I hate the media

So, I'm home from work this morning (I have to work on Saturday and am trying not to end up with a dozen or more hours of overtime) and I turn on the TV and find this thing called Birth Stories on Discovery Heath. I know its going to be bad, but this was the narration I heard in the first two minutes I watched. (Thank you Tivo for letting me go back and transcribe it.)

"Pushed to her absolute limit after a long and draining natural delivery [woman's name] is now resting comfortably with her new daughter [baby name]. And with the same immense challenge ahead for [woman2's name], [Dr's name] is concerned that she use her energy wisely. Although many mothers plan a natural delivery, its easy to see why so few are able to follow through. Even though she's been in labor for just an hour [emphasis mine: and she's pushing so its clearly a speedy bus labor - its her third baby] [woman2] struggles with the intensity of her pain. [Scene of her pushing and saying "I can't handle it, I can't handle it"]"

I get that these shows want to show the full range of births, fine [I was actually very inspired by a tub birth I saw on a similar show while I was pregnant; it was the thing that convinced me that I could do it too), but it makes me angry when they take pains to narrate a normal birth as something so terrible and fearful.

"Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire" - W B Yeats

I'm starting to realize that I really, strongly (more strongly than I had realized) want E to go to a good pre-school starting in the Fall. Something with a Montessori or Waldorf theory behind it. Unfortunately, any such school in my area that offers such a program is also far out of our financial reach -- around $13K (including extended day fees, because we would need him to be there for an entire workday, not just the half-day formal preschool). And that's only for a school year ... we'd still need to find and pay for care for him in the summer. A couple of schools do offer financial assistance, but only once the child is school aged. No assistance is offered for pre-K.

So, yeah, another way I'm failing him, I guess.