Longest Shortest Time, continues
I gave money to the kickstarter of the Longest Shortest Time podcast awhile back, but I did not expect her forthcoming episodes to be so, so good. Rewriting your birth story? So important, so powerful. The one about a late term, stillborn birth? Possibly the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard over headphones. I was weeping, obviously, but I’ve thought of that episode every time someone has mentioned a death to me since. It changed the way I thought about mourning. The one about how to talk to other moms without boasting? Kindly discusses a difficulty I brush up against every time I hang out with other moms. INTERVIEWS INA MAE AND COMPLAINS?? Amazing. Did not know that was possible in this life.
This is very cool stuff happening over there, in 30 minute increments. Well worth your time.
14 Comments
Julie
Excellent! I just started using the Swell app – like Pandora for podcasts. All the content (including Longest Shortest Time, Comedy Central, America’s Test Kitchen, all the usual NPR/PRI/etc material) I’m looking for plus great new stuff I would not have run across – the app suggests similar content according to your likes and bookmarks (akin to Pandora). Just in time too — my smartphone became my lifeline during the foggy crepuscular hours of my first postpartum weeks and it’s so good to have something worthwhile to listen to!
Rachael Ringenberg
Verrrry interesting.
Julie
So I have been blazing through LST and enjoying it very much, but stopped cold at the stillbirth episode… as an expectant mother I sympathized with a terrible event, but as a physician was perplexed and rather horrified by the mother’s decision to wait for labor rather than opt for induction. She put herself at risk for disseminated intravascular coagulation, a potentially fatal derangement of the bleeding/clotting balance, among other complications and for what? For her deep desire for a certain ‘experience’. I’m a strong advocate for personal autonomy, including in cases like this in which the patient knowingly opts for undue and unnecessary risk, but the reportage fell short, choosing to frame the narrative in a poetic, agendized manner rather than a more even-handed approach with acknowledgement of the mother’s choice that could have left her dangerously ill, debilitated, or even dead. Luckily the best outcome possible was achieved. (I have similar concerns about the rewriting the birth story episode – however, it is a podcast, not a series of educational case studies put forward by professional medical or midwifery organizations.)
Susie
I thought that stillbirth episode was so moving, and it helped me start to understand my friend’s recent loss. Thanks for recommending the podcast way back when!
Rachael Ringenberg
Thanks for reading Sus!
Liz
I had stopped listening to this podcast for a while, but this post reminded me how great it is. Got my whole kitchen cleaned listening to the two most recent ones 🙂
Rachael Ringenberg
Thumbs up for occasionally clean kitchens!
Andrea Barnett
You were the first person to turn me onto this podcast, and I’ve been meaning to tell you how much I love it. I’ve shared it with so many moms since. The bragging episode is my current favorite (it really hit home as a mother who “lost” at sleep and had to suffer through 19 months of feeling like a failure for it), but the episode with Ina Mae is also spectacular. Thanks, lady. Couldn’t agree more.
Rachael Ringenberg
So funny to say it that way–I lose, you win. It feels like that deep inside, but no one means for it to, and we wish it didn’t.
PS I was just thinking of you and hoping you are well!
beaktweets
Yes! You introduced me to her podcast and I just caught up with a bunch on our trip. The Ina May one really blew my mind. I haven’t listened to the still born one so I’ll have to when I’m up for a cry.
Rachael Ringenberg
Me too. I was like, you can actually talk to her in person???
Wren
I’ve been wanting to listen to more podcasts for a long time. I listened to some a while back–NPR Books, This American Life, #thepetecast–but haven’t kept up with any since. Maybe I should make a goal of listening to one episode of something each week…
so alaina
thank you for introducing me to the longest shortest time – i am in love. so glad i found your blog – i’m a fellow boston blogger and we have some mutual friends but i’ve never come across it before. so good!
Katie
Thank you for turning me on to the Longest Shortest Time – I dug back into the show archives and have been listening to them from the beginning – so great! Another enjoyable parenting podcast is Slate’s Mom and Dad are Fighting – it takes a lighthearted but insightful approach to parenting and is always good for a laugh.