a baby skunk stumbling in the park across from our house. It was mid-afternoon, not really skunk-patrol time. It was all alone. It lopped side to side. It was a baby.

My husband had to hold me back from running across the street and scooping it up in my arms.

A number of torrential rainstorms came shortly after, and I spent most of the summer convinced that our little Pepe Le Pewe was a goner.

Until this weekend. The little guy, still a runt with barely-there-hair on its tail, was spotted by my hubby Saturday morning limping through the park grass. He pointed him out to me and you would think my lost long baby had been returned. More tears were quickly wiped from my eyes. We drove off, me feeling a huge sense of relief that the natural world was indeed a just and good place.

That is until that night, when the skunk came across the street and shot his love juice at our house.

Two days later our living room still carries the residual stench of stunk.

What compelled this little black and white bundle of stink-ass to come to our property?

And why do I suspect that this is the same sort of payoff I can expect for the first six weeks of my baby's life?

Hypnobirthing: A Good Approach, Despite My Previous Post

So, my post on HypnoBirthing generated more comments than any other, and the responses were thoughtful and thought-provoking. I am very grateful to all the HypnoBirthing instructors whose comments underscored what the birthing approach is really about.

Reflecting on both the post and my experience with the classes, I shouldn't have been so cavalier and inflammatory in my accusations. My disappointment in the learning experience overshadowed the fact that I do think HypnoBirthing is relevant and important.

As someone who has studied mindfulness meditation (and in fact used it along with both Chinese and Western medical practices in order to get pregnant), the principles of HypnoBirthing seemed like a natural extension of my approach to pregnancy.

What I should have underscored is how unnatural it felt to work a nine-hour day at an office, then race home, perform prenatal yoga for 90 minutes and then head directly to a 2 1/2 hour Hypnobirthing class that usually ended around 10:45pm at night.

Even when I gave up yoga (much to the chagrin of my hips) the late night class (and the instructor's admonishment when we arrived late) felt more burdening than empowering.

Did the instructor realize the strain my body and mind felt by 10pm? Maybe. Did she believe that the value imparted by Hypnobirthing was more important? Perhaps. Did I agree with her?

Absolutely not.

I appreciate that HypnoBirthing is about reinforcing the choice we have as parents to determine how our children are brought into this world. But that choice, that responsibility, doesn't start with contractions--it begins now. I've already made dozens of choices as a mother--my choice to be with a midwife, to practice prenatal yoga, to take classes, to warn my family that my hubby and I want privacy for the first couple of days with our newborn.

If I choose not to forgo dinner and thereby come 15 minutes late to a prenatal or HypnoBirthing class than I am making a parenting choice that should be respected by someone advocating for parents making informed decisions.

I was told by another prenatal instructor not to be "too skeptical" about HypnoBirthing. It's good advice for life in general, and upon reflection, my first post really didn't present a fair picture of my view on the practice.

To remember to breathe, to remember that we are our own advocates--these are important daily lessons that rest at the core of HypnoBirthing. In my exhaustion and prenatal-class overload, I may have lost sight of how simple these principles really are.

Burn After Reading Not Worth the Heat

Have you ever been invited to a really cool party and then you got there and stood awkwardly with a warm beer for a couple of hours, wondering why you thought you'd want these people as your friends?

The filmic equivalent of those uncomfortable hours is Burn After Reading, the new movie from the Coen brothers. It's being toted as a satire but it's actually a farce, with overblown characters and ludicrous incidents leading up to...well, not much.

It's almost painful to watch an actress as respectable as Fran McDormand reduced to hysterically squealing, while Brad Pitt's interpretation of a personal trainer has the subtlety and originality of an eleven-year old's performance in an improv exercise.

Maybe the inclusion of a guy named Cox (John Malkovich) and a guy obsessed with his cock (George Clooney) push this film into the darker regions, but there is nothing particularly funny about the dialogue or plot. And again, the actors' deliveries are so ham-fisted that they border closer to annoying than entertaining.

If you are looking for a party that you'll actually enjoy, I recommend going out to see Hamlet 2. It includes Steve Coogan, a musical number about sexy Jesus, and a testes-temperature moderating caftan. Now that's comedy.

Me and SNL: The Break-Up That Will Never Happen and Is Long Overdue

Every time I hear any hype about an upcoming episode of Saturday Night Live, I tune in, anticipating hilarity and timely wit.

And almost every time I am disappointed.

My hubby has never understood my commitment to SNL. He belongs to the camp that thinks the show should have been cancelled sometime around Dennis Miller's departure.

This might be true, but then we would have missed out on some of the most hilarious skits in recent years, including Timberlake's "Cock in a Box" duet and the Diaper Thongs ad.

That said, this weekend's season premier was so unfunny that I only lasted until the second commercial set before I conceded the remote control and relented to watching the Food Network.

Yes, Tina Fey looks exactly like Sarah Palin. Yes, I love Tina Fey. But really, was her skit with Amy Poehler as Hillary Clinton really that funny?

At the Republican Convention, the Daily Show coverage of the Republican's hypocrisy when it comes to women's issues and this election was brilliant. Witty. Tear-inducing.

The opening SNL skit? Meh.

And watching Michael Phelps read cue cards while fully dressed was as painful as having the gym lights come on at the end of a drunken high school dance. Dude, you are WAY uglier than I thought.

So, do I end my 15-year lip lock with unreliable comedy? Probably not. With the funny business, I will always respect attempts at humour, even if they fail. Because comedy is hard. And you have to be willing to try a hundred times over, if only for one laugh.

I know this makes me a bad comedy enabler but what the hell. Sometimes those ecstatic drunken moments before the lights come on make even the ugly boys worth giving a chance.

Hypnobirthing: Look Into My Eyes

Last night the hubby and I snuck out of hypnobirthing class like a pair of cons making a break from Alcatraz.

It was at 9:45pm. We were only halfway through class. We were exhausted. And when we explained as much to our instructor we got a barely concealed sneer of contempt.

Her flaring nostrils basically said: You Are Bad Parents.

We had high hopes for hypnobirthing when we signed up. I imagined calm weekly meditation sessions, similar to the mindfulness meditation course I took last winter. Lots of breathing. Maybe a babbling brook or two.

Instead, we've been subjected to weekly propaganda sessions held in a cramped yoga studio that stinks of unwashed feet. Hour after hour has been spent letting us know how the medical profession has every intention of wrenching our baby from our arms and stabbing it with needles as soon as it's forcepped out into the world.

We've been told 'stats' on the evils of epidurals and Pitocin. Eye drops? The doctor might as well drop his pants and piss in your kid's eye. And nurses? Hysterical, uninformed, and condescending.

The instruction has been fear-mongering at best. In fact, last night, I realized that I had never had any anxiety towards labour until I started going to these classes.

After painstakingly going through every detail of a three-page birthing plan that we are supposed to present to our health care providers, I finally asked: Does any of this apply to couples who are using a midwife?

The short answer: no. Turns out that 4 weeks spent belabouring the evils of the medical approach to childbirth were pointless since they have no real application to how my own labour will be.

And, in fact, some of the concerns expressed about the medical approach were irrelevant to Canada (we no longer have nurseries for newborns, for instance).

Despite all the emphasis on parents being advocates for their own choices during labour, it seems our hypnobirthing instructor has lost sight of respecting her own students' choices.

Already the hubby and I are considering skipping our last class. I mean, I've been staring at her illustration of a uterus for 4 weeks. I get it. It looks like a whoopee cushion.

Frankly, I've had enough of the hot air.

Why Is Pregnancy Congratulated and Motherhood Ignored?

Suddenly in the last couple of weeks, my pregnancy has been embraced by the world at large.

Waitresses, store staff and random female strangers are all now commenting on my belly, wishing me luck and basically cheering me on.

For some reason, the only men who rally my bump are homeless dudes, which is sort of sweet and also sort of sad. Usually because I start to imagine a time when the homeless dude was just a regular dude trying to get by, with a girlfriend and a baby.

Then I realize something had to happen for him to make the leap to the street so I start wondering about the girlfriend and how maybe he didn't treat her so well when he got drunk and then I think about the odds of his baby making its way out of a cycle of poverty and substance abuse and I get depressed and sort of angry at the homeless dude because he's high and happy and hooting at me "Hey Congrats!" and meanwhile his offspring is rolling dubes behind her grade seven mold-ridden portable, begrudging her single mom while devising lists of high school boys she can fellate. Sigh.

Anyway, while my body is feeling the extra 35 pounds and the pressure against my organs mount, the general attitude of festivity has been appreciated. I like repeating my due date a dozen times a day because, frankly, it's all I'm thinking about.

But as the number of supportive strangers increases, so does my bafflement with social attitudes towards motherhood. Why is it that we cheer on women in their third trimester but huff with annoyance when we have to step around an exhausted new mom and her stroller?

As far as I know, women don't rush up to mothers and pat them on the back and say, "What you do is amazing. Congratulations!"

From what I've seen, new moms are basically invisible, while their squirming, time-consuming, pooping, barfing, crying babes are the ones who garner all the praise.

Which means I have 6 weeks to suck in all the attention and sympathy and well-wishes that I can. Because after that, the hard work begins and, until my kid can thank me in his valedictorian speech (after earnestly musing that high school was the 'best years of our lives,' hrmph) it's pretty much a thankless job.

ANTM Recap: The Future is Here

Watching the premiere of America's Next Top Model was sort of like getting a glimpse of the future and having it confirmed that reality television really will be responsible for the downfall of civilization.

Sort of terrifying and sort of mesmerizing in the campiest of all possible ways.

Cycle 11's opening episode is all about the future, which is also confused with martians, models and translucent rain coats. It begs so many questions:

Why was Miss J given the title Alpha J while Mr. Jay was relegated to the Beta second fiddle? Is this Tyra's attempt to further emasculate a man already forced to wear silver lame and white pants?

Why must the judges beam in and out of every shot like a triage of drag Captn. Kirks? Which leads to...

Why is the future of modelling so unbelievably fugly? White/grey hair, ill-fitting cruise wear for men, wetsuits for women?

Despite the rocking outhouse called the Glaminator 11.0, ANTM is alllll about ham this cycle. And not the ham that gives you listeria but rather the type of ham that offers Tyra-rific performances including:

Tyra as a moose
Tyra as a robot
Tyra as a humanitarian (did you know she has white friends?)

Of course, Tyra has got some semi-finalists competing for the crazy crown. Front runners include Marjorie (think Woody Allen disguised as a blond French Amelie), Elina (she's the girl in third year university who made you contemplate your bisexuality until she started rambling about animal liberation and then you suddenly realized her breath stunk of vegan halitosis and you stopped going to your philosophy class)and Clark (Southern hostility and a mannish face that the judges inexplicably keep describing as pretty).

The least crazy pair are Ultimate Fighter McKey, who took her hair style from Run Lola Run and Isis, the first transgendered contestant on the show. Isis is serious and gangly and looks like an awkward boy in a bathing suit, but she's so badgered and abused by most of the other girls (especially Clark and Hannah Alaska) that I hope she makes it to the finale.

I am also loving Sheena, a hot Sandra Oh channelling 50 cent.

Marjorie's photo ends up on top, and some girl who we don't care about because it's too early, is eliminated.

Next week: Elina converts Clark to the bi-side and Hannah Alaska is accused of racism. Scandal!

America's Next Top Model Premieres Tonight

Yes, Tyra is back. It's like we hardly had a chance to miss her.

Cycle 11's two-hour premiere unleashes its beastly self this eve. As you most likely already know, this season promises to be more scandalous than ever before because, great balls of fury, there's a transgendered contestant.

Actually, I am not sure if the bits have been snipped from the bob, but you know that won't stop Tyra from repeatedly upstaging the trannie. She will probably also use the she-man to belittle the rest of the starving gazelles by pointing out how s/he is ten times more feminine than them.

Since I will be at pre-natal class, I won't be able to recap the show until Friday.