That's what happened to Claudia Meija. Somehow during what should have been a very brief stay at the hospital, in an area (labor and delivery) where the patients aren't even sick, she acquired an "aggressive streptococcal infection," a.k.a. flesh-eating bacteria.
There were no complications with the birth: "Everything was normal." But then she developed a rash ("possible allergic reaction to the sheets") and severe stomach pain ("normal for someone who had just given birth"). Two days later, doctors performed a hysterectomy. Twelve days later they amputated all her limbs, having given her the choice between that and dying. Even so, it was months before she was healthy enough to leave the hospital.
Is it any wonder that when Jon was in the hospital with viral meningitis I prayed as much that he would not acquire a new infection as I did that he recover from the original?
Is it any wonder that, despite its own inherent risks, home birth is looking more and more like the safer alternative?Here's a local version of the story:
http://www.wftv.com/news/6056445/detail.htmlPermalink | Comments | Edit
Category Everyday Life
I doubt I would have found The Giver had it not been required reading for two of my nephews. One read it as a class assignment in seventh grade; for the other it was read aloud in fifth grade. Intrigued, I borrowed the book from our library.
The Giver makes me wish I belonged to a literary discussion group. Without a doubt there is plenty here to discuss, and I can see why teachers might be eager to share this Newbery Award winner with their classes. I would love to talk about it in a group, to toss about various interpretations and implications. And yet, despite the "young adult" designation, despite the fact that the main character has not yet reached his teens, I question the value of such a book in the elementary or middle school curriculum.My friends and family know all too well how strongly I believe children are much more capable than we give them credit for, and are all too familiar with my rants about how society—especially school—holds them back, does not respect them, and deprives them of important opportunities for growth and learning. Certainly a 10-year-old could contribute intelligently to a discussion of The Giver, if he had the background and experience. However, modern American education—which definition I extend backwards at least as far as my own experience—will rarely if ever allow such a child to develop. To speak intelligently on the serious issues that emerge from this book requires more knowledge of history, philosophy, religion, literature, and ethics than many adults possess. Without such a background, how can a discussion rise above the level of the readers' feelings?
I'm reminded of the first Gulf War, during which our local elementary schools made a point of engaging their students in discussions about the war, querying them on such issues as why we were fighting and whether or not the war was justified. What, other than confusion and a false sense of self-importance, can come from asking such questions of people who know nothing of history, let alone economics, politics, and religion?
Before we ask our children to wrestle with life's difficulties, ambiguities, and moral dilemmas, let them have a strong course of history and logic, at least. To do otherwise is to send them unarmed into mortal combat.
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Category Everyday Life
You will get in trouble if you send "coffee in any form" to the Philippines. Jordan prohibits "advertisements concerning treatment of venereal diseases." Don't send "wireless receivers and their accessories, parts, or batteries" to Iceland, "Japanese shaving brushes" to Uganda, horror comics to Great Britain, playing cards to Spain or Madagascar, "books and prints contrary to the Islamic faith" to Saudi Arabia, "circulars or advertisements containing amulets, charms or talismans" to Malaysia, or "primary educational books not written in Portuguese" to Brazil.
Italy prohibits stamp albums, artificial flowers, "bells and other musical instruments and parts thereof," "hair and articles made of hair," "nutmeg, vanilla, sea salt, rock salt, saffron," typewriter ribbons, and "toys not made wholly of wood." The list for Ecuador includes "all maps showing the territory of Ecuador with incorrect boundaries," "bits and mouthpieces made of copper or any alloy containing copper," "preparations for erasing ink and handwriting," "so-called 'Panama' and 'Mocora' hats and the straw used for making them," and unrefined salt. Taiwan forbids coins over 100 years old along with "extracts, essences, and concentrates of tea" and "sugar, molasses, saccharine, and other sweetening substances."
North Korea makes it very simple: "All merchandise is prohibited."Permalink | Comments | Edit
Category Random Musings
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Category Everyday Life
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Category Everyday Life
The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home, by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise (W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 2004)
I heard so many homeschoolers raving about The Well-Trained Mind that I had to read it for myself. Then the question became not why so many people love it, but why do I? One reviewer called this approach “ultra school-at-home”—which should have been enough to send me fleeing as from a thousand devils.
If I didn't loathe labels that place homeschoolers into boxes, the one I would be most likely to accept concerning our homeschooling philosophy would be "unschooling." So why would I enthusiastically recommend this book, in which the only reference to unschooling is negative and largely inaccurate? Why would I even read a homeschooling book that opens with the stated belief that homeschooling is second best to an ideal school system, and includes the line, "I set up the desks and the American flag and started to teach my children at home"?
Let me begin with my sympathetic feelings for the White Queen in Alice, who could believe “as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Just as I find no inherent contradiction between Attachment Parenting and my belief that babies need to spend a lot of time prone on the floor, so I see no reason why someone who passionately believes an unspoiled child hungers and thirsts for knowledge should not find much of benefit in the Classical Education model. One of the secrets to success with unschooling is knowing how to discover, discern, and extract from many sources that which is good.
What is commonly called the Classical approach has fascinated and appealed to me ever since I read Dorothy Sayers’ The Lost Tools of Learning. Despite the best (unintentional) efforts of one of the most popular present-day advocates of this approach, and of a private school of my acquaintance that attempts to follow it, to make this form of education appear repulsive, if I were homeschooling now I would find a way to synthesize these ideas, to offer my children the benefits of both unschooling and the Trivium. Impossible? Go ask Alice.1
Two aspects of The Well-Trained Mind make it particularly valuable:
- The authors have compiled an absolutely fabulous collection of ideas, recommendations, and resources. The reading lists alone are probably worth the price of the book.
- The book articulates one of the foundation stones of my unschooling educational philosophy: Children can achieve far, far more than is commonly expected of them, if they are given the opportunity and the encouragement our educational system commonly denies them.
I do want to point out an area in which I find The Well-Trained Mind to be deficient: mathematics. We used the Saxon math books from Math 54 to Advanced Mathematics (neither the earlier books nor calculus was available back then), and our experience was quite different from what the authors describe.
They state that parents need to teach the mathematical concepts in the Saxon books, that it is not a self-teaching program. We found that to be dramatically untrue. I can't speak for anything before Math 54, but beginning with that book the Saxon texts contain everything needed. Our children simply sat down with the books, read the material, worked the problems, and went on. This was a delightful contrast to other math texts that had left us bewildered because they assumed a teacher had already explained the concepts.
A grievous omission from The Well-Trained Mind's carefully laid out mathematics curriculum is any recognition that some students will be able to cover the material more quickly, although they do provide a revised sequence for students who might need to take a slower approach. Our children would have hated these math books if we had followed the official Saxon plan, which requires students to work every single problem. This would have bored them so seriously they probably would have developed an aversion to math, instead of the love they now have. We found that doing one third to one half of the available problems (carefully chosen to avoid missing concepts) was the right pace, and they flew through the books with joy. Saxon proponents who fail to acknowledge such an option do a disservice to both the publisher and the students.
Children who follow the path described in The Well-Trained Mind will receive a liberal arts education exceeding that of most college graduates, yet their mathematical knowledge will be little better than that of a typical college-bound high school senior. Not only is mathematics critical to many fields, but the mental skills developed in more advanced (post-calculus) courses should be an important part of the rhetoric stage.
1 For those who are too young or too old to have experienced Jefferson Airplane, this is not a reference to my mother-in-law.
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Category Random Musings
Because of the vaccine shortage, we abstained from our annual flu shots last year. Perhaps that was a good thing, because it encouraged us to avoid public drinking fountains, to be more careful with handwashing, and to make use of pocket vials of hand sanitizer when out among the hand-shaking public. (This was recommended by a physician friend whose specialty is infectious diseases. The alcohol-based formula is effective on both bacteria and viruses and, because of the way it works, does not promote resistance as anti-bacterial soaps do.)
It was thrilling to have avoided the flu without the vaccine, but we decided not to translate that excitement into presumption, largely because we will be with people this season to whom we particularly do not want to pass the illness. So we paid a visit to the county health department.
We discovered the health department as a source of immunizations one year when we tried to go to our doctor and discovered his office was no longer giving flu shots that year. That turned out to be a blessing! We've gone back to the health department ever since. Which of these two scenarios would you choose? (1) Go to the doctor, hang around for half an hour or so in a waiting room full of sick people, and hand over a $20 copay; or (2) go to the health department, wait five minutes, and pay $18!There are many reasons people won't talk about the cracks in the bridge, one of which is that our lives are too frantic. A deadly waterfall may be waiting for us downstream, but it takes all our energy and effort just to keep our boats upright in the rapids right now. Another is a shutdown from overstimulation. All news stories, from the tragic to the trivial, are presented by hyperventilating news anchors desperate to keep us from changing channels. Everything is of critical importance; every event is a crisis. And when everything is special, nothing is.
I used to be more negative about how much worse the world is than it was, until I realized I was cutting the feet out from under our children. This is their world, and they aren't negative about it; they think it's full of opportunity and promise. Realizing how bad things have become is a privilege and a sign of age.
Actually, I see lots of reason to hope, if, and it is a big if, we can hang on to our freedoms. We must allow nonconformity, permit people to take risks, and encourage innovative thinking. I am greatly encouraged by people I've seen who have said, "STOP!" to the world as it is, families who sacrifice much to gain more. Two parent, single income families. People who ride bikes and take public transportation by choice. Homeschoolers. Large families with small, homestead farms. Women who have rediscovered the joys of non-institutionalized childbirth. Men who turn down promotions to preserve family time. Families who dare turn off the television and eat dinner together. I speak only from my own experience—you can think of many more examples.
Of course you may say that Peggy Noonan is speaking of a larger arena, of presidents and world events, of large-scale cultural problems. And there's every possibility that her concerns may be the tsunami that sweeps away the families and the farms. But I believe that if we are to survive this crazy trolley ride, it won't be governments, schools, or megachurches that hold back disaster, but individuals and families taking a stand.
I would restate Neil Postman's excellent advice from The Disappearance of Childhood, given in response to the question, "Is the individual powerless to resist what is happening?"
The answer to this, in my opinion, is "No." But, as with all resistance, there is a price to pay. Specifically, resistance entails conceiving of parenting as an act of rebellion against American culture. For example, for parents merely to remain married is itself an act of disobedience and an insult to the spirit of a throwaway culture in which continuity has little value. It is also at least ninety percent un-American to remain in close proximity to one's extended family so that children can experience, daily, the meaning of kinship and the value of deference and responsibility to elders. Similarly, to insist that one's children learn the discipline of delayed gratification, or modestly in their sexuality, or self-restraint in manners, language, and style is to place oneself in opposition to almost every social trend. Even further, to ensure that one's children work hard at becoming literate is extraordinarily time-consuming and even expensive. But most rebellious of all is the attempt to control the media's access to one's children. There are, in fact, two ways to do this. The first is to limit the amount of exposure children have to media. The second is to monitor carefully what they are exposed to, and to provide them with a continuously running critique of the themes and values of the media's content. Both are very difficult to do and require a level of attention that most parents are not prepared to give to child-rearing.
None the less, there are parents who are committed to doing all of these things, who are in effect defying the directives of their culture. Such parents are not only helping their children to have a childhood but are, at the same time, creating a sort of intellectual elite. Certainly in the short run the children who grow up in such homes will, as adults, be much favored by business, the professions, and the media themselves. What can we say of the long run? Only this: Those parents who resist the spirit of the age will contribute to what might be called the Monastery Effect, for they will help to keep alive a humane tradition.In addition to setting us up on the Lime Daley server, Jon upgraded our blog software version, so there are some changes. Probably the first thing you noticed is how much faster the pages load. Note also the nifty search box to the right, and the fact that posts can now be assigned more than one category. One downside of the fact that the new version uses caching: sometimes you will need to reload the page (reload, refresh, depending on what your browser calls it) to be sure you are seeing the most up to date posts.
The transition went amazingly smoothly, thanks to Jon's prompt and diligent efforts, but we're still working out some minor details as I get accustomed to the new system, so please let me know if you notice any problems.
So...Lift Up Your Hearts! is back in business—please feel free to post and comment once again.Mallard Fillmore hits the nail on the head again. One can as easily subsitute "president" for "congressperson."
I don’t have time to do justice to this wonderful book, only to say that every mother, grandmother, mother-to-be, and potential mother should read it—and that goes for fathers, too. When Eliot expresses her opinions on the data she presents, I don’t always agree, but as a collection of clear, readable reports on the latest research on brain development, this book is invaluable. I’d love to post large quantities of this amazing information, but will content myself with a few more or less random samples.
Elevated temperature is dangerous for developing babies; pregnant women should avoid electric blankets, heating pads, saunas, and hot tubs, should reduce high fevers, and—I wouldn’t have thought of this—should limit exercise to levels that don’t cause their bodies to overheat.
The birth process itself is amazingly good for babies. Some of the advantages require actual passage through the birth canal, but some come earlier in labor and thus it is recommended that even for planned Caesarian sections the mother be encouraged to undergo at least the early stages of labor. When compared with babies delivered by c-section, vaginally delivered babies take their first breaths sooner, experience a more rapid rise in blood oxygen levels after birth, are less likely to have respiratory problems, are better able to maintain their body temperatures, have larger reserves of glucose, and have better reflexes, muscle tone, and sensory responses.
Touch is enormously important to babies. Infant massage, long practiced in India, has been shown in several studies to promote physical, mental, and emotional health as well as brain development.
The dads are right. Dads fling their babies around in the most frightening manner while the babies crow with glee and the moms cringe. Of course proper precautions must be taken to protect the baby’s neck and brain—no one is advocating “shaken baby syndrome"!—but stimulation of the child’s vestibular system confers enormous developmental benefits. In one study, babies ranging in age from three to thirteen months sat in a researcher’s lap and were spun ten times in a swivel chair, each spin followed by an abrupt stop. The babies experienced spinning on both directions and in three different positions, to stimulate each of the ear’s three semicircular canals. After four sessions a week for four weeks, the results were clear. Compared with control groups (one with no treatment, another where the child sat in the researcher’s lap but did not spin), these babies showed clear advancement in both their reflexes and their motor skills (sitting, standing, crawling, walking). One set of three month old twins was split up in the study, and by the time they were four months old the one twin had control of his head and could sit independently, while the control twin was just beginning to hold his head up.
Babies are aware of odors in utero, are calmed by the smell of amniotic fluid, and prefer to nurse on a breast moistened with amniotic fluid.
Back in the days when women assisted in (or even soloed) their own deliveries, their hands were probably covered with amniotic fluid, which was then transferred to the breast as they attempted their first feedings.
Babies as young as six days can distinguish the smell of their own mother’s breast from that of another lactating woman, and even formula fed infants prefer the smell of an unfamiliar nursing mother to that of a non-nursing woman. Infants are also comforted by the scent of their own bodily secretions, which is why a well-chewed blanket or stuffed animal makes such a good “transitional object,” and why having them washed is so upsetting to the child.
It is interesting that children in non-Western cultures do not show as much attachment to these kinds of comfort objects as Western children, perhaps because the former continue to have a great deal of touch and olfactory contact with their parents. (They often keep nursing and sleeping with their parents well past infancy.)
Hearing, too, is acute in the womb. Newborns have been shown to recognize, and enjoy, sounds they heard before birth, from Dr. Seuss stories to concertos, and can distinguish not only familiar voices but also familiar languages.
The evidence for the superiority of breastfeeding is simply too overwhelming to summarize. For the baby’s physical, mental, emotional, intellectual, social, immunological, and every other kind of health, there is no arguing that breast milk—and the nursing process itself—is by far the best. One thing I hadn’t realized was the preponderance of evidence that breastfeeding makes babies smarter. Even after all efforts to correct for other variables, such as home environment and parental attitudes, there is compelling evidence that breastfed children are developmentally and cognitively superior. So that’s my problem….
Reading What’s Going On in There? will make you stand in awe of the tiny baby whose chief accomplishments you once thought were eating, screaming, and excreting.
