Lady in the shoe
Published 2:19 pm Wednesday, February 4, 2009
There was a woman in her thirties who lived in a shoe, she already had six children and she should have known what to do. She gave them Campbell’s soup without any bread, and whipped them all soundly and sent them to bed.
The truth is this woman actually lost her “shoe” house two years ago and now lives with her parents and for some insane reason decided she needed eight more children to add to her brood.
I have four kids. I don’t know what to do! If I lived in a shoe it would be a large hiking boot that is sturdy enough and waterproofed to handle these rowdy boys. No designer pumps for me!
Some are hinting the octobaby woman is obsessed with having kids since she now has 14 of them less than eight years old and all were purposely implanted with in vitro fertilization (IVF). This was no accident. This makes the scenario much more disturbing! Why, is the first question I have to ask.
If I were her parents I would be grounding her for life… and whipping her soundly with NO bed for six months, which is going to be the case anyway!
So, when do we step in as a government? As a society? Can we? Should we? Is it child abuse to give birth to kids when you can not afford the cost? When is it right to step in?
What about sanity, should we allow crazy people to raise kids? Aren’t all parents eventually crazy? Cause, this woman is either insane, oblivious to the horrors of being a single mother or she is working on her two million dollar Oprah deal and this is all a ploy to become famous? Which is it? 15 minutes of fame, a large sum of money or a love of poopy diapers?
For me, this is simple. You can’t pay me enough money to have one more kid, let alone eight at one time. Two at a time has nearly done me in! My sanity is wobbly, my body is beaten from the inside out and my pocketbook is empty! My heart may be full of love, but my brain cells are mush. Now do I want to multiply that by eight?
Seriously, I would have passed on the million to sleep with Robert Redford so I can’t even imagine the pain and torture of raising eight crying infants and breastfeeding them, dragging 14 whiny kids out of bed and dressing them for school, ball practice, dance rehearsals, homework sessions — all by myself — to gain millions of dollars that I would be too tired, too sick and too mentally incapacitated to enjoy spending! Oh, wait, with enough money I could hire “Jo, the Super Nanny!” Hey, maybe octobaby mom is smarter than I thought?
I will call my local fertility expert tomorrow, but to gain Oprah’s attention now I will have to out number the octobaby, possibly 10 at one time.
Scratch that. I am too tired to make the effort. Some women need drugs to go through labor, well, I would need drugs to contemplate having more kids!
Just look at the added health issues associated with having multiple pregnancies, like strokes which are common daily occurrences with mothers of small children, diabetes from snacking every time a child snacks and immune deficiencies from all the collected germs of preschoolers. Can you imagine that house when the stomach virus comes a calling! Yikes.
So what is the right answer in our tolerant society? We throw loads of money into programs to educate women in preventing unwanted pregnancies? Do we need to educate those who are having ‘wanted’ pregnancies?
Yet, this woman through her spokesperson is collecting offers to tell her story for profit, and who can blame her because she is going to need some cash for diapers! She is saying she is joyful about the babies. See, just like I thought… crazy! If someone just told me I had eight babies, the word joyful would not be in my vocabulary. My poor husband would be dead — killed with one searing laser shot from my eyes!
Why do people have multiple kids anyway? I did not set out to be a mother of four but life happens. Octobaby chick works in the fertility clinic so she really takes her work seriously. Or should I say, she takes her work home?
Some folks have big hearts and they deserve the big family experience. If Brad and Angelina want to have 100 then I say go for it because they have money enough to hire some assistance plus they seem to be hands on parents.
On the other hand, if you have four or five and you are as poor as dirt, and you are purposely planning to have more, then who is going to stop you? It’s a free country.
The contradiction for octobaby mom is that she is educated and seems sincere. I still think someone needs to mentally evaluate her because post partum depression times eight could be a scary thing and this woman must have begun her depression after the first birth of her first born.
Do I point the finger and say we should stop the breeding? I can only take responsibility for my womb — and this one is out of order!
Tracy Williams is a guest columnist and can be reached at myhometowncolumn.com