Web MD states,

If you become pregnant with an IUD in place, your doctor will recommend that the IUD be removed. This is because the IUD can cause miscarriage or preterm birth (the IUD will not cause birth defects). Taking out an IUD early in a pregnancy lowers risks of miscarriage or preterm birth. But IUD removal can also cause a miscarriage. As a pregnancy progresses, miscarriage risk is lower if an IUD is removed than if it is left in place. ¹

Here is a short documentary about the birth control pill and informed consent. For the full length documentary, visit 28daysonthepill.com

It all started out very “innocently” (or shall I say ignorantly?) When he was a baby I had read a lot about attachment parenting and natural parenting, and gotten quite a few ideas in my head that a baby was just an innocent human being, who with the right positive reinforcement would wind up as a gentle, loving, person. HA! What little did I know. In such denial I was. If only I could have had a glimpse into the life of my future “strong willed” child.

Though honestly, I don’t know very many children who are not strong willed. Do you? So, around the time my son began to walk (at 10 months), his will began to multiply and manipulate. My husband and I already had our work cut out for us in reversing the bad habits we had taught our little monster. We had to begin teaching him discipline at 1-1.5 year old that we should have been reinforcing from the beginning.

The Lord and his Word (and the help of several other mature Christians) has helped us along the way. In that short span of time we have learned as much about parenting as we have about our own attitudes. With the birth of our second son, we were determined to do things differently. I taught baby how to go to sleep on his own. I used the wake, nurse, play, sleep cycle (as opposed to wake, play, and nurse to sleep cycle I had gotten in with our first.) We just finished night weaning at 9 months, which I think could have been acheived sooner and was done easily when baby was moved in his big brother’s room. And finally to the title of this post, we began teaching him the word “No” at about 8-9 months of age.

I had heard many times with our first, that he was too young to know what “no” meant. But, I have in fact learned from my own experience that babies can learn the word at a young age if you teach them. They know far more than they can tell you! We began with telling him no when he squirmed and wiggled during diaper changes. At first, it seems like a game to them. In a few short times during the day we would practice obedience around 8 months of age. He would squirm, and I would tell him no and set him firmly and still where I wanted him. If he would squirm, I would tell him no again and set him back. If he still didn’t get it, a light tap (and I do mean light, it doesn’t take pain to train a baby) on the booty would get his attention. I would do this until he layed still. Some babies have quite the will and will still think this is a game. The goal is the obedience during each “session”, however much patience and time it takes. Never get angry or upset. This is a learning experience for them. Praise them when they obey. Sometimes they will obey and sometimes they will test you. YES, an 8-9 month old WILL test you! In our experience, our 10 month old knows clearly what “No” means and obeys. He gets praise for listening. It is such a joy to see obedience at this young age. It is so much easier and gentler when you start early. It takes much more time and effort (and frustration) to undo the will a child acquires when they are not trained young. It must be very confusing for them, also! They are able to do anything they want with no consequence for months or even years, and all of a sudden mom and dad (and everyone else) is telling them “NO!” and expecting them to obey. Why should they believe you?

I know this was a bit of a ramble. I had many thoughts pouring out of my head that I wanted to get down!

Comment below if you are a resident or plan to join.

“The greatest number of children produced by a mother in an independently attested case is 69 by the first wife of Fyodor Vassilet (1816-72) a peasant of the Moscow Jurisdiction, Russia, who in 27 confinements, gave birth to 16 pairs of twins, 7 sets of triplets and 4 sets of quadruplets. Most of the children attained their majority. Only two of the children born to Mme. Vassilet in the period 1725-1765 died in infancy. Mme. Vassilet became so renowned that she was presented at the court of Czar Alexander II”
“The Guinness Book of World Records”

What blessing from God! But what do other Christians think?

Read this blog post from MamaArcher to find out why our heritage and blessing from the Lord is being reduced to a hinderance in our society. How sad for the people who feel that way.

“At what number are children reduced to unwanted puppies to give away rather than being a heritage and blessing of the Lord?”

“Why do people think it acceptable to ridicule others for accepting those blessings?”

“Why are people so stuck on numbers rather than what scripture says about life?”

“Why are so many Christians at ease with dismissing what God places such a high value upon?”

In a recent and powerful editorial, columnist George Will quotes from the provocative 1983 report on public education, A Nation At Risk: “If an unfriendly power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war.” We are now 25 years after this National Commission’s report. How are we doing?

In one very real sense, the US has bought a lie: That education is the answer to all social problems. It is not! Public education cannot compensate for the disintegration of the family and its horrifying effect on children. Will writes: “No [educational] reform can enable schools to cope with the 36.9% of all children and 69.9% of black children today born out of wedlock, which means among many other things, a continually renewed cohort of unruly adolescent males.” Throwing money at schools will not solve that problem. In 1966 a controversial report was published that proved rather conclusively that “the qualities of the families from which children come to school matter much more than money as predictors of schools’ effectiveness. The crucial denominator of problems of race and class—fractured families—would have to be faced.” But the US government and the entire educational establishment have ignored that truth.

Will writes: “In 1976, for the first time in its 119-year history, the National Educational Association, the teachers union, endorsed a presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter, who repaid it by creating the Education Department, a monument to the premise that money and government programs matter most. At the NEA’s behest, the nation has expanded the number of teachers much faster than the number of students has grown. Hiring more, rather than more competent, teachers meant more dues-paying union members. For decades, schools have been treated as laboratories for various equity experiments. Fads incubated in educational schools gave us ‘open’ classrooms, teachers as ‘facilitators of learning’ rather than transmitters of knowledge, abandonment of a literary canon in the name of ‘multiculturalism,’ and so on, producing a majority of high school juniors who could not locate the Civil War in the proper half-century.”

The educational crisis in the US is a crisis in reasoning. For some reason, we believe that spending great amounts of money will produce better test scores and better citizens. What the US is ignoring is that education of children is the intersection of three of God’s choicest institutions—the family, the church and the state. We have bought the lie that the state can do it better, ignoring the family, which is now thoroughly dysfunctional, and the faith community. The ones who are suffering the most are of course the children! Our need is not necessarily for more money for education; it is for teachers who have deep-seated faith and who see children the way God sees them; and a state that sees the importance of the family and faith as necessary ingredients in raising children. Until and unless everyone has that perspective, our educational system is doomed to ultimate failure.

See Will’s essay in the Washington Post (24 April 2008). ]]> http://reformedchristianblogs.net/creativecounterpart/2008/05/03/the-crisis-in-public-education/feed 0 http://reformedchristianblogs.net/creativecounterpart/2008/04/25/food-prices http://reformedchristianblogs.net/creativecounterpart/2008/04/25/food-prices#comments Fri, 25 Apr 2008 20:40:01 +0000 http://creativecounterpart.wordpress.com/?p=136 “Load up the pantry” as advised by the Wall Street Journal (and Wendy Jeub)
Friday, April 25th, 2008

As Wendy and I prepare for another presentation of “Cheaper by the Baker’s Dozen,” we are tempted to rename the presentation “Hurry Up and Stock Up the Pantry.” News item after news item is validating what we have been saying ever since oil began its rapid increase of prices. Add the minimum wage increase, growing demand in Asia, and government environmental policies for biofuels, you’ve got a recipe for expensive food!

The Wall Street Journal came out with an incredibly persuasive article on stocking up the pantry. Columnist Brett Arends lists the reasons with logical analysis in his article “Load up the pantry“:

Food is a global economy, so economic food prices in Asia does effect us in America.
Inflation in 2007: Flour up 13%; dairy up 10%; eggs up 30%; poultry up 5.4%. Compare that to the average money market fund (2.5%).
Food companies are no longer absorbing costs for raw materials (e.g. wheat has tripled in three years).
There aren’t “starving children in China” anymore, as a rising middle class is demanding more food (same in India).
Now, I just want to note that I was NOT one of those alarmists freaking out about Y2K. Back then I thought the claims of food shortages and riots were greatly inflated. You remember, computers would all collapse and ships would stop shipping food and chaos would consume. I remember thinking, “If that happens, I’m going hunting,” and I let others stock up on food and candle wax.

Also note, however, that the Y2K fears were not based on economics: they were based on technological opinions that no one fully understood. As I claim in Cheaper by the Baker’s Dozen, “Economics is as sure as gravity.” You can always count on it to work out, for the better or for the worse.

What should you do? Our third Principle of Frugal Living listed in the presentation states, “Frugal living requires creative solutions to economic realities.” Notice we didn’t say “economic problems” or “catastrophes.” There is really no such thing. Economics is amoral and simply a “reality” that we must deal with. The ideas Wendy and I come up with are simply ways we have dealt with the reality for 17 years of our marriage raising 14 kids.

Wendy’s Love in the Kitchen cookbook has a section in it called “Stock your shelves.” No kidding: nearly the exact same title as today’s Wall Street Journal article. She explains how she frugally keeps a tight reign on our family budget and how you can too. It isn’t computer engineering; much of it is simply understanding the family economic unit. Really, the advice she gives is worth much more than the price of the cookbook.

Could you do us a favor? Cut-and-paste the content of this post and send it to your friends. We’re onto something here, and you can help. Spread the word, for I believe our cookbook and CD ROM are rightly timed to serve a growing need out there. Thanks!

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-C. Everett Koop, M.D., former U.S. Surgeon General