It is Christmas Eve, and I am thinking about birth. I am always thinking about birth, but on this night, after a week of preparing for our christmas celebrations as a family, and after several rehearsals with our ward choir to prepare for tomorows christmas sacrament meeting, I have the Saviors birth on my mind.

Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus
I have been thinking about Heavenly Father. As the Master of the Universe, he could have sent his only begotten son to the earth with all of the worldly spendor that typified Jerusalem culture at the time. He could have been born to an older, more experienced mother, who was better off financially.
He could have provided Mary with the best midwives that money could buy, perhaps being born in a palace, with servants running hither and yon to make things more comfortable as she gave birth to the Savior of the world. No need to breastfeed her son, money would have purchased wet nurse services, and Mary would have been freed to pursue her own interests while servants raised Baby Jesus.
Or, Heavenly Father could have waited and allowed the Savior to be born during our time when modern “advances” would have assured a sterile environment with all the drugs, technology, and surgery money could buy.
Father in Heaven could have manipulated the situation in any way he chose to make things more sterile, more safe, and eased Mary’s burdens in a thousand different ways as she prepared to give birth to the savior.
I suppose it is an unasked question…..but.. Is it possible that Heavenly Father was trying to send the world a message when he allowed his son to be born surrounded by animals in a barn? Think about the cow spit that was on the straw in the manger where the baby lay. Not exactly clorox clean.
And did Mary have anyone to assist her during her labor? During pushing? After the birth? How did she possibly make it through the birth without an epidural? Or a c-section? What about cutting the cord? Delivering the placenta? How did she possibly give birth without bleeding her life away? She did not have any oxytocin to clamp down her uterus, and certainly no trained nurse at the time was on hand to provide fundal massage to clamp down her uterus to stop uncontrolled bleeding.
Who taught her how to breastfeed? And how on earth did baby Jesus make it past the first few weeks of life without being shot up with any number of vaccinations to keep him healthy?
These are the sorts of questions I have asked myself over the years as I made my way to Unassisted Childbirth.
I believe Heavenly Father was trying to send a message to all of us when he allowed his son to be born under the most humble of circumstances. Message being? A quiet unhindered birth with just the mother and the father present is an ideal situation for welcoming children into the world.
A newsletter called the New Nativity II has been published for years to share birth stories of unassisted birthed babies. Contact Val for more information.
New Nativity II – Unassisted Childbirth Newsletter Edited by Valerie Nordstrom
vnordstrom@comcast.net
4820 69th Ave. No.,
Brooklyn Center, MN 55429-1673
Jenny Hatch
UPDATE: December 25th, 2005
PICTURES!

Andy on Christmas Eve with the presents

Christmas Morning

Christmas Eve Supper

Christmas Morning

Getting ready for church

Hatch Children

Paul and Ben ready for church

Shelly and Paul rehearsing for the sacrament meeting christmas program

Choir rehearsal
Jenny Hatch

Read the Introduction to this blog

Found this graphic at the Free Republic site
I’ve just spent a couple hours surfing the net trying to get a sense of America’s response to the Iraq Vote.
As I have read various articles, blog posts, and the most excellent coverage at Pajamas Media I really get a sense that the great divide in our country comes down to a misunderstanding of the history of the middle east, and how controlled they have been by Marxist thought, money, and influence. I was listening to Air Amerika yesterday as I drove my kids to school. I am always more curious to hear the liberal take on events than what the conservatives are saying.
As the local Boulder host was going on and on about American Imperialsim, I just turned it off and explained to the children a little of the history. I thought I would take the time to do that here on my blog as well.
I think the ultimate test in the whole debate is, Will Iraq become a state of America, or a colony??
It is a good question to ask. Because if Bush was simply shoving American Imperialism on Iraq and Afghanistan, it would seem to me that he would also be forcing them to join us as the newest addition to the US.
But no, shortly after the war started Bush handed the Iraqi people their sovereignty, they elected the founders who wrote the constitution, and now they have elected a parliament. To say, Michael Moore like, that this could have happened by the common people “rising up” and overthrowing Sadaam and setting up a Democracy WITHOUT American help is simply denying the reality of how Iraq was being run.
Iraq was being run as a typical Communist state. And why shouldn’t it be? The soviets were the funders and political parents to Sadaams society.
I found this interview on Frontpage to be most enlightening
Ion Mihai Pacepa Interview
It truly does address so many of the issues that the left seems to be unable to understand. I would challenge anyone to read it, and really ponder the reality of the things that Ion Pacepa says. If you can accept even half of what he claims, I think we can begin to agree on some basic points.
And really the bottom line is this….Is America safer now than we were with Sadaam in power???
Another great place to do some serious reading and pondering is Jayna Davis’s web site. Her information yet again, changes the whole picture and context of the war.
In time these sorts of things will be more fully exposed. Those who willfully put heads in the sand and are determined to believe that so called American Imperialism is the cause of all that is wrong in the world will never be convinced, and that is fine, it is a free country.
I choose to believe that in fifty years, history books will mark this week as a huge turning point in Freedoms march around the world. And I am so pleased to be the sister of a soldier who served in Iraq for a year. The sacrifice of his wife and three sons, and the worry of my parents while he served, all of it has been worth what just happened yesterday.
If liberals who are against the war and question Americas roll in spreading democracy would simply take some time to study the history of the middle east and the relationships that were forged during the height of the cold war, I think they would have an easier time understanding that the war on terror is just another front of the cold war. Really the war on terror is the final legacy and residue, a sticky, nasty, black residue, from the war between Freedom and Tyranny that was waged during most of the 20th century.
I really feel for Liberals. They have been so brainwashed by university studies, (and it has been my experience that the more schooling someone has had the stronger the marxist ideologies are embedded in their psyches) that it is an act of God for them to break out of that knee jerk emotional reaction that comes up when the sacred cows are slaughtered and served on toast. “what? America actually did something noble and good? Impossible.” “you mean, this war really was all about freedom and democracy?? No….”
Liberals are like the NOBLES in Braveheart.

A Noble from the Movie Braveheart
They sit on both sides of the fence and watch the way the wind blows, and when it is in their best interests they go one way or another, never taking a stance, but waiting to see how things will simply affect them personally.
What I predict is that we will see all kinds of spinning, spinning, spinning of words, positions, etc.. in the coming weeks, as politicians especially recognize it will be surivival emotionally to be “for the war after we voted against the war with our words….etc…
And what the heck is up with Joe Biden. Here we have this American Senator who in all the pieces I read about him today was talking about the Iraq constitution as if it does not exist. Is he not aware that the whole point of the first election was to pick the founders who would write the constitution. Which they did, and the whole point of the second election was to accept or reject that constitution??? Which they in fact did accept.
He is talking like the constitution has not even been written yet. Anyone else notice this?? Why is he so dumb?
God bless the iraqi people. I was simply praying for the past 24 hours that no one would die while voting. I have not heard the final numbers, but it seems like very few people were killed. (talk about voter disenfranchisement and disempowerment). Update: Just read that three people were killed during the election.
UPDATE: chat at Free Republic on this topic
Sadaam was obsessed with Stalin
Stalin and Saddam
Posted by Ed
In the current History Today, Simon Sebag Montefiore discusses some of the issues that he considered while writing a book on Stalin’s inner circle. I was really struck by one particular series of anecdotes:
“When I was researching Stalin, I learned that most of the great decisions of his rule took place not in the Kremlin but in his dachas, particularly those in the south. Few historians had visited all these so I set off to find them in the bandit republic of Abkhazia on the Black Sea, which can only be reached by UN Peacekeeping helicopter.
When I was at one of them, I asked the old caretaker if anyone else had visited them all, fearing that she would answer that Robert Service or Richard Overy had just left. ‘No,’ she answered, ‘but in the 1970s there was an Arab gentleman who visited every one.’ ‘Who was that?’ ‘Saddam Hussein.’
Saddam was obsessed with Stalin, and Ba’athism was an Arabist pastiche of Bolshevism.
When a Kurdish leader was invited into Saddam’s personal apartments to negotiate, he was amazed to find, in addition to bottles of Johnny Walker whisky, virtually everything written about Stalin translated into Arabic. The comparisons were legion–and not lost on Saddam: Tikrit and Gori are just a few hundred miles apart. Both men were brought up by strong mothers, rejected by weak fathers, protected and inspired by stepfather figures. Both rose through terrorist exploits.
Saddam, born in 1937 the year of the Soviet Great Terror, seemed to directly ape Stalin’s Central Committee Plenums of that year when he took power and held his famous meeting when his leadership rivals were arrested. But Saddam, despite his attempts at fiction writing, lacked Stalin’s subtlety, statesmanship, vision, his mastery of men, the power of his fanatical Marxism–and his intellectualism. ‘I’m seventy and I never stop studying,’ said Stalin.”
More Here
Mark Steyn on the Iraq Election
Jenny Hatch

“..our goal in Iraq has not changed: a free and democratic Iraq. I strongly believe a democratic Iraq is a crucial part of our strategy to defeat the terrorists, because only democracy can bring freedom and reconciliation to Iraq, and peace to this troubled part of the world. Our efforts to advance freedom in Iraq are driven by our vital interests and our deepest beliefs.
America was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and we believe that the people of the Middle East desire freedom as much as we do. History has shown that free nations are peaceful nations. And as Iraqi democracy takes hold, Iraqi citizens will have a stake in a common and peaceful future.”
Jenny Hatch