Print
E-mail
Tell us what you think!Send a letter to the editor about this or any other article in The Maine Campus.
Babies are born into the world every day – it’s a basic fact of life. Most of these little bundles of joy don’t make headlines, but lately, a few tots have been making some news.
A recent baby-related incident involves a woman, Patricia Pokriots, who claimed to be a good samaritan for rescuing a baby she had seen thrown from a car. Pokriots was heralded as a hero and the baby was declared a bona fide miracle. These decrees were retracted when it was learned that Pokriots had fabricated the story in order to relinquish custody of her own baby. This sick twist of fate is just one chapter in what is becoming a rapidly warped version of “A Baby Story.”
In Kentucky, a woman who is nine months pregnant wards off an attacker who is trying to steal her unborn baby. Sarah Brady is forced to kill her assailant, Katherine Smith, in self-defense, according to police reports. Smith reportedly told neighbors that she was pregnant. She may have been trying to steal the fetus as a result of her delusions. Her autopsy showed she was not pregnant, despite her claims and her fully furnished nursery.
Brady’s incident is eerily reminiscent of an event in December involving the killing of a pregnant woman, Bobbie Jo Stinnett, for her fetus. Her killer, Lisa Montgomery, assaulted Stinnett and was in the process of perfoming a crude Cesarean section, in order to remove the baby when she was apprehended.
The baby news doesn’t stop at the crime-and-punishment stage. Instead, it ranges to the absurd and outright bizarre aspects of this miracle of life.
Last month, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, a woman gave birth to a 16.7 pound baby boy. I will be the first to admit that I can’t understand or appreciate the logistics of childbirth. What I do know is that baby is friggin’ huge. It’s like two kids rolled into one, because the average baby weighs between six and eight pounds – give or take a couple ounces. The amazing part is that aside from a pre-existing diabetes problem, mother Francisca Ramos dos Santos and her son are doing well. It was the fifth childbirth for the 38-year-old dos Santos.
A Romanian woman also made headlines for giving birth about a month ago. 66- year-old Adriana Iliescu gave birth to her premature daughter, Eliza Maria. The infant was roughly half the weight of an average newborn according to physicians, but was breathing on her own in intensive care. Are you kidding me? A 66-year old woman giving birth? There are so many questions and jokes that can be made regarding this geriatric gestation. How the hell did Iliescu even get pregnant? And what’s she going to do when little Eliza starts growing and playing? There’s no way a 66-year-old woman can keep up with a toddler. In fact, a couple of twenty-something mothers I know can’t keep up with their growing tots, so imagine a woman three times their age chasing a brat around?
Not to mention the sheer logistics of aging. I’m certainly not a math major – in fact, I am a proud product of Pogozelski’s class – but I figure that by the time Eliza is six, the age when children start attending school, her mother will be 72. When Eliza learns to drive, goes through puberty and learns about the birds and bees, her mother will be well past the average life expectancy for American women, let alone those individuals in the less fortunate nation of Romania.
What does all this mean? Well, it’s a nice reminder to wrap it up when your getting some Valentine’s Day nookie. It’s a simple reminder that children, especially newborns, are a blessing, but also a delightful pain in the ass.
Mike Melochick is a senior journalism major and an amateur gynecologist.
Related Posts:- Child labor fuels hoop dreams (January 31, 2002)
- Labor of love (September 10, 2009)
- Op-ed: Philosophy – a labor of love (February 12, 2009)
- Op-Ed: May Day: Of loyalty and labor (April 27, 2009)
- UM students protest unfair labor (February 28, 2002)
