http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&tab=wn&ned=us&q=mother+14+children&btnG=Search+New
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Let’s review the known facts, so far, of this matter:
In 1999, Nadya was injured on the job, whacked in the back by a thrown desk, likely confined to bed and sunk into deep depression. By 2001, her husband walked away or she pushed him away. She got a lump sum of backdated payments and knew she would continue to get monthly support from a Worker’s Comp settlement.
Her back had recovered enough that she was physically able to attend classes and expand her education, I guess. Looking at that lump sum she thought, “Now, I can have the babies I’ve always wanted.” Her mother supported this decision, no doubt. Someone had to agree to help her because she could not physically care for a child by herself.
I have had personal experience with problem pregnancies and back injuries so I can speak with some authority when I say that combining these two conditions is a choice no one can make without an enabler. Nadya should have been entirely dependant upon her mother to buy groceries, cook meals and bring them to her. During the last months, she needed help going to the bathroom and bathing. Carry around a 10-pound+ weight in your belly pulls on the lumbar region of the back and causes pain in women who have never had back injuries. So Nadya would have spent most of her life since 2001 lying down. I’m guessing she continued her education thru correspondence courses and/or the internet. I can’t imagine she could do it any other way without being on powerful pain medication which would have endangered the fetus.
So, after that first baby, her Mama is the one who got up and changed its diapers, gave it baths, changed its clothes and carted it back and forth to Nadya’s waiting arms. Nadya got all the comforting parts of motherhood and someone else did the hard crap work. Understandably, she thought, “Being a mother is wonderful! Why don’t I do this again?”
Something else was happening beside the ease of getting only the good parts of mothering. By nine months of age, that first child no longer lay docilely in her arms, cooing and looking up with adoring eyes. It squirmed. It pushed and pulled, bucked and flailed. It kicked without malice. In all of my speculation, I am presuming that Nayda’s back injury is real, permanent and disabling. The gyrations of a normal child can hurt healthy, uninjured mothers. She cannot pick up a toddler and carry it on her hip. She can’t lift up a one-year old and put it in a highchair. She can’t carry the kid to the car, lean over, put it in a car seat and strap it in. She can’t even lift one out of its crib. Her parents did all of that!
The decision to do it again had to have been accompanied by significantly dramatic scenes. There was hysterical crying and wailing for “a baby in my arms.” There were tantrums with accusations “You never loved me enough. You never made me feel good about myself! Daddy was gone. You were busy. I was all alone!” There was blatant emotional blackmail, “If I don’t have another baby, I’m going to get depressed again. I won’t have any reason to live. Nothing to comfort me in my pain and misery…”
Maybe these scenes didn’t happen before the second baby. The first one hadn’t entered the “Terrible Twos” yet and her parents’ memories of toddler hood were probably vague. It might not have seemed like too much trouble to help with a second child… or the third. But, at some time before the fourth pregnancy, there had to have been a showdown, a point at which her parents realized that something was very wrong.
Nadya should not be able to cope with a toddler. She loves babies but she may not especially like children. By age five, the oldest one may have been trained to treat her like a fragile flower and allowed to gently cuddle up beside her for story time. But, healthy, normal children do not stay still for long and their natural energy bursts out into squirming, hopping and jumping, bouncing on the bed and causing Nadya pain. “Get off the bed,” she might cry out while gasping with agony, “Get away from me and go run around the yard!”
During the fourth pregnancy that resulted in twins, Nadya got a second layer of injuries. This car accident brought in more compensation but it wasn’t enough. Nadya’s mother filed for bankruptcy and the family moved into a smaller house. As soon as the twins were out of her arms, Nadya needed “one more baby.” Someone — mother, father, or sperm donor friend — drove her to the appointment with the fertility clinic. Unless her injuries are a total fraud, she could not have driven herself. She was aided and abetted in the commission of yet another pregnancy when she already had six children that she could not financially, emotionally or physically support. Everyone involved had to know this before the last six embryos were implanted in her womb.
Had Nadya become a monstrous tyrant who controlled and manipulated everyone around her? Was her emotional blackmail so powerful, her pathetic compulsion so pitiful? At this point in the saga, the situation had already gone far beyond irresponsible and was heading into willful negligence. When she decided to keep all of the viable fetuses in her most recent pregnancy, she decided to seek the financial salvation of fame? If she had just had six more babies for a dozen total, she could be assured of making the front page of the tabloids. There is no way this decision wasn’t intentional and calculating. There were already successful reality shows about families with too many children. This was The Plan. Of course, she was “delighted” when she actually got eight babies and made headlines around the world. How disheartening it must be for her to realize that not all of us are impressed by her “accomplishment”?
Let’s not discuss the issue of freedom of choice in this regard. Brad and Angelina don’t have money issues and are fabulously fit and healthy; they can choose to have as many children as they want and I don’t mind. A child on welfare can choose to have a baby and I’m not terribly outraged by my tax dollars supporting her. Thinking about all welfare babies, lumped together, bothers me a little more and I’d like to see the government make some effort toward supplying birth control and encouraging people to use it. On an individual basis, self-validating thru motherhood is understandable and acceptable because it’s attained in a natural, gawd-given way. We won’t want to legislate that.
Altho Nadya had the money to pay for her IVF treatments, it’s unclear who’s going to pay the current Bellflower Kaiser Permanante bill. She may say she’s never gotten and will never ask for taxpayer assistance so it’s none of our business, right? Hey, she’s getting a Masters in counseling; she’s going to earn a million dollars a year working for Social Services, right? Not. It’s going to take more than a multi-million dollar book/movie deal to get these 14 kids all the way to self-sufficient adulthood. Some of them aren’t going to ever get there. One of them is already known to be autistic. Among the octuplets, there will most likely be other long-term ailments and disabilities. So her assurances that my children aren’t going to be paying for her children are ridiculously false. Recklessly inflicting her progeny on society is our business. We do get to judge whether her decision-making was wise, wily or purely insane.
What about her dreams of fortune thru infamy? Would you buy her book? Um, why? I might read a book by her mother in which the true horror and insanity of the situation is revealed…
I might watch the movie if it’s a portrayal of a manipulative, selfish sociopath played by Angelina Jolie. But if it’s a glowing Lifetime movie tribute about overcoming obstacles to impossible dreams, I’ll pass. Purposefully having fourteen children you can’t support financially, emotionally and physically should not be encouraged.
Should a posse of case workers go ahead and jump in now? Or should we wait to see how damaged the children are in a few years?