grown-up time, motherhood & rural poverty

so this is what can happen given a little bit of one-on-one grown-up time, especially when the grown up is my very favourite person and partner:

i can occasionally use my brain
i can laugh
i can catch up and be caught up on a million details that slip through our fingers all the time
i can share quiet moments, without stuffing them full of everything else we've been needing to say, do, consult, debate, figure out

given that we were in the car, the kids were both asleep, and we were waiting for a. to sign the contract for her apartment and therefore couldn't go anywhere or do anything other than sit in the car (otherwise we might have chosen to sleep, clean the house, catch up on email, have sex), we actually just shot the shit for almost an hour, and it was awesome.

i also started to get a tiny little inkling of a possible research idea. not even necessarily for a phd, but maybe just to try to collect some research and write a paper, as part of the UPA. it would be interesting, and would bring more social, qualitative research to UPA. it would also make me a 'researcher' and not just the computer person, and could lead to good contacts for an eventual phd. it's also more socially 'useful' than my other ideas tend to be, though if i turn it into a phd i'd want to add some more social/cultural/media analysis too.

yay for grown-ups, and a little bit of brain activity. it does me good.

so the idea would be to use interviews and/or workshops to ask/answer: what resources are needed to support women through pregnancy and/or early motherhood?

i'd have to limit things in a bunch of ways - age of moms (probably i'd do teen); pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding, general early days/months/years of motherhood, etc. it would inevitably include medical care and medical info and all that, but i'm especially interested in community/family resources: other women, radio programs, neighbourhood spaces, i really have no idea. the poverty here makes it likely that the most basic, obvious things (like access to water, good nutrition, not burning garbage, etc.) will be the most important and might block out coming across other, maybe less important but still interesting and necessary things. but i still think it would be worthwhile and interesting, and i would so love it if it could develop into something like a weekly drop-in in one of the salitas, or something like that. as with everything else here, people would probably only go if we could offer milk or something else they need, but fair enough. maybe i can figure that out somehow.