Thanks to all

Thanks, Onna, I have always identified with The Cowardly Lion and now you are telling me that I have courage! That is awesome to read. I guess I do have courage, because I am not going to give up and turn into Jabba-the-hut! Sometimes it is so uncomfortable and sometimes I forget I even have POP. What an interesting condition! I admire all of us who keep looking for new ways.

I was thinking today when I was weeding and mowing, that if we women in the developed world have a lot more POP than the women in the undeveloped world, we need to see what they are doing and copy them. Does anyone know what the life of a woman in the undeveloped world really is? I only know from TV. Comments, please.....

One thing I know is that in South East Asia they squat on the floor, basically, for relieving themselves. So a completely different angle than we do and no seat pressing into them. After, when cleaning themselves up, they use a spray of water going diction of front to back. (Less likely infections this way, and as I understand it contact with feces in the v area can be one of the things to spur yeast infection).

And they have a lot of tumeric in their diet. Also not into fats and desserts etc the way western world is.They seem to be the area/culture with the least amount of POP from what I can see. They also aren't squeezing into girdles/Spanx/panty hose, tight jeans, bras, and riding in cars that have seats that put us at weird angles. Also the jobs here I noticed - often have people standing long hours without a chance to sit and often while wearing panty hose, etc.

Damn hard. The life of a woman in an undeveloped nation, that is. I've visited a few, but my experience in a remote village in the mountains if Fiji with a group that builds housing was about as basic as it gets. I stayed with a "well to do" family, which meant 9 of us slept side by side on the floor of a palm leaf hut while the roaches and chickens ran over us at will. Most other families in the village slept in mud. Literally. Toilets were pits with a bit of privacy (the chief's wife had a concrete shaft with a western toilet seat a top her pit). Women spend hours seated cross-legged on the floor managing babies, cooking, and sewing. They dress in loose skirts and t-shirts. Nobody has shoes. They spend hours bent at the hips tending to cassava crops. They carry laundry a mile and a half down steep stairs to the river to do the washing in murky water, then load their heavy baskets atop their heads to hike back to the villiage. (I have never seen such white Sunday clothes as those cleaned in a river of waste and animal carcasses). They sing. They dance. Their worth is measured in cattle and kava. They starve when times are bad. Their backs bend beneath loads of fire-wood. The nearest medical care is many hours away by a slow and dusty bus. (We once had river eel for dinner -- it had attacked one of the men, barely missing his jugular. No ER for him) Their children die of malnutrition. They gossip. They laugh.
Me, I take the sitting, the waist bending, the forward position for toiling, the laughing, the singing, and the dancing as examples of how to get back to the basics of being a woman. Then I thank G~d for grocery stores and laundry rooms.

Hi Bad Mirror

I totally agree with your last sentence! It's easy to envy the more 'natural' lives of women in the developing world. I've spent time in rural India, and seen documentaries about the high rates of death in childbirth or fistula in many developing countries. Often this is a result of cultural norms encouraging very young girls to have babies and is made worse by the lack of medical help available in the case of an obstructed birth.

It doesn't make me less passionate about the need for change in obstetric and gynaecological attitudes in the West - just stops me feeling too sorry for myself about a little thing like POP when I look at my good, pretty healthy life and my lovely live children - one of whom would probably not be alive today without antibiotic treatment as a baby. I think of the drugs I needed to stop a haemorrhage after my daughter's birth and yes, perhaps the haemorrhage itself was due to a mismanaged birth, but it happens all over the world, whatever the birth practices. If it had happened in a third world country the chances are that I would have died. If no one HIV free and well nourished had been good enough to nurse my baby, she would have died too. We are in the privileged position of being able to improve our health with Christine's groundbreaking work and even though our medical system is very far from being perfect, at least we've got one for emergencies!

Doesn't make me feel any less cross about intimidating or dismissive doctors and careless prescribing though! Good for you Marigold for deciding to take matters into your own hands and I'm really glad you're feeling better. I've never needed/ tried the all fours thing, but was just passing on a tip from other women.

Doubtful