How to plan an orgasmic birth during a bull market

Money often defines our entry into parenthood, for better or worse

Hi there, 

I’ve missed y’all during these months of maternity leave. You may remember that last year I said I’d be taking caretaker leave for the first time in my life. During these few months of leave I successfully pushed a human being out of my body! I gave birth to a healthy son. :) 

This event completely changed my perspective and priorities, as we’ll explore a wee bit here. Yet I was surprised to find that finances played a pivotal role in most of my decisions entering motherhood. 

I originally wanted to try a natural birth, using an inflatable tub in my backyard, a doula and a natural birth center. However, I was quite sick in my third trimester, and reached a point where I couldn’t work while remaining healthy. My employer’s leave policy and insurance requirements also defined how I chose to give birth (hospital, not midwife, induction to meet the sick leave requirements when I went past my “due date,” etc.) and approach to breastfeeding (stopping before the full year I’d originally hoped for). 

It struck me how the social stigma surrounding sex work is supposedly about selling access to women’s bodies, although white collar women with corporate employers are also exchanging the use of our bodies for money. Anyone who positions American parenting norms as the result of feminism is disregarding the economic demands of capitalism. 

Russian women get up to two years of maternity leave, compared to one year in the U.K. and literally 0 guaranteed days in the USA. Consequently, I’m grateful my American employer offered any paid leave options. That was my primary motivator for halting my freelance work and acquiring a corporate job in 2023. In addition, having a small bitcoin savings helped me afford hired help when I needed a few days of complete bed rest to recover from the birth. Luckily, I’ve recovered (the female body is remarkably resilient!) and gained a new sense of power from celebrating my lifegiving abilities. 

For readers from the bitcoin community, where natural birth is (rightfully) lauded, I recommend the Orgasmic Birth podcast for free birth education and resources. Our society shies away from the sensual aspects of birth, like feeling loved and supported by family members and becoming hyper aware of body sensations. Natural birth education can help turn our fear into excitement and curiosity. I was still able to incorporate many principles of informed consent, love and pleasure (chocolate, nipple stimulation, forehead kisses, lavender oil, etc) into my healthy birth experience, although it certainly involved more needles and machines than I would have liked. Also, I deliberately strived to time my birth with a bull market so that I had higher purchasing power, something I recommend for bitcoiners thinking about family planning. It doesn’t matter how expensive you think having kids will be, I promise, unexpected costs will come up and will exceed even that. 

I recommend a fertility tracking app (like Clue or Ava) to help you conceive, keeping the pattern of four-year crypto market cycles in mind. Babies will come on their own time, so I’m incredibly lucky it worked out in my case. 

Now I’ve realized I need to extend my newsletter hiatus for at least a few more months while I juggle infant care with returning to work. I aim to reveal some new research projects in 2025, although the financial aspects require a few more months for me to figure out. High quality research isn’t profitable, so it is typically subsidized by other media initiatives like content aggregation and curations or mass market production. In the meantime, I’ve paused subscription charges while I occasionally use this newsletter for answering readers’ questions and sharing life updates. I couldn’t be more grateful to my loyal readers, following my work these past four years. Thank you for joining me on this journey!

Before we go enjoy some of that summer sunshine, here are two poems, one I wrote before pregnancy and another I wrote after giving birth, which illustrate my evolution as a writer and as a woman. I hope you enjoy them!    

Finally Over You:

Fresh moons passed and you stayed gone. 

So I carved your silence into a canoe, dropped your memories

into the weeping river, stone by stone, stripped dreams off my skin like wet rags

to sail naked toward the rising sun.

You once said you don’t believe in Love, even though I worshiped you. 

Now I’m a wild-haired, bare-breasted heretic 

armed with a vessel of my own, the wind at my back, and the seeds of disaster

cradled in my palm. 

Newborn:

If I’m lucky, you might like me enough to visit 

on holidays, call me if you taste a chocolate cake 

that reminds you of me. Someday. The only guarantee 

I carry in my pocket, this memory of you 

wearing blue cotton, eyes closed. All I’m sure of, as you sleep on my chest, is 

that you’ll never understand 

the depths of my love for you. That’s the deal I’ve made, holding you in my arms. 

My whole heart is outside my body, yet you owe me 

nothing. Milky tears soak through my t-shirt. Sunlight 

peeks through the windows. I’ll rub my fingers 

across the face of this memory, over and over, until it’s worn 

smoother than a pebble on the beach. You are 

the sea-blue peace I never knew was inside me. 

That’s it for now. Let me know if you have any questions or ideas for other topics I should tackle this summer. 

Until next time!