Octuplets

I’ve been fascinated by the woman who recently gave birth to octuplets. It turns out that she had six fertilized embryos implanted, two of which split into twins thus resulting in eight births.

She already had six kids, so now she’s got fourteen -- all under the age of seven. Oh, and she’s a single mother who lives with her parents because she’s been on disability for the past few years.

The door-slamming in that house is going to be mind-boggling.

I also must admit that I’ve Tivo’d 17 Kids and Counting. It’s the weekly series featuring the Duggar family who have 18 kids, ranging from 21 years of age to 2 months. The worst thing I can say about the Duggars is that they home-school their kids and insist on teaching them that the world is only four-thousand years old.

I like kids. I really do. And there’s a part of me that’s always wanted to have a kid of my own. I haven’t done so because:

1. One needs female this-and-thats in order to produce a kid.

2. The kid might mess with my Tivo.

But the main reason I don’t have a kid is because they’re expensive. I make a nice salary but - - - kids are expensive!

I can see it now:

Kid: "Daddy, I want a Wii-Pod for Christmas!"

Me: "People in hell want ice water."

Yes, the Duggar kids all seem to be well-provided for. The family is frugal, they buy second-hand clothes, and, admirably, they don’t buy anything on credit. Moreover, they've raised a bunch of kids who seem to have been instilled with an astounding amount of altruistic values at a very young age.

Such a selfless family value seems to be lacking an awful lot these days. There is a lot that I admire about the Duggars, and yet - - -

They have 16 kids under the age of 18.

What if they got divorced and mom got custody?

If child support is $600 per month per child, Daddy Duggar would have to come up with about ten thousand dollars per month in child support.

If they each got eight kids in the custody battle, each parent would have to pay five thousand dollars per month in child support.

Neither parent went to college and I seriously doubt that either of them would have the potential to earn enough to support a tenth of their brood.

Still, we should wish them only our best.

I shouldn't be judgmental toward parents. After all, I've never been a parent, so I should only be saying to myself . . . . . perhaps. . . hmmmm. . . . . .glass houses?

And, most of all, let's always keep in mind that the little ones of these families will probably be reading our blogs ten years from now.

Octuplets

A woman in California has given birth to a surviving set of octuplets yesterday – that’s eight babies – and they are doing remarkably well. They’re comprised of six boys and two girls.

If they all live (and let’s hope they do), this will be the first set of octuplets ever to have survived. Ten years ago, a woman in Houston gave birth to eight babies and seven of them survived.

I’ve always been somewhat fascinated by multiple births ever since I did a book report in the eighth grade on the Dionne quintuplets. They were the first set of quintuplets to have ever survived (born in 1934) and the only set of identical quints to have ever been born.

You have to admit, though, that the thought of raising eight babies is pretty mind-boggling. The first time I was ever confronted with one “muddy” diaper, I was pretty mind-boggled.

Let’s say, a newborn baby gets changed eight times a day – and I think I’m being conservative here. That’s 56 messy diapers a day. 1,440 diapers a month.

Can you imagine doing this before the days of disposable diapers?

The mother of these eight babies reported that she wants to breast feed them -- all well and good.

But as I recall, the moment babies get hungry, they shriek like an angy pterodactyl.

I’d be willing to bet that anywhere from three-to-eight babies are going to be hungry and shrieking at the same time, and not just patiently waiting for the next available breast.

Can you imagine what the terrible-two’s will be like? I remember my niece absolutely losing it because she wasn’t allowed to pull a feather out of a table arrangement. It’s what they do. Now multiply that by eight.

What about when they begin playing outside? Eight-year-olds are completely incapable of entering or exiting a room without slamming a door. And they’re constantly on the move, especially boys, because by golly, there are doors to be slammed.

What about when they all begin playing video games? It’s hard enough to get one of them to put down a video game and come to the dinner table.

I was baby-sitting an eight year old one time and he refused to put down a video game to come eat. He even swiped at me when I stood in front of the TV.

I calmly went to the fuse box and shut the power off, leaving him in the dark.

I thought that was a pretty clever parenting technique, but I was dealing with one kid. I cannot imagine eight.

I hope everything turns out okay for these little ones. I really do.

As far as the breast-feeding thing goes, I think the mom might want to consider one of those automatic milking machines that you see at a dairy farm.