Posted on 05/05/2013 8:29:56 PM PDT by Morgana
A recent post on HuffPo has gone viral, being reposted mostly by people who cant believe what they just read. A man, if you can call him that, writing under the pen name Albert Garland wants you to know: My Wife Is Expecting Twins and I Am Not Happy About It.
This article is an excellent example of what we mean when we say first world problems. Even as it starts, I know I am about to read something steeped in a viewpoint warped and twisted by selfishness. It begins thusly:
Ive been doing some spying lately, casually asking friends and acquaintances about their experiences with having twins.
A buddy from college said of the first year: Think of the worst thing you can imagine. Thats what it was like.
Were two sentences in, and Im already gaping at my monitor. When I think of the worst thing I can imagine, my mind immediately leaps to children with leukemia, extreme poverty, famine, murdered children. That type of thing. What decidedly does not leap to mind is, Parenting two infants.
Im already thinking about my mother. She found herself, a divorced single mother of two with a GED and a job in food service, pregnant with twins at age 27. And then parenting us all alone. But Ill get to that.
Were just getting started with this mind-blowing article.
A former colleague was more blunt: Twins were always my worst nightmare.
And now its my and my wifes nightmare; were expecting twins this August.
Horror of horrors.
Not only did these disgusting people get pregnant on purpose, they did IVF on purpose. Thats right: they paid a doctor $10,000 to put those two embryos in this awful mans wife.
In the parsimonious manner of postmodern family planners, they decided to have one more child for their toddler son. A girl, of course, since they had a boy already. (What made them think they could select the gender? An inflated sense of the power of their own wishes, perhaps?) The old-fashioned way didnt work (theyre in their late 30s), and IUI (intra-uterine insemination) didnt work. So the next step was the $10,000-a-pop crap-shoot of IVF, in-vitro fertilization.
It worked. But, dadgum it, wouldnt you just know it, she came up pregnant with twins. Twin boys. Can you even imagine such suffering?
Here is the part of the article that makes you realize that if youre reading the thoughts of a normal man, we need to seriously reevaluate our definition of normal.
As horrible as this might sound, we found ourselves wishing these twins away.
We considered a reduction for about 30 seconds. (Thats essentially an abortion of one twin, not both.) If you thought that IVF involved playing God, a reduction felt beyond brazen Machiavellian, even. Give us a reason, we thought, as we had the twins tested for genetic anomalies. None came.
I have no comment. Theres nothing I can say.
The loving father goes on to talk about how horrible his son made his life.
When our first son was born, I was naïve. I remember thinking it was going to be nice to be home for a while and have some time off. I couldnt have been more wrong. Those first six weeks were brutal. Then the colic arrived. Two months later, we were shattered, frazzled, damaged. Three years later, we still struggle mightily with a boy whos fiercely strong-willed and seems to inherently know that crying pushes our buttons.
Does anybody else want to put this guy through, I dont know, Army Basic Training or something? Yes, I have no doubt parenting a baby with colic is hard. But damaged? Seriously? And three years later you struggle with your three-year-old son? Maybe its because youre terrible parents. Just a thought.
So tell me how this isnt going to suck. (Did I mention we live in a one-bedroom apartment?) Sure, in 10 years I could have close to a starting five of super-athletic, NBA-hopeful alpha males living under my roof smelling up the joint. But right now its hard for us to see twins as good news.
First: maybe you should live somewhere where you can afford more than one bedroom. Second: way to embrace the eugenics mentality of only valuing the lives of your children if and when theyre useful to you. If none of them become NBA-hopefuls, will you still love them?
In fact, he doesnt mention once in this article that he loves any of his children.
This is how it ends:
With four months left to go, Im not sure what stage were in at the moment but its not acceptance. My wife and I even both privately admitted that we dont like the new children, which is of course insane
They say the most important thing is the kids health but what about ours?
What about yours? Who cares? With all the time and energy you spend thinking about yourself, you dont need any help from the rest of us.
I have a dual viewpoint of this article. Im not only, as they say, struggling with infertility, but I was nearly nine years old when my mother became unexpectedly pregnant with twins. Her boyfriend, their biological father, found out she was pregnant and took off, forever.
I remember a magnet on our refrigerator when I was growing up. It said: A baby is Gods opinion that the world should go on. It stayed there for years. Later, Mom told me she put it there for a reason, to remind herself when it was hard.
And of course it was hard. They didnt sleep. Ever. For the first ten months, my mother slept in two-hour spurts. Now in her early 50s, she goes to bed at nine oclock every night, and jokes that shes still catching up.
She struggled. We all did. But my mother, who most certainly did not pay $10,000 for those twins, who was shocked and scared by her unplanned pregnancy, nevertheless handled single motherhood of two children plus twins with grace, fortitude, and love some words Albert Garland might consider looking up.
Around the world, people much poorer than the Garlands view large families in the Biblical way: as a blessing. Right now, somewhere, in a country where a one-bedroom American apartment would look like a palace, a man is wearing rags and watching with pride as his babies play on the floor of a shack.
Albert Garland is a wake up call. His revolting words hold up a mirror to a culture that has become selfish, soft, and sad. We have forgotten what real suffering is, because we tend to not experience it. We have become so privileged we can no longer tell the difference between joy and pain.
Ill be praying for all the Garlands especially their children.
Adopting a girl must’ve been beyond their problem-solving capabilities.
They did not get pregnant. Only a woman has a womb and carries a baby.
I have twins with ADHD, how’s that for stress? But if I were blessed with more twins, I’d be overjoyed!!!! Children are a blessing from God. I really wish I could have more.
I am speechless
This is indeed shocking (and you know, not much shocks me anymore). My husband and I are the GRATEFUL parents of fraternal twin boys. We both had fertility problems so we used IVF. We were advised that it was really a long shot for us, with maybe a 15% chance of getting one baby. We got TWO and we feel like the luckiest people God ever put on this Earth.
I will admit that twins aren’t a walk in the park. Our boys are “high energy” (that’s “CRAZY” in non-doctor-speak) but I feel like my life began the day they were born. We didn’t have any relatives to help us, so their infancy was really difficult for us. We live in a small house with one bathroom and don’t go on fancy vacations and all the rest ... but what kind of monster uses IVF and multiple embryos, knowing the possible outcome, and isn’t delirious to get a two-fer? Those people don’t deserve what they have. They should probably put those kids up for adoption. I’m sure they’d get more loving parents that way.
“Not so great for the parents pocketbook...”
It was probably partly for that reason that I fainted as they were running the ultrasound on my wife’s tummy and the technician awkwardly asked “Um. Um. Did your doctor think, um, that you, um, might be having, um, twins? ‘Cuz you are.”
They were born very early and stayed in the hospital for 7 weeks. But healthy. And while the first two years were a struggle - 15.5 years later they (girls) have been a real blessing.
Astounding... Every time I see twins I smile, and I can tell that — especially in the case of the young ones — the mommies and daddies are just as pleased as punch and as proud as can be.
Pity the poor kids with worthless cretins like this for parents.
Boy did we sweat it out when my wife was pregnant.
This guy is an ignorant fool. Didn't he listen to his doctor?
Why would a woman procreate with such weak men....I actually had this conversation with two 20 something very pretty women yesterday who said there are few educated alpha men in Nashville....no doubt...not under 40
My children and their momma are my reason for breathing
I have always been big on making and raising babies
it was never anything but a given for me...natural
wifey as well
good thing we didn’t meet when she was 20 and I was 28...whew
i’d be even more broke from college costs
I have no idea what you are referring to.
ping.
Some people don’t deserve children.
I know couples who would give their right arm to have ONE of those babies that *thing* is whining about.
I pity those children,being born into such a family.
The writer of the article says at one point (about the couple)
they got pregnant.
Yep and I’m one of them. We have battled infertility for years and can’t have children of our own. He can just give me one or both of the kids, MrR and I would me more than happy to take them
I wanted twins as well. Didn't get any, but I always thought it would have been great.
This man is still a little boy.
He doesn’t want to move on to the next level.
He’s angry that his children’s needs force him to stop doing whatever he pleases 24/7 and do for them instead.
You can imagine the rest of the words I would use to describe him seeing as how my wife and I will never conceive.
Me to!
this dude is like my ex, I was thrilled with the children, he regarded them as an interference
Men who aren’t men aren’t men because they are selfish narcissists, not because of the feminists.
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