On another board where there’s been a months-long discussion of a shown seen on cable called “14 Children and Pregnant Again,” about a family that believes in having as many children as they can force out, I heard about this Australian couple. The American folks belong to a movement called “quiver full.” I don’t know if the Australians believe the same stuff, but at least the Americans produce kids naturally.
My brickbats go to the doctors idiotic enough to approve any more attempts at getting pregnant so soon after giving birth to quads. That poor woman’s uterus is going to run away screaming shortly, if it doesn’t just give up completely and prolapse as she’s walking down the street!
This was the first thing i thought of when i read the OP.
People with unusually huge families like this often get a whole bunch of free shit, and even cash donations from sympathtic members of the public. I remember back when i was living in Australia some family had quintuplets or sextuplets (can’t remember now) and they got shitloads of money from TV shows like A Current Affair who wanted to interview them and show “A day in the life of…” type stories.
Often all that help dies off fast. Babies are cute. But fourteen year olds who don’t tie their shoes aren’t. And with the explosion in quads and quints from fertility treatments, anyone counting on continued help from the publicity may be disappointed - the publicity only lasts until the next set of quints in the area.
This is what I cynically call all of these multiple births induced by fertility treatments. The children are no more alike than ordinary siblings, they just happen to be born at the same time to the same mother. IMO “real” quads, quints, or what have you, are identical.
Probably most naturally occurring quads are fraternal, like these guys. Identical quads are practically unheard of. I don’t think this is a fair qualifier; now, I can see differentiating between fertility-treatment multiples and natural multiples.
Still, however it happens, the thought of four at once makes me want to run away screaming. And to do it TWICE…
At least the names are decent. A lot of people who get articles written about them for having a million kids name them horrendous things. There was one family who had 15 kids and gave them all J names.
Financial capabilities aside (and as Caught@Work noted, living with grandparents does not exactly indicate they’ve got cash to splash), I believe it is just plain wrong to seek medical help in order to create a situation that is going to need MASSES of medical intervention in the future…if indeed the babies survive at all.
I too was thinking about the Baby Bonus stuff when I first read of it, but surely, SURELY after already having so many children, the parents would have realized that no amount of fincancial help is going to make such a large family viable?
That rings a bell – rural Americans, fringe fundamentalist Christian, father was a local politician, his best friend had twelve kids and was also in politics, and they were pushing a bill that had something to do with home-schooling, right? Or am I confused?
Who’s paying for the fertility treatments? I know my father had to pay a metric assload just to get enough fertility treatment for him and his wife to conceive one child, let alone go back and do it a second time. Is this something they can bilk medicare for if their income is low enough, or is it all out of pocket?
A good and close friend of mine had been married for a couple of years and couldn’t conceive naturally. She got pregnant with some hormonal therapy, which led to her doctor telling her she would have triplets. Oh joy! They had planned an expected one child, but soon adapted to the idea and were happy about it.
Let me tell you, that was one of heck of a complicated pregnancy. She was in bed for the duration of it, the kids managed to make it almost to the 7th month and were born without major complications. There was only one little surprise: there were four instead of three!
That was a frigging madhouse. I love them and all, but 5 minutes in that house would send me out twitching and in the verge of a nervous breakdown. Mom and dad both worked and they needed two sitters to watch after them. Since the good doctor had told them that without assistance they could not have any more children they took no precautions and when the babies were short of 4 months old she found herself pregnant with their fifth boy. Oh joy!
Having seen that first hand I wonder who in their sane mine would make the decisions made by the woman in the OP. They sound like people whose mental capacity would improve with a prefrontal lobotomy.
Hmm… this explains the rise of the Religious Right. They thrive by outbreeding the non-religious folk so their kids grow up to vote Republican. Our society is doomed.
Frankly, I am disappointed. I was hoping for some really bad names so that way when they fill and entire special ed class room the teacher will be driven insane by the Rayven, McKensy, Ezekiel, Jebidiah’s. one ticket …first class…