I’m gaining a new appreciation of the word “normal.”
\nIn my work – human rights education, equity issues – normal is not a great word. It means there is a standard that humans should live up to, and if they are different from this standard – if they are not “normal” according to whoever sets the standard – they are judged.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, when my midwife calls to say that the ultrasound results are completely normal – that the growth is normal, the water levels are normal, and even the position of the placenta, if not super common, is normal – that is a really great thing to hear. Little baby, right now we want you to be normal! Lots of time for extraordinary after you exit the womb.<\/p>\n
Another word I have some feelings about is “fetus.” I’ve felt pretty strongly from the beginning that this baby is a baby – our baby – and just as much our baby in those very early stages of development as she or he will be right before birth, after birth and probably for a lifetime. I would rather not use a word that suggests our baby is a different kind of creature, however useful the word might be in medical discourse.<\/p>\n
In any case: you go and grow, sweet baby!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m gaining a new appreciation of the word “normal.” In my work – human rights education, equity issues – normal is not a great word. It means there is a standard that humans should live up to, and if they are different from this standard – if they are not “normal” according to whoever sets […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"saved_in_kubio":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kamillamilligan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}