I was in my kitchen baking cupcakes yesterday when I heard the news about the octuplets at Kaiser Hospital in Bellflower. Eight? I stopped and set down my spatula and thought it through -- eighty fingers and toes!! WOW!
I knew we'd have a story to talk about for a few days, for sure! And as you can see if you followed that link above, our viewers have plenty to say about the wisdom of having eight babies at one time -- I won't get into that here. What boggles the mind is that all eight are healthy, and at this moment, less than 24 hours after their births, they are all breathing without help! I wanted to look up more information on other notable multiples, and found this slideshow on the Los Angeles Times website with pictures and summaries of other instant infant families and how they've fared over the years.
The ones we are hearing about today are the surviving seven of the only other octuplets born in the United States, known as the Houston Octuplets. But the ones I think of are the Dionne Quintuplets and the lessons learned from them. Five identical baby girls, which, as you read about them on various websites, were a "Depression Era Freak-show," taken from their familiy and made wards of the Canadian Government in a surreal tourist attraction called "Quintland." I can understand how the mother of this new, large brood that arrived in Bellflower yesterday wants to keep the details of their births and their family under wraps!
She has her work cut out for her. Which leads me into another item of interest I ran across this morning online; a story on Salon.com about how the newborn Obama administration could use a team of late-term pregnant women to whip things into shape at the nation's capital. The editorial (written by Heather Havrilesky, a woman in her 7th month of pregnancy, by the way) says, in part, "Rest assured, pregnant women aren't merely inspired to sift through stacks of baby blankets to sweetly prepare for a new family member's arrival. They're hormonally compelled to act swiftly and decisively on each and every agenda set before them, whether it involves building consensus among key policymakers, creating elaborate Excel charts, or pistol-whipping enemy combatants." Funny stuff, but maybe there are pearls of wisdom in there. One of the comments posted about the article online made me laugh: "I still remember trying to tell my loving wife in her third trimester (shudder) that it would be a good idea for her to avoid the taco she wanted and have something healthier. God: do not get between a third trimester woman and what she has decided she wants. That's all I'm saying."
I would love to post a picture of the new babies, or any babies, but they're not available to us as I write this. So I will post something else that made me laugh out loud when I saw it, and I have watched it about three times over the last day or so and it makes me smile. Who knew a dog could ride a bicycle? Trust me, it's worth watching ... and gets better at the end as we see him get on one paw at a time, and scoots his rear end into the seat.
I've also posted this on my Facebook page ... along with some other stuff, check it out!
