What are you unaware of?

Thanks for the opportunity to vent.  I've been waiting for the perfect time and perfect place in which to do so.

I believe that a great number of us have been following the saga of "Octomom" and her kids for the past several weeks, and we all have opinions about this situation.

Now, I'm going to give you my thoughts...

For starters...I'm unaware of any REAL reason why Nadya Suleman should be thought of as an unfit mother and have her kids taken from her and put into foster homes and/or adopted by others.

Some people like to paint her as somebody who planned this little scheme all along so that she would end up being famous and pampered.

From my observations, that is absolutely untrue!

Nadya was actually pretty conventional at first.

She went to college, found work, got married, and planned on having a large family in the conventional way.

However, she found out that what John Lennon said about life being what happens to you while you're busy making other plans as definitely applying to her life.

For one thing, Nadya found out that she was one of those women who had trouble taking a traditional-style pregnancy to term.  I know several people like this.  A lot of them lived back before the time of in vitro fertilization, so they just had to deal with it.  Some of them were able to adopt.  Others were, for one reason or another, unable to or didn't see it as the way to go for them.  Some would decide to take in dogs, cats, and other pets instead and/or doted over their nieces, nephews, and children of friends.

One beautiful woman who dealt with this was named Mary Streets.  She and her husband, George, wanted a family so badly.  She mostly had miscarriages, but she did give birth a couple of times.  However, the babies she bore were too premature to survive for very long.

Mary and George became second parents to neighborhood kids; doted on their nieces, nephews, and kids of friends; and...................................

Mary did something else very special.  She became an extra mother to college kids.

Once upon a time, University Of Indianapolis/UINDY was known by the name of Indiana Central College.  It's my Alma Mater, as I'm a proud member of the Class of 1976 after beginning my college education there in September of 1971.

1976 not only was the year when I graduated, but it was to have been the year when Mary retired.  She and George were planning on going on a Hawaiian vacation when she turned 65 that September 2, but this didn't happen.

Not even a month before school would be letting out and Mary would be given an honorary degree along with the rest of us graduates, God had other graduation plans for this wonderful saint..

Flags on campus flew at half-staff for Mary just to show how much she would be missed.

During my time in college--and since a year or two before when the new student center (Schwitzer Center) opened--Mary's job was to watch over the small canteen in the basement of the same.  That is, if you lost change in one of the vending machines, she would make a note of it for some records and would reimburse what you'd lost.  Mostly, though, Mary's day consisted of sitting at a table and providing a listening ear to the students who came in there for a light meal or snack.  Not only would she listen but, also, would give her thoughts.

Mary was comfort food to so many of us on campus!

Actually, that's what she did at one time--made and served up comfort food.

Before Schwitzer Center was built, each dorm had its own dining hall, but there was also a short-order restaurant in the basement of Esch Hall called The Campus Cupboard.

Commuter students and students not wanting to walk all the way back to their dorms to eat during the school day showed up with bells on at The Campus Cupboard.

Mary served them mouth-watering items such as burgers, chili, and I'm not sure what all, as I never got to experience this, but I assume things like onion rings, fries, breaded tenderloin sandwiches, etc.

She rented space there just as she would have anywhere else that a restaurant might go in, and students paid for the items just as they would when going to any other restaurant of this type.

However, various students recalled times when they were struggling financially, and how, if Mary knew it (and she made it her business to know things like this), food would be on the house.

Even though her actual work day involved more than it did in the canteen, she still had time to interact with students/faculty/staff/other employees of ICC who entered this warm, fuzzy spot on campus.

Schwitzer Center would have a state-of-the-art dining hall, and the powers that be wanted to make sure that students and others on campus took advantage of it, so the dining halls in each dorm became history, and Mary was told that she could no longer rent space out for a restaurant.

Other than the dining hall--although you were permitted to leave campus to eat somewhere if you wanted to or prepare something on your own in the kitchen of your dorm--food service on campus would be limited to the new dining hall and vending machines.

However, nobody wanted to say goodbye to Mary, so she was given a paid position overseeing the canteen in the basement of Schwitzer Center--and this canteen would be called The Campus Cupboard.

Mary loved kids of all ages from infants to college students.  If she and George had been born years later and would have had the option of in vitro fertilization, I have very little doubt that they would have taken advantage of it.

Of course, I'm glad that Mary wasn't born years later as she wouldn't have been that wonderful, warm, fuzzy person who was there at the right time for all of us college kids.

If memory serves me correctly, Mary was not only like Nadya in how pregnancy wasn't something she could be successful at the conventional way.  Mary was also like Nadya's kids because there were at least a dozen of them born to her mom and dad.

Mary turned out just fine, and I believe that Nadya's 14 will, too.

But, back to Nadya...

She found out that she couldn't have kids the conventional way--and something else was going on with her as well.  She and her husband were good friends, but she wasn't really in love with him.  She had just been in love with the idea of getting married and having kids.

Now, she realized that, as there was going to be nothing conventional about conception for her, she might as well be using donor sperm as well.

She and her husband separated, and, after they divorced, he moved on and, eventually, married somebody else.  He has nothing but good words to say about Nadya and wishes her well with her family.

Nadya had been working at a mental hospital.  One day, there was a riot in the ward where she worked, and she ended up with an injury while doing her part to try to settle everybody down.

She tried to work after that, but she was no longer physically-able to do the same kind of things that she did before, so she ended up getting a settlement for her injuries, using part of the settlement and a student loan to return to school to work towards a degree that would make her eligible to become a counseling psychologist.

Another part of the settlement would be used to pay for in vitro fertilization treatments.

In vitro fertilization, treatments produce several embryos.  The ones not being used at a given time would remain frozen.

The recipe for producing a baby in Nadya seemed to be the use of six embryos at a time, as not all embryos would stick and develop.

Her first four successful tries produced a baby apiece.  Her fifth try produced twins.

There were six more embryos left.

If Nadya had been able to get pregnant the conventional way, she would be showing up on pregnancy tests as pregnant even if her pregnancy had only advanced to the stage where there was an embryo in the womb instead of a fetus.

Therefore, she had qualms about those six embryos being destroyed without even a chance at life (which she assumed would be one more baby).  She could have donated them to others, but she had wanted all of her offspring under one roof and not one or two out there somewhere.

She decided that it was time to use the last collection of embryos that had been produced during her treatment.

Much to the shock of everybody, ALL of the embryos stuck--and one of them split (or so it was thought, though it turned out that two of them had split, and there were now eight babies growing inside of her).

That was different than one of six implanted embryos resulting in a single pregnancy while the rest just eventually made their way out of her.  This was a case of 7 (the number thought at the time) individuals who were starting to grow and develop inside of her, so she just didn't feel right about choosing which of them to abort and which of them to keep.

Yes, I'm sure that she was aware of certain benefits that seemed to go along with having large families--especially, several babies at once.  There would be TV shows, and there would be companies that would donate needed items such as diapers, baby food, and even scholarship/trust fund money.

That was just a given.

It's like what happened when three of her six older kids turned out to have special needs.  They collected disability benefits.

It's like if you or I got hit by a drunk driver and severely injured.  We would collect benefits and get disability.

How would you like to be in a house fire and have your skin burned off--and, then, because both government and private agencies helped to pay for your treatment and your future, you get accused of planning on getting burned in the house fire because you were crazy, spoiled, and wanted to be rich and famous?

Using the house fire analogy, let's take it a step further.  You might be put down for using a portable kerosene heater to try to keep warm when you were the proud human of a frisky cat and dog.  This would add more "evidence" to the theory that you had planned on going through all of this for the sake of money and celebrity.

Yes, with six embryos implanted, there was that chance of six babies (or more, if some split) being the result.

However, it hadn't happened any of the other times, so chances were slim to none that it was going to happen this time around.

It's like, on a cold night, your dog and cat want to stay warm, too, so they generally get under the covers with you.  Therefore, there would, seemingly, be no danger in the use of a portable kerosene heater.  You had no idea that this would be the night they'd get up, chase around the room, knock over the heater, and die in the fire while you ended up surviving but suffering severe burns.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans...John Lennon...

Nadia thought that she would end up with seven or eight kids total, and this would be it.  She would have given all of the embryos a chance, and she would have completed her family.

When she found out that her womb had turned into a full house, she still felt as if everything would turn out okay.  She would be getting the help she needed and would be returnng to college, finishing her degree, and, likely, opening up an office in her home for her counseling work.

But, suddenly, the dookie hit the fan bigtime!!!

When it was learned that she already had six at home, didn't have a husband, and had been unemployed for awhile she became the villain in this drama.

And this is about what I'd like to vent by pointing out some of the holes in the rants of people who are hating on her...

• Nobody is being forced to donate to Nadya and her family, and nobody is going to put you down if you don't choose to--so why are you so hostile towards people who choose to?  Why do companies and individuals who want to help get threatened with boycotts and bodily harm?  In other words, why are you so desperate for Nadya to fail at this that you want to block her from getting help?
• During the seven years before she became infamous as Octomom, Nadya was caring for her other six kids.  The ones who were in school were a joy for their teachers to have in class.  All six of them--including the ones with special needs--look bright, happy, and well-adjusted.  So, why are you calling Nadya "unfit" and demanding that her kids be removed from the home they share and put into foster care and/or adopted out?
• Why are you acting as if Nadya is being pampered Hollywood-style when it comes to her appearance?  She has full lips, and I don't believe that she's had any botox surgery to get them that way.  Some people just naturally have full lips.  Look at Mick Jagger in his younger years.  We had a teacher at our high school whose lips were so full that his nickname was Lips.  In photos and videos that I've seen of Nadya, I've seen anything but a glamour queen.  She's very pretty, but her outfits are very casual and her hair is "wash-and-wear."  She dresses quite a bit the way that I did when I was her age and younger and had the body for it, and I can tell you that I wouldn't have thought of spending a fortune on my clothes and that, for the most part, I did my own hair.  Furthermore, even if she did have botox done on her lips, why would that make her unfit to be a mother?

This is what I think...

We are living in tense times with the economy, war, criminal element on both sides of the south border, etc. and are experiencing fear.

Fear does strange things to people at times.

One thing that fear does is to make people react badly to those individuals seen as different--even if "different" doesn't include any behavior that might be seen as downright antisocial or threatening.

The shaky economy in Germany, for instance, made it easy for Hitler to convince the masses that there are just some people who are not fit to share air space with them.

During the Cold War, it was easier to label a different person as being mentally-ill than it was during the feel-good 1980s.

A lot has happened in the past decade or two that has resulted in an increase in bullying in schools and neighborhoods, gang warfare, surpremacist groups, road-rage, and other ills.

Among those other ills is included a form of entertainment that is based on pointing fingers instead of extending hands.  People go on talk shows and get booed at when they deserve to be listened to and helped instead.

Yet--Thank God!--this isn't the entire picture.  There are still so many out there who care and want to reach out to others.  They, too, share my disdain for the putting others down mindset, and this is one of the things that gives me hope that we can still return to a kinder, gentler time!