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Wanna buy a baby for a-thousand bucks? Three doctors and a nurse have been arrested for allegedly selling newborns after telling mothers their babies had died, at a private hospital in Mexico City, authorities said Wednesday. Police uncovered the scheme after one of the women learned her baby was alive and had been sold to another woman for 15,000 pesos, $1,130 in US dollars, said Luis Genaro, the capital's deputy attorney general. The woman gave birth to a girl in a working-class district in October 2008, Genaro said at a news conference. He said she told authorities she heard her...

Robert Gibbs told reporters that President Obama is not watching the results tonight. Politico reported: Hours after urging reporters not to draw sweeping conclusions from Tuesday’s gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told POLITICO President Barack Obama wasn’t even keeping an eye on the results. “He’s not watching returns,” Gibbs said.

Earth: An environmental writer mainstreams an idea floating around the green fringe — save the earth by population control and give carbon credits to one-child families. Are we threatened by the patter of little carbon footprints? New York Times environmental writer Andrew Revkin participated in an Oct. 14 panel discussion on climate change with other media pundits titled "Covering Climate: What's Population Got To Do With It?" People who need people they are not. In a recently rediscovered book, "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment," co-authored with Malthus fans Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Holdren wrote that families "contribute to general social deterioration...

When a sonogram showed that Stephanie Lewis, a writer and party planner living in San Diego, was expecting boy-girl twins, she was ecstatic. Lewis, already the mother of a two-year-old son, had always longed for a girl. “From an early age, I just remember wanting a daughter,” says Lewis, an effervescent brunette who recalls a Pleasantville childhood filled with mother-daughter fashion shows, ballet recitals, and tea parties. “Now, finally, I was getting her. I was just in heaven.” Not that the sonographer’s revelation had come as a shock. For this, her second pregnancy, the 28-year-old Lewis had done everything in...

Children born in the winter months already have a few strikes against them. Study after study has shown that they test poorly, don't get as far in school, earn less, are less healthy, and don't live as long as children born at other times of year. Researchers have spent years documenting the effect and trying to understand it. But economists Kasey Buckles and Daniel Hungerman at the University of Notre Dame may have uncovered an overlooked explanation for why season of birth matters. Their discovery challenges the validity of past research and highlights how seemingly safe assumptions economists make may...

WHEN the head of family planning in Shanghai said young couples should have more babies because the city was growing old, it sounded like a statement of the obvious. Yet within days there was a storm of comment on the internet and in state media as people asked whether this meant the government was preparing to relax its one-child policy. There are signs officials are rethinking the ban, which has prevented 400m births since 1979, because on present trends China’s population will begin to decline by the middle of the century. By then, India will have overtaken it as the...

SHE'S had six, possibly seven children, all to different fathers. Four were sent to live with their grandmother and at least one, police believe, has been murdered. Kate Elizabeth Hutchinson, 36, gave birth to her latest child in a Lismore psychiatric ward 10 days ago. The baby boy has since been removed from her care. Now, her estranged mother is begging authorities to stop her getting pregnant again. "Somebody, please, somebody has to do something to stop her from having any more babies,'' Helen Hutchinson said last week. "It's as much for her sake as it is for the children's....

New research shows babies have a handle on the meaning of different dog barks – despite little or no previous exposure to dogs. Infants just 6 months old can match the sounds of an angry snarl and a friendly yap to photos of dogs displaying threatening and welcoming body language. The new findings come on the heels of a study from the same Brigham Young University lab showing that infants can detect mood swings in Beethoven’s music. Though the mix of dogs and babies sounds silly, experiments of this kind help us understand how babies learn so rapidly. Long before...

Evian Roller Babies International Version

A WOMAN is soon to deliver a record-breaking 12 BABIES, it was claimed today. The teacher is expecting six boys and six girls, according to reports. She conceived the tots following fertility treatment, after suffering a number of miscarriages. British fertility experts confirmed the extraordinary pregnancy in Gafsa, Tunisia, was possible - but carried "colossal" risks. The mum - who has not yet been named - reportedly told doctors she was "feeling fine and looking forward to hugging her six boys and six girls".

Just when you thought you'd seen everything, a pair of scientists at Oregon State University has published a study arguing that any effort to limit carbon emissions must consider the impact of "reproductive choices" on the ecological equation. Paul A. Murtaugh and Michael G. Schlax make their case in "Reproduction and the Carbon Legacies of Individuals," published in the journal, Global Environmental Change. "While population growth is obviously a key component of projections of carbon emissions at a global level, there has been relatively little emphasis on the environmental consequences of the reproductive choices of an individual person," they argue....

NEW DELHI — Rights activists lashed out Friday at local officials who allowed hundreds of infants to be dropped from the roof of a mosque in western India in the belief that the fall — which ends when the babies are caught in a bedsheet — would ensure good health and prosperity for their families. The ritual at the Baba Umer Durga, a Muslim shrine, is believed to have been followed for nearly 700 years, and each year hundreds of people, both Hindus and Muslims, take part in the ritual. The infants, mostly under two years old, were dangled Thursday...

NICHOLASVILLE — A newborn baby that had just come home suffered cuts and puncture wounds Monday after a family dog snatched it from a crib and apparently took it into the woods, police said. Officials did not release the name of the infant or his parents, but they said the 3-day-old boy was in intensive care at University of Kentucky Hospital. The infant was snatched about 1 p.m. Monday on Beaumont Road north of Nicholasville, said Jessamine County Deputy Sheriff Anthony Purcell. The infant, who was taken home Sunday, was in a crib when a Native American Indian dog took...

HURLEY — The Cochran quadruplets have more than quadrupled in size. And they’re nearing their first birthday in a new house, where each eventually will have his and her own bedrooms. Mom Sandra and Dad Matt have been scrimping and saving since pregnancy to build the new home on a high school coach’s salary. They got it finished just in the nick of time, Sandra said, because the Cochran family, with a 4-year-old and four 10-month-olds, has outgrown the house trailer. The quads were born in August, and since they arrived home in the fall, they have slept in...

The prevailing view among parents, the general public and mental health professionals that infants as young as six months old "do not remember" traumatic events that happen to them or to their loved ones has recently been disproved, a professor of infant mental health said at a Jerusalem conference on Sunday.... [snip] ... Most professionals and parents have pooh-poohed this idea because infants and young toddlers do not have the verbal ability to describe the trauma, but it nevertheless is stored in their brains, she asserted....[snip]... People are wrong to assume that when traumatized infants grow up and don't speak...

WASHINGTON – Puzzling new research suggests women have a harder time than men looking at babies with facial birth defects. It's a surprise finding. Psychiatrists from the Harvard-affiliated McLean Hospital, who were studying perceptions of beauty, had expected women to spend more time than men cooing over pictures of extra-cute babies. Nope. Instead, the small study being published Wednesday raises more questions than it can answer. First the background: The McLean team already had studied men and women looking at photos of adults' faces on a computer screen. They rated facial beauty, and could do various keystrokes to watch the...

Last year, a young Chinese woman—let’s call her Dan Li—ran afoul of the Chinese government. She had become “illegally pregnant.” By the time the authorities found out, Dan Li was seven months along. Family planning officials tied her to a bed, induced labor, and, when the baby was born, killed the baby. What happened to Dan Li is an abomination—one, however, that tragically takes place regularly in China. But now, thanks to the U.S. Congress, you and I will be paying for it. Last March, without fanfare, Congress passed a bill providing $50 million for the United Nations Population Fund....

SAID AFTER HITLER: "When Hitler attacked the Jews I was not a Jew, therefore I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the Catholics, I was not a Catholic, and therefore, I was not concerned. And when Hitler attacked the unions and the industrialists, I was not a member of the unions and I was not concerned. Then Hitler attacked me and the Protestant church -- and there was nobody left to be concerned." (Pastor Martin Niemöller) WHAT WILL BE SAID AFTER OBAMA: "When the Liberals attacked the babies in the womb I was not a baby in the womb,...

WINFIELD, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- There are thousands of children in foster care waiting, hoping for a loving, forever family. While many of those children are perfectly normal, there are quite a few with physical and mental handicaps that often fall at the bottom of the list. But one local family wants to adopt, and they only want a child with special needs. Their reasoning dates back nearly 20 years. “Kids like that are special," said Carie Jarvis, who wants to adopt. "They're not wanted. No one wants those kinds of kids. And that's just what I'm drawn to.” Carie wants...

SPENCER, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- Roane General Hospital and Roane County Family Health Care will stop delivering babies this summer. The hospital will stop its in-patient obstetrical services July 31. According to a news release, the services are being discontinued because of several reasons, including low birth rate, an aging population, and the difficulty of recruiting specialty physicians to rural communities. “We’ve done everything we can do to preserve the program. It’s just not possible anymore,” Larry Dent, chief executive officer at Roane County Family Health Care said. Roane General and Family Health Care will continue to offer prenatal and postpartum...

"HAVING abstained from sex for four days, the young man walks in. Fifteen minutes later he is out, knowing that he may, in the near future, sire a child or two. What's more, he doesn't harbour any thoughts of ever learning the child's identity. A sleazy bordello? No, it's a sperm bank in Mumbai. And, constituting new breed of New Age donors are mostly medical students and young professionals between the age of 20 and 40. These are the 'genetically-sound' sperm donors of today who help an increasing number of Indian couples going in for artificial insemination. Shammi --- 25,...

A lot more parents are naming their kids after President Obama, but not enough for "Barack" to make the top 1,000 boys' names. But watch out this year. The Social Security Administration, which tracks the nation's most popular baby names, said today that "Barack" did set what is believed to be a record by skyrocketing more than 10,000 spots -- from number 12,535 in 2007 to 2,409 in 2008. It predicts that Barack will jump into the top 1,000 for 2009.

Born weighing 599 gm and 694 gm, the Mehra (name changed) twins were barely larger than a human hand at birth on January 21. They weighed less than one-fourth of the normal birth weight of 3 kgs because they arrived unexpectedly, three months earlier than when they were supposed to, on April 30. The babies were born after 25 weeks and four days of gestation. Full-term babies usually come after 38 to 40 weeks. The twins — the older boy weighing 599 gm and girl, 694 gm — have not only survived but have left for their Vasant Kunj home...

Susan Schmidt, director of Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline, said parents can "scapegoat" a child, wrongfully blaming one or two of them for the rest of the family's problems. Scapegoats are punished or neglected, while the others aren't harmed at all. "They're the bad kid," Schmidt said. "They're the reason everything is going wrong." Typically, however, neglect is unintentional, said Frederic G. Reamer, a professor at Rhode Island College's school of social work. Drug abuse and mental-health problems lie at the root of most cases. Poverty, unemployment and lack of support from friends and family can make it worse.

Legislative bodies in two states voted this month to define the beginning of human life – and human rights – at conception. On Feb. 17, North Dakota's House of Representatives voted 51-41 to approve a bill that declares "any organism with the genome of homo sapiens" – even one not yet born – is a person protected by rights under the state's constitution. Yesterday, the Montana Senate voted 26-24 to approve S.B. 406, a constitutional Personhood Amendment that states, "All persons are born free and have certain inalienable rights. ... Person means a human being at all stages of human...

Octomom Nadya Suleman is worried that the California hospital where she gave birth last month won't release her octuplets until she "has a better living arrangement," TV host "Dr. Phil" McGraw said. McGraw said Suleman, 33, called him in a frenzy on Tuesday, telling him she fears that the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center where she gave birth on Jan. 26 will not release her kids until she proves she can take care of them. "What she is telling me is that unless and until she has a better living arrangement, that they are not likely to release the children to...

INNOCENT-eyed Alfie Patten spent his first night acting as a 13-year-old dad and declared: “It was easier than I thought.”

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Babies who use many gestures to communicate when they are 14 months-old have much larger vocabularies when they start school than those who don't, U.S. researchers said on Thursday. They said babies with wealthier, better-educated parents tend to gesture more and this may help explain why some children from low-income families fare less well in school. "When children enter school, there is a large socioeconomic gap in their vocabularies," said the University of Chicago's Meredith Rowe, whose study appears in the journal Science. Gestures could help explain the difference, Rowe told the American Association for the Advancement...

I have a friend with a 2 week old newborn who's starting to loose it. Hubby is in Iraq and the baby is waking up every two hours all night long. I know there are strategies to help babies, even as little as this one, to start sleeping for 4 or 6 hours at night, but I don't know what they are. (I failed miserably at this with my own kids and my daughter woke up every two hours until she was 15 months old.) I remember FReepers giving good advice on this issue a few years ago and hope...

Every baby could have its genetic code mapped out at birth within 10 years, a process which will predict conditions such as diabetes and heart disease and help prevent them. Jay Flatley, head of leading genome company Illumina, predicted a revolution in healthcare after the complete DNA read-out for every newborn becomes a technical reality. He said only social and legal issues would delay the process. But with many people reluctant to have their genome read for fear it could be used against them by employers or insurance companies, the process is expected to raise difficult questions over privacy. The...

A California woman shocked doctors by giving birth on Monday to octuplets, believed to be only the second set of eight babies born in the United States. The six boys and two girls were doing well and were in stable condition in the neonatal intensive care unit, said Dr. Karen Maples at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in the Los Angeles suburb of Bellflower.

WASHINGTON - Many people like to stop and play with newborn babies, but now some adult women are playing house with fake babies. Some women are even going as far as taking day trips with the fake babies to the park, out to eat, and even hosting birthday parties for them. Forty-nine-year-old Linda is married with no children of her own. Now, she says she feels like a mother because she has Reborns -- dolls made to look and feel like the real thing. "It's not a crazy habit, like, you know, drinking, or some sort of, something that's...

Yahoo has done Andrew Sullivan proud with their headlines.....and doesn't this have a "deja vue" ring to it? And, didn't we just see this same media trick in September? Of course the article has to go on to mention that the babies Father-Levi Johnston mothers was recently arrested on Drug Charges. Johnston's mother, Sherry, was arrested on drug charges earlier this month after an undercover narcotics investigation.

Natural Childbirth Moms More Attuned to Babies' Cry Finding may help shed light on postpartum depression in those choosing Caesareans THURSDAY, Sept. 11 (HealthDay News) -- Mothers who delivered their babies vaginally appear to be much more sensitive to the cry of their own child within a few weeks of the birth compared with those who deliver by Caesarean section, a new study shows. The finding, published in The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, give researchers insight into why postpartum depression seems to be linked more often to Caesarean birth. The researchers based their findings on MRI scans that...

Liberals breathlessly criticized Sarah Palin because she had the audacity to be interviewed at a turkey farm while turkeys were being terminated. How on earth do liberals think that turkeys die on the way to the table? Natural causes? Hey it could be worse, at least they weren’t the victim of a Bartial Birth Abortion. Compare the Palin video (below) to demonstration videos of Partial Birth Abortion (also below)

Eight months later, in August, the heavily pregnant Rebekah began to notice that the military base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where her husband is based, and the neighbouring town of Fayetteville were overrun with new and expectant mothers. Nature had taken its course when the legendary 82nd Airborne Division began returning home from Iraq, along with special operations forces also based at Fort Bragg, and the result is a baby boom, which has left hospitals straining to cope not with combat casualties but bouncing newborn infants. Last weekend Rebekah Sandelin, 32, was one of 1,000 mothers from Fort Bragg...

Many were euphoric the night Barack Obama was elected US President. The day after, a few bloggers wrote about their greatest hope: that they would have an “Obama baby”. - Many claimed that they could have conceived a child on November 4 after a night of celebration. With exit polls showing that Obama had won over 66 per cent of people aged 18-29, the young were particularly ecstatic. As a result, there could be a boom in births on or around August 4, 2009 – which is the President’s 48th birthday. Indeed, it is possible that Obama himself was conceived...

<p>DALLAS — Darlie Routier, the suburban homemaker on death row following the fatal stabbings of her two young sons, will be allowed to have new forensic tests on evidence in the 12-year-old case.</p> <p>A federal judge in San Antonio granted testing a bloody sock with human hair that was found near the crime scene. The judge also gave permission to run four fingerprints through a national database and new analysis of a butcher knife presented at trial as the murder weapon and fibers from another knife. The decision signed Nov. 5 comes months after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals allowed for testing of some pubic and facial hairs.</p>

Decontee Williams was so excited by Barack Obama's victory on Tuesday night that she started jumping up and down — and went into labor. Twelve hours later, Barack Jeilah was born at Phoenix Baptist Hospital to Williams and Prince Jeilah. The baby was 8 pounds 9 ounces and had a full head of hair. "I love Barack Obama, and I love the name," said Williams, 31, who came to the United States as a refugee from Liberia in 2003. "In Africa, we call it a blessing. That is a good name." In the last week, Barack, Obama, Michelle, Malia and...

Recently, my wife and I took our 8-month-old daughter on a trip involving five plane flights in one week. Many people would be reluctant to travel with a baby that small, but we had a compelling reason: We have Fig Newtons for brains. An intelligent person, or even a reasonably bright fungus, would know that two people cannot possibly carry both a baby and all the supplies the baby needs, including stroller, car seat, clothes, diapers, industrial-sized bale of wipes, stuffed bear, stuffed tiger, stuffed frog, stuffed paramecium, etc. The total weight of all these supplies can be hundreds of...

The government is warning parents about Carter's Inc. baby garments with tag-less labels after about 400 babies who wore the clothing developed rashes on their backs. The warning applies to the fall 2007 line, which includes about 110 million garments, said Mary Drayna, a manager for the Atlanta company. The Consumer Product Safety Commission said Friday that children should stop using these garments if they develop a rash, but the agency did not announce a recall of the product line. Drayna said the affected clothing includes knit items such as body suits, shirts and pajamas. She said the items have...

In a historic change with political and cultural implications for the nation's largest minority group, a baby boom has helped Hispanics account for just over half of the overall population growth in the United States since 2000, according to a report released Thursday. Different from the past, the nation's Latino population growth in this decade has been more a product of birthrate than immigration, according to the report from the Pew Hispanic Center. Since 2000, the nation's Latino population has increased by 10.2 million - 6 million from births in the United States and 4.2 million from immigration. "What we...

My husband and I just found out we're going to be bringing 2 future Freepers into the world this spring!!! WHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

An eight-year-old dog has touched the hearts of Argentines by saving the life of an abandoned baby, placing him safely alongside her own new puppies. The country's media are calling him "the miracle baby". He was born prematurely to a 14-year-old girl in a shanty town outside the capital, Buenos Aires. She is said to have panicked and abandoned the boy in a field, surrounded by wooden boxes and rubbish. Then along came La China, the dog which somehow picked up the baby and carried him 50m to place him alongside her own puppies. The dog's owner heard the child...

New Focus on Children at AIDS Seminar By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN Published: August 6, 2008 MEXICO CITY — The global response to the AIDS epidemic has short-changed children, health workers at the International AIDS Conference said here on Wednesday. Although governments and donors provide large amounts of money for H.I.V. treatment in the developing world, too little of that money reaches children, said Linda Richter, a psychologist in South Africa who delivered the first plenary lecture on children in the history of the conference. She also said that despite increased efforts to reach pregnant women, too few of them were...

London: A British mom has managed to retain her size zero figure – despite giving birth to 13 kids, with the 14th on its way. The 37-year-old Joanne Watson, in her first trimester, loves being pregnant and always manages to get back her 7st 5lbs ideal weight after giving birth. "I''m lucky because I always sail through my pregnancies and have no symptoms whatsoever at the moment," Mirror quoted her as saying. Joanne, who is 5ft 2ins, said: "Some people say I'm mad. But we're as thrilled that we're expecting for the 14th time as we were the first time....

"Cities across America are applying to participate in the fall 2008 nationally coordinated 40 Days for Life campaign – a focused initiative that promises to be the largest and longest coordinated pro-life mobilization in history," said David Bereit, national campaign director of 40 Days for Life. "Abortion claims more than 1.2 million innocent lives in the United States each year," he added, "and in 2008, the stakes for our nation are higher than ever. People of faith and conscience are approaching this challenge with a heightened sense of urgency." 40 Days for Life is a community-based campaign that features 40...

There are four things in America for which there is little forgiveness. The first is killing your wife, as O.J. Simpson discovered. The second is allegations of child molestation, as Michael Jackson found. The third is being old, as John McCain is rapidly discovering. And the fourth is having too many children, as I have found. Looking down at primitives with "too many" children is one of the last acceptable prejudices in the West. With our ninth child expected imminently, God willing, I find myself pitied and pilloried wherever I go. "Wow, that's a lot of kids," is a refrain...

"One morning in 2006 Kimberly, then a 38-year-old New York therapist, was getting her three children ready for their day at preschool. She was cooking breakfast for her two daughters and one son when her husband, Ken, called out from another part of the house, telling her there was a morning show segment on that she should watch. Kimberly (who did not want her last name used) turned on the television in the kitchen. As the camera panned across a group of youngsters and infants visiting the show's studio with their mothers, she moved closer to the screen -- and...

Bo(woof) In Commentary: Cuteness comes in many forms, although I believe the cutest is of the canine form. So what makes you feel warm all over (besides me peeing on your leg)?....http://boknowsonline.com/2008/05/29/q-t-piis/