This image is being blasted across the Media as the fullness of American Technology and Medical Innovation. I believe it is an image that should be pounded into the minds of parents everywhere as the absolute failure of the Medical Profession and American Society to teach and educate new mothers with the facts of prenatal nutrition.
What a sad and pathetic way to enter the world…. Tiny Baby to Leave Florida Hospital
“MIAMI (AP) —
A premature baby that doctors say spent less time in the womb than any other surviving infant is to be released from a Florida hospital Tuesday.
Amillia Sonja Taylor was just 9 1/2 inches long and weighed less than 10 ounces when she was born Oct. 24. She was delivered 21 weeks and six days after conception. Full-term births come after 37 to 40 weeks.
“We weren’t too optimistic,” Dr. William Smalling said Monday. “But she proved us all wrong.”
Neonatologists who cared for Amillia say she is the first baby known to survive after a gestation period of fewer than 23 weeks. A database run by the University of Iowa’s Department of Pediatrics lists seven babies born at 23 weeks between 1994 and 2003.
Amillia has experienced respiratory problems, a very mild brain hemorrhage and some digestive problems, but none of the health concerns are expected to pose long-term problems, her doctors said.
“We can deal with lungs and things like that but, of course, the brain is the most important,” Dr. Paul Fassbach said Monday. “But her prognosis is excellent.”
Amillia has been in an incubator since birth and has been receiving oxygen. She will continue getting a small amount of oxygen, and her breathing will be monitored once she leaves Baptist Children’s Hospital. She now is between 25 and 26 inches long and weighs 4 1/2 pounds.
“She’s going to be in a normal crib, she’s going to have normal feedings, she’s taking all her feedings from a bottle,” Smalling said.
Amillia is the first child for Eddie and Sonja Taylor of Homestead. She was conceived by in vitro fertilization, which made it possible to pinpoint her exact time in the womb, and was delivered by Caesarean section.”
No one ever talks about the costs of all this abomination, not to mention the long term consequences for this child from her months of torture in the NICU.
I’m looking forward to the day when the woman in America who has the healthiest full term and most beautiful baby is heralded for her amazing contribution to our society. Instead what is blasted from sea to shining sea is the wonder of this little person being kept alive for months outside of the womb..
And I have no doubt in my mind that C-section was performed because Momma had toxemia, a completely preventable malnutrition state for the mother marked by protein deficiency and dehydration. WATER, SALT, PROTEIN, WATER, SALT, PROTEIN, WATER, SALT, PROTEIN, come on… say it out loud. “WATER, SALT, PROTEIN, WATER, SALT, PROTEIN….these are the keys to healthy pregnancy.” Jenny Hatch
“We are being warned of the dangers of pornography as its pollution infests ever-growing numbers of people, but few regard it as a threat — at least until it creates havoc for them. With not enough fingers pointed in their direction, the pornography industry is making a bundle as it helps kill off morals and decay the fabric of good emotional and spiritual health.
Pornography is making a loud, quacking noise. Compiled evidence — lots of it — shows the devastating effects of this addiction on so many people. First-hand or second-hand, people are being affected, debilitated — even destroyed — by it.
The peddlers of pornography would have us believe that no harm is done- just as some peddlers of tobacco did for so many years. Data indicate a different picture:
Psychologist Edward Donnerstein, at the University of Wisconsin, conducted a study that found that even brief exposure to violent forms of pornography can lead to anti-social attitudes and behavior. Other studies back his up.
Exposure to pornography may diminish a person’s capacity for true intimacy. Researchers have found that those exposed to nonviolent pornography indicated a diminished satisfaction with their partner’s physical appearance, affection, and physical intimacy.
Nationwide studies show that where the circulation rates of pornography are up, so are the rape rates. Although rape is not usually a sexual act, but an act of violence, there is some correlation here.
Approximately 70 percent of the pornographic magazines sold end up in the hands of minors (The Pornography Plague , Kerby Anderson). Those minors cannot all be someone else’s children. Do we know what our children are experiencing — and accepting as a norm? What kind of marriages will they be able to create once their norms have shifted away from proper spiritual principles?
When viewing of pornography becomes habitual, there is a correlative increase in doubts about the value of marriage.”
Yesterday we had a powerful lesson in Relief Society Meeting about Pornography.
I was introduced to this new manual and 12 step recovery program put together by the LDS church in 2005. Go Here.
We had Ward Conference, which is a three hour series of meetings that include the Sacrament, Sunday School, and a combined Relief Society and Priesthood class which was taught by our Stake President and Stake Relief Society President. These leaders serve over 2,000 members in the Boulder Colorado Stake.
The difficult topic they chose to address was Porn Addiction and the increasing problem that it is becoming in the church. I really appreciated the way that they did not hesitate to lay out the problem as well as share some insights as to how we as parents could help our children and ourselves stay clean from this plague.
Our Stake Relief Society President shared quotes from individuals, some she knew and some whom she had read about…tragic quotes about how they wished they had made better choices, how they would give anything to have back a loving spouse or custody of children lost. She claimed that 40% of internet porn users were women and that this number was increasing. She also claimed that it was far easier to prevent a pornography addiction than it was to cure one.
Then our Stake President Spoke and he shared how once a month he meets with the Bishops in our stake and each bishop has shared stories of those addicted in their congregations who are struggling. He believes the problem is much more wide spread than what the leaders hear about because of the shame factor involved in confessing this particular sin. He also said that the church at the highest levels was deeply concerned about this issue and it was right up at the top of the agenda in terms of importance and focus.
He shared the 12 step program which had the Atonement of Jesus Christ woven completely through it and claimed that although it was not a perfect cure, it had helped some people when most secular programs are unable to claim cure for the problem of porn addiction.
He made a line of demarcation and tied it to Joseph in Egypt who was tempted by Potifers wife. That line is that if you are surfing the web and you accidentally view some porn and then you flee from it the way that Joseph ran so fast he left his coat in Potifers wifes hands, then in the Lord’s eyes you are not to blame…only be more careful about the web sites you go to and the surfing topics you search for.
But he said, if you are actively out searching for porn and looking at it, even if it is only the so called soft porn, you have a serious spiritual problem that needs to immediately be addressed and dealt with.
As he was talking I was praying fervently. I was begging the Lord to show me how to protect our children from this plague. During the class I felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to openly talk to the children about it, ask them if any of them had seen any porn on the internet and how they responded to it.
So at supper last night I brought it up very casually but also directly, sharing what had been taught in the class, and also sharing some stories of healing that had been used as examples of healing from this plague.
First I asked our four older children who had accidentally seen porn on the internet. Every hand was raised.
“Was it accidental?” Yes, and mom, it was so gross, ewwww, yuck.
I told them the difference between soft and hard core porn and said that according to the Stake President it did not make any difference, if you were looking at porn, you had a serious problem that needed to be taken to the Bishop.
The I told them that every week at Family Council we were going to have an accounting for the whole family. And anyone who accidentally viewed some porn would be asked to share that fact. I told them the reason for this was to help them be accountable and get used to talking openly about pornography viewing so that if it ever did move past the accidental to the intentional phase, they could quickly identify that it had become a problem before it turned into a full blown addiction.
I told them about a man who had struggled with porn addiction from the time he was eight years old, who had been excommunicated from the church twice for various sins he had committed tied to Porn, and at the age of 58 had finally overcome a lifetime of pain, shame, and sorrow tied to his sin. This man had witnessed to the fact that it was so much easier to PREVENT a pornography addiction than it was to heal it. And he wanted his story shared with anyone possible, especially parents, to help them teach their children of the plague and how to prevent it in their own families.
This class was a sobering reminder to Paul and I of the challenges that face us as parents trying to help our children avoid the pitfalls of life. I hope and pray the weekly accountability will help the children to openly shun and avoid this addiction like the plague it is.
Family Council is what we do on sunday nights to help us organize our schedule and deal with various issues that crop up. Some have joked that it is the only family fight that starts and ends with a prayer, but we have decided that it will be a good time for a weekly reminder to our children of how much we want to help them prevent this problem in their own lives. My heart aches at even having to talk about this topic with these tender hearted little ones, but President Williams said that the average age of seeing porn for the first time is eleven and it is usually by accident while surfing the web. All four of our older children, including our ten year old son, said they had in fact seen one thing or another, and that was a surprise to me, because except for Allison mentioning it one time, they had never mentioned it to me.
I’m grateful for the chance to bluntly discuss this topic with them, and for wise spiritual leaders who are also open about the problem and want to help prevent tragedies in family life. Jenny Hatch More Here at Meridian Magazine
Woke early this morning, Ben was ill, I gave him a bath and a quick essential oils massage on his back to help ease his symptoms, itchy skin, congested. While he was in the bath I asked him what he ate at the basketball game last night…”any candy?” “No, Mom, all I had were some Cheetos.” Not much better, but at least he wasn’t sugar saturated.
Allison had her last Basketball Game last night. Spring sports start next week, soccer and track, and she wants to do both. I was hoping we would have a little break, but with new practices next week, plus the regional BB tourney, it will be the most busy week of all.
Ah Life, it just gets busier and busier, no let up in site. More Complicated and more fun.
I found this old picture in an album a couple weeks ago and decided to scan it and then put it here on my blog. Allison was ten days old, and I had just experienced the realities of a cesarean section. One of those baptism by fire moments in my life. I remember feeling betrayed by all of my childbirth ideals.
Yet isn’t that life? We have some sort of a picture in our minds of how we think life should go, and then reality smacks and it is so far from the ideal that we had hoped and dreamed about, we could not possibly imagine how things could get worse, and then sometimes it does get worse, not always, but sometimes it does and we look up to heaven and wonder, “God, do you have some sort of wicked sense of humor, is this funny to you?” Or the question Ashers wife keeps asking (yes, almost finished the book…it is riveting) – “Asher, is there a plan? Tell me there is a plan” when trying to reconcile her parents and extended family being murdered during the haulocaust.
I was first introduced to the music of Les Miserables during the summer of 1987. Our music director Matt sang Bring Him Home for the cast of the summer stock I was participating in. And I cried. No, I wept. Stirrings. Again, the deeps of my being stirring. As soon as I had the cash, I bought the London Casette. Then early in our marriage I purchased the Broadway Cassette and was surprised to find out it was even better. We Americans are so conditioned to believe anything from Europe is better than that produced right here in the good ol US of A.
The early years of our marriage defined by Les Mis. Saw the musical three times with traveling casts: Detroit, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City. Singing the songs with guitar, piano, performing, performing, performing. Where is that score? Lost the music, oh well, we can get it off the internet….but never do. Last christmas Paul was asked to sing Bring him Home at the Christmas Party. Sure I can do it, sung it a hundred times. I thought he sang it wonderfully, even though I know he only rehearsed a couple times.
That music swells the memories. Good, bad, ugly…..beautiful. It’s funny putting stuff up on You Tube, some of the comments on my vids show that people expect perfection, it is all they hear on the radio, perhaps not understanding how difficult it is to nail a performance live. They don’t understand that what they hear on the radio is perhaps something that had been recorded dozens of times looking for perfection. Yet when Amatuers like hubby and I sing and share…perfection is expected and if not delivered well, tsk tsk, you are not quite good enough for me….lowly charlatan.
I’ve never claimed or pretended to be anything than what I am, an amatuer singer who loves music. I missed rehearsal last week for Colorado Rep…too busy with basketball, so I did not know they were holding auditions for Les Mis last night. We are singing a choral medley of the show, 32 pages of it. My friend Patricia called yesterday afternoon and said she was going to try for the soprano solos and did I want to come along. I told her no, I did not plan to audition, my asthma has been really bad and I just didn’t think I had the air power to sing it right. She told me I was welcome to come along with her anyway, and so I did. “perhaps you will change your mind”, she said as we ended the call.
I had not even looked at the score to see what solos were involved. And I have not sung anything from Les Mis for years. Five minutes before she showed up, I opened up the piano and plunked out the first line of I dreamed a dream, then grabbed the leash for my dog and ran outside to walk him before she showed up to take us to rehearsal. As I walked the dog, I sang full voice the first verse of I dreamed a dream….And it all came crashing back into my mind. The emotion of that song, the lost love, betrayal and depression. “when hope was high and life worth living”….”but there are dreams that cannot be”…
So often in my life I have had moments….long moments, years, weeks, days when hope was gone. When all that was being presented to me was destruction and depression. The words that came from professional lips….devastating to my heart. “you probably shouldn’t have any more children”….”you are too fat to be a part of our troop”….”you just aren’t good enough”….”No, this illnes is permanent”…..”You can’t have a vaginal birth after a C-section, you or the baby could die!!!”….and on and on and on…..
Where was MY ideal life? Under that proverbial rock, hidden from view? God, is there a plan? Is all of this mental torture really necessary?
As I walked the dog I sang Fantines words….”I dreamed a dream”
“There was a time when men were kind, when their voices were soft and their words inviting.
There was a time when love was blind and the world was a song, and the song was exciting.
There was a time.
Then it all went wrong.
I dreamed a dream in time gone by.
When hope was high and life worth living.
I dreamed that love would never die,
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.
But the tigers come at night.”
with their voices soft as thunder.
As they tear your hope apart,
as they turn your dream to shame….”
Do ALL women feels these same feelings? Do all women have their hopes crushed by one thing or another in life? Do ALL people have their dreams turned to dust while they plod along trying to find out what life is for?
I look at my life and the blessings overwhelm. Once in a while I will meet a new friend who knows nothing about our family and the message that is conveyed to me is that our family is perfect and does not have the problems and issues that other people deal with. When this belief is expressed to me I sometimes attempt to look the person in the eye and nod and accept her assessment of things, but a couple of times I have found myself busting out laughing at the irony of it all, “no, not laughing at YOU, not dismissing YOU…you just don’t know anything about it, that’s all”.
If you think you have met a perfect family, you just don’t know them well enough. This does not mean that we all have to air our dirty laundry on a realty show, so that others can see the various foibles and traumas we have experienced. But the question does come to mind, “if we are all struggling with life and the various trials and temptations that life affords, what is it all about?” Why all of this struggle? Why all of this pain? Gut wrenching, lung collapsing, fever inducing pain?
After five minutes of walking the dog, I decided to audition. As we drove to the church where rep singers rehearse, I decided to belt it instead of try to sound pretty. It is not a pretty song. It is that gut wrenching, lung collapsing, fever inducing pain song. It is a song about a woman who becomes a prostitute to save her child. It is about mother love and women love and the depths that a soul will go to try to make her life work.
So yes, I sang it ugly, I sang it powerful and raw, and figured if the director wanted it that way he would have me do it. Sure, everyone else sang it pretty, choral music is pretty and melodic, and QUIET!!! And I sang it loud. When I finished he said “well we just heard the broadway version of that”…nothing else. Somtime I’ll record a version of it and shove it up on YOU TUBE, so others can hear my rawness. Is it possible to sing a song like that without the hoplessness it contains spilling out, even when the singer trys to sing it pretty?
I don’t know. I just know how I had to sing it the way I did. Don’t really care if I get to sing it at our concerts. (Ok that’s a lie) I have not worked with this director long enough to know what he wants, and that is good because it frees me to sing how I like without caving to the pressure to attempt to sing how he would have it. The long timers in the group all sang it choral style, so perhaps that is what will win the prize of the solo. Solos are a prize, they give visibility and kudos and praise and challenge. I love to perform. My heart thrills with each second of connection with a live audience. The overwhelm of adrenaline, the crash of applause, the absolute thrill of touching someone else to the depths of their being….true emotion, true weeping…..I love every bit and piece of it.
We have some women in our world, Amanda Marcotte comes to mind just because she has been in the middle of the current blogger storm, who have used some derogatory language to describe certain aspects of mothering. The Conservative Blogs have been particularly vicious to her. Out of curiousity I went to her site to surf around and see what she really thinks, and found this entry, and several like it, that passionately spoke in favor of women’s rights of self determination. Go Here.
QUOTE:
“One woman whose name I’m not sure I can spell correctly (Laura Pemberton I think) gave one of the most moving presentations at the summit when she told her story of trying to evade a court-ordered C-section that violated her religious beliefs. (She had one C-section before under genuinely dangerous circumstances, and the “no vaginal after a C-section” rule kicked into effect.)
Hers was a horrific story of a patriarchal medical and court system that came into collusion and forced this C-section on her in a way that made it clear that after a certain point, it was a punishment against her for refusing to deliver at the hospital and trying to deliver at home.
After all, by the time the police came to the house, arrested her, strapped her down to the table at the hospital and had the court order in hand to operate, the baby was just about to come out. (She said she was dilated to 9 centimeters—I don’t know what this means, but it made the audience gasp.)
After she told her story, she was asked about her views on abortion and she got rigid, stating that she thought it was wrong, and she made it clear at another part of her presentation that she felt it was a woman’s god-given duty to have children. This woman was the religious conservative red stater that people who talk about compromise on abortion want to lure over.
And yet here she was sitting at the table with a bunch of crunchy feminists, queer activists and generally cantankerous pro-choicers (literally, she sat with our little group at lunch one day and was winking at and laughing with some of our more goofily feminist jokes)—not because we had limited our demands for women’s rights but because we expanded those demands and the expanded view of what women’s rights are was appealing to her. Talk about choice, she’s not at the table. Talk about a woman’s right to self-determination and that means something to her.
The reason that liberals are losing people is because we’re too timid about pushing forth our agenda. And this came up again and again—women who for whatever reason aren’t overly interested in this discussion of “choice” came to the pro-choice table because the people at NAPW are talking about the much larger concept of justice and the right to self-determination.”
I was thrilled to go to the source and read for myself what she wrote, because I am a conservative and spend quality time reading conservative bloggers, it would have been easy to dismiss Amanda as a feminist nut and stereotype her and yet here she is passionately articulating a view that I completely agree with, nodding my head as I’m reading, thinking “You go girl”.
And so the circle of my life widens and broadens. Heck I do the same thing when I listen to Nancy Pelosi talk about immunizations. “YOU GO GIRL!” It is always wise to go to the source and read for ourselves rather than let our minds be dictated to and massaged by other writers.
As maturity bids and I get closer to grandmother years and old age (Stop laughing, I know I just turned 39 and everyone over the age of 45 is going puleese), I find myself mellowing. The fires of movement that ruled my twenties and early thirties into childbirth activism are slowly winding down. Why? Frankly, I’m tired. I want to spend my time and energy on something else. Musical Theatre and Choral Singing satisfys something very deep in my soul and it brings much less distress into my life than birth activism. It’s not that I have lost any belief or passion for holistic birthing, it is more that with the writing of my books, the birth conference I organized in 2001, and the various things I have written on my blog, that is about all I have to offer to the cause.
I pray that my writings have helped to articulate the truth that creating a body for a child is the ultimate act of creativity. It is the fullness of womanly power. It is the most beautiful and artistic use of her female skill and intellect. If you feel that you have been betrayed by motherhood and your child is anything but the serene, peaceful, beautiful soul that you have hoped and prayed to give birth to, might I suggest approaching mothering in a different way..and would you be offended if I even throw out the idea that perhaps healthier living is the answer?
Teaching Bradley Childbirth in our home in 1992 – nursing baby Allison while I taught.
I occasionally feel a burning desire to go to my young friends, newly pregnant, wide eyed, and so hopeful…so innocent…so beautiful in their mother glow. Grasp them by the arms, shake really hard…and yell so loud, no one can miss one word of what I say, and scream…”DO NOT LET THEM CUT YOUR BODY!!!”
I know that won’t be very effective, and so I have never done it. But every once in a while, yes, I am tempted. If you saw someone about to walk over a cliff with their young children, you would yell…right?? You would scream. You might even jump at them and try to pull them away, perhaps even scratching and hurting them or the children in the process, but knowing that what you did was right and good and necessary….You would do that, right???
That is how I feel at times when I listen to the birth stories, when I listen to the young ones quoting their doctors and midwives and sharing the stories….
I’ll keep writing, sharing, praying, hoping that something I write will influence someone, even just one, one family, one birth, one baby born more gently, more peacefully….but at times I get so frustrated with the whole thing I just weep.
I remember pouring out my heart to Heaven one day. I yelled in my mind to Father in Heaven….”WHEN is it going to be fair?” “When is this montrosity of a whore going to go down in flames?
What keeps me going are the babies. The birth stories. The glow I can HEAR in the voices of my friends when they call or email to let me know another baby has been born into the hands of its father. Amanda Counter wrote me such an email when she gave birth to her fourth baby at home. It was a painful birth, and when I wrote her back to revel and tried to find the words to comfort, I just told her some life events take you to the depths as a woman and we have no guarantees that birth will be painless. When a home birth feels like a betrayal (Did it really have to hurt that bad???), it does cause the momma to look up and ask, “is THIS pain really necessary???”.
I don’t know. It just is what it is. Some births are painful, some are painless. I’ve had both. Amanda was still able to do it at home and it was a triumph for her. Perhaps the pain opens us up to the greater depths of joy motherhood has to offer. And when a woman conciously chooses to anesthetize herself from the pain of birth, perhaps she cuts herself off from the ability to even feel the joy that COULD be hers if she would trust the process of birth.
As I circle around this life, experiencing the joy of music, performance, laughter, the heights and the depths of mothering I trust that in those things I don’t understand that there is in fact a plan, a purpose, a meaning…to the pain.
I believe Salvation is the goal and exaltation is the prize. Jenny Hatch
