No need to comment that the Mom who gave birth to octuplets is a very troubled lady. The story has sparked plenty of debate. Most agree, “This never should have happened”. So lets think about this for a moment. Who should decide how many children a woman should have? I certainly don’t like the idea of the government telling us how many children we should have.
I am a big “personal responsibility” advocate, in that we all have free will to do good or bad things. That said, there usually exists checks and balances in our world, which, along with personal responsibility, prevent us all from doing stupid things. In the case of Nadya Suleman, it seems that all the checks and balances failed her and therefore the 8 babies. For most us, our first line of defense is the family. When we are considering doing something really stupid, our family members usually sound off LOUDLY. They yell and scream, they try to talk us out of it, and they DON’T ENABLE THE BEHAVIOR! Apparently, Ms. Suleman has been living with her mother as she continues to have these babies out of wedlock. Something is wrong right there, before even getting to the octuplets. If her mother would have said, "You are not living in my house and having these babies", what would have happened? We can't know that, but it would have made it harder for her to go and have more babies.
Next we get to the doctor. Here represented a chance for someone in the second layer of checks and balances to act. He had the chance to say,” You want to do what? That’s crazy!” Besides missing an opportunity to really prevent someone from making a big mistake, he even went beyond customary practices of implanting no more than three embryos and implanted six. Was that her idea? If it was his, what’s up with that?
Now we get to Medicaid. It’s a little unclear whether the great state of California paid for the IVF or will just pay the estimated $10 million hospital bill. Lets say for arguments sake, that Medicaid will pay for IVF (yes I know we could debate that one all on its own). Are there no limits? No qualifications? No anything? That is nuts!
So all in all, Ms. Suleman clearly was not capable of making good choices. But many could have intervened and did not.
So where is the lesson for us MOMs out there? I think it is to realize that we are our children's first line of defense and it is a very important role! Good parenting can't prevent all our children's mistakes, but it goes a long way to making them fewer, and less tragic.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
I hadn't really thought about the Octo-Mom's mother....very interesting point. Where was she in all this and why did she only come out against it when the tide of public disfavor came her daughter's way?? And I never really thought about the piblic funding aspect - boy will I be annoyed if the taxpayers end up footing the bill on this one!!
ReplyDeleteLMaureen
Has anyone given tis Octo-Mom a psychological evaluation? It seems like she is addicted to being pregnant and relishes the attention it gets her.Doesn"t she understand that these children are real and are not dolls!!!! She should be saving money for these kids,instead of spending it on plastic surgery.At the rate she"s going she will be the little old lady that lived in a shoe!!!!!
ReplyDeleteNadya certainly could have used more guidance in her life, however, her personlaity indicates to me she's the type of person that no matter how much advice you may give her, she would do what she wanted anyway.
ReplyDeleteLiving at home with her mother, she really had no expenses, no car payments, no real 'luxuries', if you will.... that, along with an insurance settlement she presumably received allowed her to pay for these IVF treatments. So, I do agree, her mother did enable her and indirectly had a hand in Nadya's poor decision making process.
Nadya has publically expressed her resentment and disappointment being an only child her entire life. She longed for a large family with sibling bonds, something she couldn't get/acheive no matter how many friends she had. She projected her needs/wants into creating her family in the manner she did; to make up for what she didn't have. Her mother is no saint by any means, but certianly can't be to blame if this was Nadya's main motivating factor for having so many children. (and I don't believe she really set out to have 14 kids to begin with).
After multiple miscarriages and findng out her tubes were scarred, conceiving naturally was an impossibility. Hence the whole IVF thing. She had 6 babies (a set of twins and 5 singletons). All of which she was implanted with 6 embryos each time....(same as her octoplet pregnancy, except all 6 embryos took and 2 of them split creating 8!! what odds!!).
Why that particular number of embryos was chosen to begin with, who knows....
In my own IVF experience, I know sometimes embryo quality can be very poor from cycle to cycle; some embryos meet freezing criteria while others dont--so do u transfer them or allow them to expire? It's a difficult decision to make. This is where the GUIDANCE of her RE should come into play; but not dictation.
She also had 5 previous pregnancies using the same amt. of embryos, although biologically possible, who could have predicted such a rare occurance based on her past 5 (successful)attempts?? Especially since this was a procedure using her remaining frozen embryos which greatly reduces the odds of success.
As far as who should determine how many kids a particular person should have-- my opinion---NO ONE! I certainly don't want Big Brother watching me in my bedroom or at my ob-gyn appts for that matter. It's no one's business. If Nadya didnt have to use IVF and was able to conceive the old-fashioned way, time and time again, who would stop her???!
Should you be financially stable? It would be nice, but not always the case.
Take a look at the Duggar's. They have 18 children. What about them?? The family of ROBOTS whose matriarch births children, then passes them off to an elder sibling to take care of after a year or so, so she can get knocked up again and again... They don't have alot of money, but they do live within their means and have no debt. Something Nadya could learn from.
For my own personal beliefs, babies out of wedlock is also unacceptable. HOWEVER, I do not judge Nadya for not being married and raising multiple children. Just as I dont judge same sex couples for creating families.
Most likely, if she had a husband, this wouldn't be as sensational a story as it has been. Sad, but true. The definition of what constitues a family is constantly RE-defining itself. There really isn't any 'norm' per se.
Having 2 parents is no better than being a single parent, and so forth.
As a somone who is pro-life for MYSELF, I still do not judge those who have reduced or had abortions. Every woman I feel has the right to choose. So, I applaud Nadya in some respects for not reducing or allowing the embryos to expire, as I also believe life begins at conception. She felt a moral obligation to give all those embryos a chance at life, and certainly succeeded at that. She could have waited is all, and probably erred on the side of caution when thawing and tranferring remaning embryos from previous IVF cycles.
Embryo donation would have been acceptable alternative, but she was opposed to it. A personal decision I can understand from personal experience having frozen embryos myself and still undecided what to do with them (have more or donate them). It's a personal decision, something that one needs to be completely comfortable and at peace with.
Anyway, I'm rambling here. To make a long story short, I do agree with your moral of your story--we are our children's first line of defense in preventing them from making mistakes in life. There's no doubt about that, although I don't belive Nadya's children should be viewed as a mistake. They are living, breathing (and so far) healthy little beings.
In the case of Nadya Suleman, I do carry a soft spot for her... mainly as a mother of multiples and as a woman who implored IVF. I feel sorry for her in a way. She's naive, irrational, a bit irresponsible. Contrary to what some may think of her, she's a smart cookie who is not as dumb as everyone may seem to think...She certainly knows how to work the system. But you know what, 14 children later, she still seems like the loneliest woman in the world. And even if she had another 14 children, it still wouldn't fill that void she's carried with her her entire lfe. It's sad, really.
Was she a bit selfish? Perhaps. But aren't we all when we set out to have a baby in the first place? Initally it is all about us and our wants and strong desires for a child or even a sibling for our child(ren).
She obviously takes for granted the kindness and generosity of others, because it almost seems as if she expects it. But you know what, she will get it. With all the media coverage, everyone is fascinated with her and her story.... She is bound to receive monetary gifts/compensation in return for more of her story and a first hand look a her life with her 14 children.
At the end of the day, it's about those babies. The reality is, no decent human being will let any of these baby suffer, regardless of their mother's poor decisions and financial staus...plain and simple. If she lived by me, even with all I had going on, I'd probably even volunteer to help for the sake of those kids.
Being someone who has been in therapy for years the only Dr she needed to visit is a Psychologist. All joking aside I feel that everything stems back to the parents. No one was asked to be put on this Earth and its obvious that something is terribly wrong with this woman...but what is it? What sort of childhood did she have? Being an only child is a poor excuse for feeling lonely.
ReplyDeleteWhy the need to have so many children out of wedlock, without the presence of a father? What was her relationship with her father, if any. As much as this story completely bothered me and as much anger I had, as I previously stated being in therapy for so many years you tend to look further into things and evaluate the situation instead of pointing fingers. Thereare 2 sides to every story. In this case 3. Hers, her parents and her doctors. They all played a role in this but at this point I feel that someone needs to reach out to her. Forget the Doctor, forget the parents, she is a mother of 14 kids who needs alot of help. Although she has already created a situation which is spiraling out of control, if she receives the proper help it may help her give these children a better life in the future. It all comes down to them. So yes our childrens first line of defense is us, the parents. Nobody is perfect but as Lori stated, "Good parenting can't prevent all our children's mistakes, but it goes a long way to making them fewer, and less tragic."