"18 Kids and Counting"--Mrs. Dugger's health

Factual Questions
1

I’m not a doctor, so I apologize if this sounds too silly for GQ.

I’ve heard that women who give birth vaginally (and maybe through c-section, I’m not sure) even once sometimes have trouble with their “equipment” (urinary incontinence, uterine prolapses, etc.). I can only imagine that the probability of such conditions arising increases the more natural children a woman has.

So, what condition is Mrs. Dugger (of the “18 Kids and Counting” fame) likely to be in? All of her children are natural as far as I know. Will there come a point where her reproductive system will simply give out due to overuse?

I’m frankly wondering why her whole midsection isn’t completely jelly by now.

2

Every now and then I wish my wife was more like her mother (10 single births). Then I go home and my infant son wails and my 2 year old daughter whines and I wonder why we had the second one. (note: my daughter doesn’t really whine much at all, but when she does, it’s nerve-wracking)
Sorry, forgot I was in GQ.

3

“There once was an old lady who lived in a shoe, she had so many kids… her uterus fell out”

/Diceman Clay

4

She’s had one or two c-sections. In some of the specials she talks about finding a doctor willing to allow a vaginal birth after c-section.

5

Thanks for the replies so far. I hope that someone with much more medical knowledge than I will see this thread soon and give me all the medical details. I’m just morbidly curious about this.

6

Urinary incontinence can be a real problem for women after childbirth.
After 18 kids? I bet she leaks pee every single time she sneezes.

7

My grandmother birthed over 13 children, at home.

She lived to be 104 yrs old and never suffered incontinence issues until a few months before she died (a little leakage, she was mortified!).

I know it’s just an antidote, not evidence.

Just don’t jump to conclusions, Okay!

8

Not to mention the issues this raises WRT her mental health.

9

Point taken. I’m just thinking about the effects having one or two children and envisioning (quite vividly) how those problems would magnify with more children.

I can’t believe, however, that no doctors are biting at this.

10

Yes, I don’t really understand the draw of the quiverfull movement.

11

Yeah, I’d deleted a snarky reference to the Duggars’ “unbridled genetic narcissism” from my first post because on reflection, it seemed more likely that their motivation is to recast the world in their fundie X-ian goodness, as opposed to populating it with their own physical likenesses per se.

But here’s my retort to the “Quiver Full” movement, H.R. Giger’s “Birth Machine Baby,” in all its manifold manifestations.

12

actually, it’s just an anecdote

13

She just had #19 early: Josie Brooklyn.