Perspective

It's interesting how quickly perspective can change when there is a sudden change in measuring tools. Six-Pence was our baby for two years. Yesterday, he became HUGE! Suddenly his communication abilities seem greater than they used to be and he seems to understand a lot more. I don't think that anything really changed, except that now we have a helpless newborn. Here's a picture of Six-Pence the Gargantuan. Oddly, the Mugwump didn't suddenly grow, I think he is too distant from the baby.

So here's the baby in his little chair. Notice the strap that is supposed to hold the child in the chair on the bottom, errr left of the picture. The strap is as big as he is. I can't believe that Shackleton was a full pound bigger than Six-Pence at birth, and a pound and a half bigger than the Mugwump.

Another thing that has changed, is peoples' perspective on birth. It seems that it has become a procedure rather than something that just happens. With all of the "required" equipment for birth, it's amazing that anyone survived birth before all of these technological advances. Yet when you really look at it, everyone on this earth survived a birth. If we go back just a few generations, everyone on earth survived a birth that didn't involve tremendous medical intervention. Do hospitals provide a safety net for when something goes wrong during a birth? Of course they do, and I don't think that it's bad that more mothers and babies survive births, but C-section rates are getting out of hand and it just doesn't have to be as complicated as we make it.

Here's a picture of Shackleton laying on the floor in front of the heater. Look at that hair! He really likes being stretched out when he's awake.

Let's take the birth yesterday as an example. The baby presented itself really early in labor in the transverse position. Most doctors will perform a C-section at that point (or so said the midwife). She got everything straightened out and in the correct position simply by moving the baby through my wife's belly. It worked fine.

Later in labor the baby ended up breech, which is also typically a C-section in the hospital. It doesn't have to be, babies can come out that way as well. I need to take a moment for a side story.

About 6 weeks ago my wife had a different midwife. She just didn't feel comfortable with her. She didn't feel that the lady would do a bad job with the delivery, but it just didn't seem right. So she went looking for a new midwife. She found Valerie who happens to have a whole lot of experience in delivering breech babies. We didn't know that we needed that experience, but I really feel that my wife was inspired to find someone who could handle the problem we would face more than a month before we knew the problem would exist.

I don't have good sources for the information, but I have heard from a couple of sources that mistakes made in hospitals are one of the leading causes of death in the US. Additionally, hospitals house more germs than most places because sick people go there. Not just any sick people go to hospitals, REALLY sick people go to hospitals. You know the people with drug resistant strains of diseases that used to be easy to treat. I certainly don't think that medical technology is bad, but I think that our overuse of the system is creating bigger problems than we'll be able to solve in the future. Our perspective now is to treat everything to the best of our ability, but we are changing the nature of diseases faster than we can come up with solutions. If we step back and take a look, it may be wise to let our bodies develop resistance to some of these less severe diseases rather than trying to decrease our inconvenience through medical intervention.

OK, I also took a few more pictures. Now that you've endured (or skipped over) my soapbox, I will let you see some more pictures. That's Shackleton

Look, he's got hair.