Waving Hello from the Scary Valley on the Other Side of the Mountains of Parental Madness

Christ is risen!
Hristos voskrese!
Christos anesti!


Well, I'm back.

In an attenuated sort of way.

I have discovered that taking care of two children under the age of two is a daily journey into chaos. When little B. was born, I wondered at all the spare time I had when I had no children at all, and I wondered what on earth I did with my time before he came along. I see now that I had no idea, no conception at all.

I had so much free time when I had only one child. What on earth did I do with my time before my daughter was born?

- V.

I'm Taking a Break from this Blog

... for the best of reasons.

My daughter Clare was born today.


Glory be to God for all things.

Keep her and her mother in your prayers.

Your servant,

- V.

E. Comments on Breastfeeding Hero and Upcoming Birth

When I checked this morning's news headlines, I came across this. I don't know if it's just the pregnancy hormones, but I felt moved to tears. If I had to choose a hero from Hollywood right now, it would be Salma Hayek.

I also thought I'd ask our readers to remember me, Elizabeth, in your prayers. I am due to give birth any day now, though my official due date is not until March 4th (funny how babies seldom get that memo). I regret that I'm not quite able to post here as often as I'd like, but I'm sure many of you understand how the responsibilities of motherhood often do not mesh with my spending more than a few minutes at a time Online. Thank you in advance for any prayers you might offer on my behalf. We'll keep you posted concerning the details of our next baby's arrival.

On Holy Childbearing

A pregnancy lasts 40 weeks.

I was recently made aware of the resonance (?) between the 40 weeks of pregnancy, the 40 years the Israelites spent in the desert, the 40 days that the flood was upon the earth, and the 40 days of Lent.

Did God arrange pregnancy to resemble these other, or these other to resemble pregnancy?

But look at this:

• The flood was "40 days upon the earth" before those that were saved could walk the renewed earth.
• Israel suffered 40 years before crossing the Jordan into Canaan.
• A woman suffers 40 weeks before the breaking of waters and a child is birthed into new life.
• The Church suffers through the (nominal) 40 days of Lent before descending into the tomb with Christ and emerging into Paschal new life.
  

This connection between pregnancy and salvation (the world's, Israel's or ours) seems to be what St. Paul is driving at when he says a woman may be saved by childbearing. Not that all will - nor will all benefit from Lent. But for the one that correctly appropriates Lent, Lent is salvific. So too with regard to pregnancy and childbearing.

- V.

"What Ever Happened to Baby WI-38?"

The following is not my work. It is by a blogger who went by the tag of Scrivener. Sadly, Scrivener has left the blogosphere, and his blog is no more.

In the interests of preserving a post of seminal importance to the Orthodox (or other conservative Christian) parent, I have taken the liberty of reproducing this text in full. Should Scrivener object, he is welcome to let me know.

What Ever Happened to Baby WI-38?

My wife and I have opted our children out of certain portions of the recommended vaccination schedule. This has made for some difficult conversations in the doctor’s office, and will likely complicate matters when it comes time to send them to school. But we have our reasons.

Here’s one: several of the most popular vaccines contain human tissue cultures originally obtained from aborted babies.

Unless you’re in the habit of reading vaccine inserts and researching this kind of thing, this will be news to you. It sounds a little too gruesome to be true. You may be inclined to disbelieve me. I wanted to disbelieve it. But though it’s not an article of common knowledge (even among health professionals), it’s quite true, and it’s never been a secret. This is public information and easily verifiable.

In order to produce a live-virus vaccine, one must first cultivate the disease one hopes to immunize against. Some viruses are more easily propogated in a laboratory setting than others. Easier ones are often produced in a cellular culture derived from chicken egg whites. Other viruses more difficult to propogate are only reliably cultivated in actual human tissue cultures.

Vaccines developed by Merck and GlaxoSmithKline for Rubella, Hepatitis-A and Varicella (Chicken Pox) are developed in a culture of human diploid cells taken from the lungs of two babies aborted in the 1960s. In both cases, the abortions were legally performed (in Europe) and the babies were healthy.

One of these was Baby WI-38. What is commonly referred to as the “WI-38 cell culture” was derived from a female fetus aborted at 3 months gestation in 1961. Diploid cells harvested from her lungs have been cultured and reproduced in American laboratories for the past 35 years as a efficacious, human medium for cultivating the infectious agents needed in the manufacture of live-virus vaccines.

In the UK, the MRC-5 cell culture was developed along similar lines, from human diploid cells harvested from the lungs of a male fetus aborted in 1966, also at about three months of development.

As I’ve mentioned, this is public information, available to anyone who cares to know. Here, for instance, is the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control page discussing the issue. And here is another pro-vaccine resource that discusses it in greater depth. On the other side of the aisle, here is a page produced by an anti-abortion group providing information on the vaccination question. And here is a website produced by an anti-vaccination group that describes the questionable ingredients (including human diploid cells) contained in a whole host of common vaccines.

We navigate perilous intersections when our principles cross paths with concern for the health and safety of our children. I know what it’s like to fret over your child's well being. We all want our children to be protected. And certainly there are real health benefits to vaccination. I don’t pretend to judge parents who choose to use these vaccines in hopes of protecting their children from disease. But I wonder if there isn’t a price to pay.

Isn't it curious anti-abortion groups don’t make more noise over this issue? Is it ignorance? Hypocrisy? Resignation? Sure, WI-38 and MRC-5 were only two unborn babies (out of millions aborted every year), and they were not aborted explicitly for the purpose of creating cell lines for use in vaccines. But can we enjoy the “benefits” of abortion without weakening our condemnation of its legal practice? Abortion, in Christian circles, is often referred to as a “holocaust” on a par with the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis against the Jews of Europe. But would you feel comfortable condemning Hitler’s crimes against humanity while at the same time employing the body parts of the first few gas-chamber victims as talismans to ward off danger, no matter how effective?

This isn’t going to change unless we start making an issue of it. Drug companies and vaccine manufacturers will not spend money on research to find better ways of producing these vaccines until they decide it has become financially or politically expedient for them to do so. So research this for yourself. Talk to your doctors and pediatricians about it. Contact your elected representatives. Call or write the vaccine manufacturers to complain (contact information is found on the last link above).

The horrifying truth is that, in our desire to live healthier lives, tens of millions of Americans (and tens of millions of others worldwide) have been injected with leftover bits of medically murdered, unborn babies.

That’s what happened to Baby WI-38.

- V.

Beautiful

... one night last week I was reading on the futon mattress in the older girls' room, with my oldest next to me, who was holding hands with her sister in the crib next to her, which is how they go to sleep. I could hear the distinct sounds of breath from the older two, and feel the littlest one breathing on my chest, the eight lungs in the room remembering God's pneumatic gift to Adam.

From the Ochlophobist.

- E.

Small thought, big thought

My seat over here has been getting cool - nobody has been writing anything in quite some time. En lieu of keeping it warm, and for the purposes of making a happy announcement in what is generally a rather bleak and uncertain time, E. (my lovely wife) and I are expecting a child.

We do not know the sex, and are uncertain if we would be telling you if we did, but it is good news, happy news, and altogether better than hearing me discuss sub-prime markets or the fact that Americans have to choose between McCain and Obama.

The baby is due March 3rd.


In other news, yesterday marks the one-year anniversary of little b.'s coming home from his three-month sojourn in hospital. In many ways, this is more of a birthday for us than his delivery date.

And, of course, October 14th was the Feast of the Pokrov (Protection of the Veil). I can't remember if I mentioned this in an earlier post or not, but when E. went into labour a month early, we hadn't even had her hospital bag packed. We rushed around, grabbing necessaries, and in that time I grabbed up an icon of the Pokrov. The icon stayed with my wife through her labour and delivery, and when b. was born, the icon stayed with him in his crib until he came home, the day after the Feast of the Pokrov.

Our lady the Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary had her protecting veil about our son, and by her prayers and supplications we were gifted with the miracle of his coming home.

So I am thankful, very thankful. Words cannot suffice.

God is good.

- V.

Rejoice with us

Our son, the sick boy for whom so many prayed last summer, was baptized into the Holy Orthodox Church Saturday. Thus, during the feast of the Nativity, two days before we remembered Christ's circumcision, we took the child given us and brought him into the embrace of the Church to be spiritually circumcised. Having been duly chrismated and communed, our newly-illumined one has now come into the fullness of the Church.

Praise be to God! Slava Bohu!

Remember him, us, and his godparents in your prayers.

- V.

On Vaccination

Recently vaccination came up in our dialogue. Not surprising, this, as we are the proud parents of little B. It was bound to come up, either as simple acquiescence to the norm, or as a rebellion against that norm.

In the course of our dialogue, I with E. and we with various medical professionals, it became clear to us that we had doubts about vaccination. I believe I have expressed those doubts once before. However, it is not in the nature of the medical trade to heed vague doubts - they challenged us, and that rigorously.

Being somewhat thoughtful people, we realized that neither our nebulous fears nor their impassioned defense was sufficient to carry the day. Emotion is never a good basis for decision-making. I returned to the Internet and began to research vaccines assiduously.

My methodology was simple. I looked up the product monographs for various vaccines, and then I looked up each chemical and biological ingredient that went into the making of these vaccines. Some were clear toxins, and dangerous ones (formalin, for example). Others were simply disquieting ingredients (bovine serum is my favourite).

For some people, what I found is enough to warrant not vaccinating their children. For others, vaccinations are tried and true, and worries over toxins mere paranoia. The purpose of this post is not to debate toxins nor to address concerns over disorders such as autism. What I want to address is the creepy part, the sick-making part, that which is both Twilight Zone and the twisting corruption of Mordor.

In several vaccines the [attenuated] virus that is needed to trigger the body's immune system has been propagated in "human diploid cell lines." Further research indicates that the cell lines in question are "WI-38" and "MRC5." Are you baffled by this double-speak? I was. I looked further.

WI-38 and MRC5 refer to two aborted fetuses - babies - whose cells have been used since the 60's and the 70's, respectively, to propagate viruses for our antiviral vaccination programme. Central to this programme are the dTap and MMR vaccines, vaccines that save children from travesties such as polio and rubella... vaccines that make use of these "human diploid cell lines."

Let me make this clearer. With few exceptions, when we save our children from polio or rubella through vaccination, we are profiting from the death of two murdered children. What price health if it is purchased in the blood of innocents?

I still shake with the horror of that initial finding, just a couple months ago. I still boil with anger, with outrage. I still cross myself, crying for our Lord's mercy.

There are ethical alternatives out there, but they are not easily available to Canadians or Americans. However, if you want your child vaccinated, I cannot think how else as a Christian you can do so.

And if you are wondering what WI-38 and MRC5 mean, they are the final indignity heaped on a human person, the replacement of name for a code. Wistar Institute fetal sample no. 38 refers to an unnamed girl presumably aborted in 1961 (source 1 and 2). Medical Research Council strain no. 5 refers to an unnamed boy presumably aborted in 1966 (source 1 and 2). See also this source.

The marvel to me is that I have never heard this before. I have lived all my life in pro-life circles. My grandfather was the secretary of a prominent pro-life organization. And yet no one knows. Is it just that we don't care? Are we hypocritical, publicly decrying the holocaust of the millions of unborn while privately benefiting from the destruction of two of these unborn? Are we just ignorant? Lazy in our research? What is the matter?

The research is easily available. I'm not making this stuff up ... look it up for yourself. And yet no one knows. It was news to our hospital paediatrician, to the pharmacist she asked to persuade us, to our referring paediatrician. It was news to our priest.

I add my voice to the others that are speaking out, that the walls of silence can be breached and the pro-life community can act against this monstrosity.

- V.

[I discovered, while gathering my links to show sources, that Scrivener has addressed this issue already, and done so with considerable eloquence. His post is here.]

Reflections from Sunday

Last Sunday we took B. to Church for the first time. Very exciting.

Father talked about the woman with the issue of blood, and in the course of his homily he touched on how in the case of this woman it was not enough that she was healed, but that she confessed aloud that she had been healed.

Sometimes it is enough that God knows and we know what God has done through His mercy. But other times it seems He asks that we acknowledge, confess Him.

And so, inevitably, I got to thinking how we have brushed the hem of His garment and so experienced His power and His mercy. And how it just doesn't seem enough that we know and He know that He has been good to us.

Thanks be to God for what He has done. Slava Bohu.

...

And as I looked around me I saw so many wonderful people. Mr. and Mrs. P., who brought us some home cooked meals; G. G., who visited us and B. several times in the hospital; Mrs. K., who prayed for us constantly; Mrs. O., who gave us beautiful baby clothing for our boy ... I could on. But every face was the face of a friend. Every hand was the hand of Christ. And I realized that these people, this parish, have been Christ to us.

And I am overwhelmed.

How can you thank someone for being the hands, feet, lips, and heart of Christ? There aren't words.

- V.

Home at Last

Well, we are home.

After three interminable months, B. has been pronounced "cured" and we are home.

Praise God, we are home.


...

For those who wondered, I ran out of words, ran out of beauty, ran out of poetry. This happened roughly about the same time that our son had his third episode of NEC.

Sometimes all that one can do is wait in silence.

In any case, we are back.

Expect posts to follow, as parenting allows.

V.

Views from a Hospital

I haven't much to add, today.

But I have been reminded that people are looking for updates on our boy.

There is substantial confusion, it seems. There is no uniformity of opinion as to why B. has got this rare disease. NEC afflicts 3-5% of premature babies, and the majority of those are 28 weeks gestation or younger. B. may be premature, but he was born at 34 gestation. And he has got it not once but twice. The best guess that our doctors have is that our boy has a severe milk allergy - unfortunately, this is not easily testable or provable.

So we are in a holding pattern, waiting for the end of the antibiotics, rejoicing that he (and his X-rays) are looking better, waiting for the scary part: reintroducing food. We are praying that this time his bowels will be able to handle it, and that "NEC" will fade from our vocabulary.



On Fatherhood

Today I was asked, again, what it felt like to be a father. I fumbled through an adequate answer, as I have each time before. Wonderful. Amazing. Defining. As good as I imagined, and better.

Here is what I should have said:

My dear interlocutor, fatherhood is the best of me. When I am apart from my son, I am shallowed, hollowed, and incomplete. My son is the centre of my small universe, and in his cot is where my heart lies; my home is his hospital room.

Dear friend, in fatherhood my love is not weakened or divided but trebled and quadrupled, beyond the paltry limits of how I thought I could love. The wreck that these difficult times should have made me has been filled up to overflowing with the grace of God, making me better than I am. I am a father, but not fully a father yet, and God is making me the father I could never be.

But, O inquisitor, at the same time this fatherhood is analogous to a child's experience of a petting zoo. He meets, greets, and pets the zoo's puppy, and goes home. Then after begging his parents to return, he goes back to the zoo, where he spends the day with 'his' puppy under the watchful eye of the zoo's proprietor. His family are on the rides or eating cotton candy, but he lives for that small dog. Sometimes the people running the zoo are impatient with him because he is underfoot constantly - sometimes they grant him more liberties because they know how he handles the pup. But no matter how much he feels like he 'owns' the dog, that small child will never be the owner until his parents break down and pay the exorbitant amount for which the zoo asks.

And in my case, I am still waiting for my Father to break down and give me that for which I so ardently yearn.

- V.

August 11th Moments

It was a beautiful day today, and I had a chance to look out over a sunlit panorama of a sylvan city, seeing it from a new vantage point with fresh eyes.

Today I noticed that even the lunch ladies at this Children's Hospital are gentle. Nurses, doctors, and specialists all betray signs of humanity, and it is so refreshing. No one has told us to go home or opined that we could take 'a day off'. Our opinions and our observations are heard, and respected.

The halls are covered with beautiful artwork.

There is a children's library.

I was able to read Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin while rocking my son in a well-made glider, we two resting skin-to-skin.

While our boy is sick, looks sick, we feel confident everything possible is being done to heal our son as fast as possible.

... Moments of divine grace.

- V.

Theodicy

the·od·i·cy /θiˈɒdəsi/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciat [thee-od-uh-see]

–noun, plural -cies.

a vindication of the divine attributes, particularly holiness and justice, in establishing or allowing the existence of physical and moral evil.

[Origin: 1790–1800; THEO + Gk dík(é) justice + -y^, modeled on F théodicée, a coinage of Leibniz]
-------

I was told that theodicy dealt with the problem of evil: ie., why do bad things happen to good people?

Why do bad things happen to the innocent?

Murder, infanticide, abortion I can understand - God must allow the free will of the evil man as well as the good, and the will to choose both good and evil. But why does He allow His little ones to suffer pain where free will is not involved? What have they done? They can't understand it, rationalize it, numb it with drugs or dissociation ... why must they suffer the pain of illness?

And why must I hear the heart-cracking wails of my infant son? The nurses do not find his veins with just one try; an IV today took 50 minutes of trying, and crying.

B. starts crying now if his legs or arms are grabbed - he anticipates the needles and the blood-work that will come.

Update

We have been transferred to the local Children's Hospital, into the NICU there. B. is showing signs of a recurrence of NEC.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy.

- V.

Minor Malaise

Last night I dreamt that it was a little over a year from now... and E. was giving birth to twins.

I would leave B. in his cot on one floor of the hospital to provide labour support to E. on another.

---

Thinking about it in the daylight, I wondered at how deep into my unconscious has sunk my despair over B.'s interminable stay. For I despair of ever getting him home. I wonder if they will continue to experiment with his diet until he is old enough to eat steaks, and asks for them in polite Queen's English.

It isn't anything major that has precipitated this malaise... just mind-numbing fatigue coupled with a couple unpleasant facts: that B. appears to be rejecting his new formula, that his hemoglobin continues to drop with no transfusion scheduled, that he has lost 7 ounces in the past three days, and that he has been over three weeks in hospital with no end in sight.

I shouldn't complain. God has been so gracious to us. So merciful.

But I am griping. A little. We do want our boy home.

- V.

Update on the Boy

So, 'tis Friday.

First, B.'s X-ray showed nothing but what they expected to see ... gas, and no signs of the NEC. Second, the run of antibiotics finished today. Third, my boy started back on feedings (small amounts increased by even smaller increments), but on an "elemental predigested formula" as opposed to Similac, which the hospital here gives all preemies.

I've never been so delighted to see a child eat... and the suction power, the gusto!

It is a joy to have reached this point in B.'s hospital stay, and I thank God for His mercy.

- V.

Blessed One

B. has hijacked this blog. Rightly so, for there is nothing so important in our life than the health and welfare of our son.

I get overwhelmed sometimes by the support E & I are experiencing in these troubled times. And even more so when I think of all the people who have been praying for our boy.

Both E & I have gone through life with a certain feeling of disconnect from other people. We are not of the madding crowd, and sometimes that independence has left us lonelier than we might otherwise be. Suffice it to say, there is nothing that we have done to deserve this mass outpouring of love and prayer.

But our boy, our benedictus, is truly blessed ... daily lifted up to God by hundreds of voices, wafted to the throne room on the incense of prayer.

Thank you, my friends. For you are all my friends now. And my brothers and my sisters.

Update

I know that monks pray for the world without needing information on the world around them. The rest of us, however, like to know what's going on with the people and the situations for which we pray. Here's a quick update.

As of a couple days ago, the head paediatrician was not worried about the NEC. Apparently, X-rays show the bowels as being clear; a diagnosis of "cured" will wait until the 10-day run of antibiotics is completed this Friday, and one last X-ray is taken. That's the amazing, wonderful news, already announced in this space.

B. is gaining weight at a ferocious pace - 2 to 3 ounces a day. We are not sure whether to praise God, though, or to pray. It depends on whether the weight gain is a miraculous but legitimate weight gain or simple and undesirable fluid retention from his intravenous catheter line.

There are a couple other minor complications. 1. His hemoglobin is low, and will continue to "drift" as his iron intake is non-existent at this time. By the middle of next week we will know whether a transfusion is necessary. 2. The antibiotics he was/is on are known to cause permanent hearing loss. The dosage was low enough the doctors aren't worried, but a hearing test has been scheduled regardless. 3. There is the small matter of reintroducing food to his system. Because no-one knows why he got NEC in the first place, suspicions are rampant about unknown allergens irritating his bowels. Much caution will be employed in the reintroduction to food - we pray for wisdom and discernment.

- V.

Slava Bohu

So much has happened in so few hours.

Over the past couple days E and I have been assured by family, friends, and near strangers that they were/are praying for our little boy. We have been overwhelmed by the support and love from so many, and we found ourselves shored up when we were most fragile.

The 24th was the single most frightening day of my life, and I know that I shed more tears in those horrific hours of waking than I have in the ten years (or more) preceding it. B.'s condition was serious, very serious, and it was treated aggressively. And the medical staff pulled no punches - they let us know, up front, the risks before us.

That was then.

At this time we have seen a series of X-rays showing a disease in remission, in marked remission - the pediatrician was "surprised at the speed" with which things began to turn. We have seen the removal of an IV, a UV, and an OG tube (less tubes protruding from our boy). Finally, he told us this afternoon that he did not expect the disease to flare back up. All that remains to B.'s stay, apparently, are the bowel rest, the antibiotics, and the slow reintroduction to food. In short, the crisis has passed, and God's name is glorified. On our lips, in our hearts, and on the lips and hearts of our friends.

So now, with hope and at peace, we can rest, confident that the journey ahead of us, though long (2-4 weeks more in hospital), will be a relatively straightforward one.

We thank, from the bottom of our hearts, all those who have prayed.
We celebrate those Saints by whose intercessions we know B. is being healed: his patron Saint, John Maximovitch, Seraphim Sarovsky, and the Holy Theotokos.
And most of all, and before all, we praise and worship the gracious God who loves mankind, whose eye is on the sparrow, who gathers the lambs in His arms.

Slava Bohu!

-V.

Lord Have Mercy

Our little B. has taken a bit of a down turn in his health.

Yesterday at about three o'clock he was diagnosed with necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). Treatment will include complete bowel rest, 7-10 days of antibiotics, all nutrition provided intravenously for over 10 days, and considerable care given in reintroducing foods back into his system. Treatment may include surgery, an ostomy, etc., if he does not get better with the former. We should know within 48 hours in which direction the disease will turn.

I can't do much for my boy, except pray. And post this so that others may know, and pray also.

Lord have mercy upon our son.
St. B., patron of our baby, pray for him.
+

-V.

Surprise!

To my complete and lasting surprise, my son decided to grace us with his presence six weeks early.

Introducing B., born July 17th. May God grant him many years.

- V.