Posted on 05/10/2005 1:27:46 PM PDT by Wolfie
Mother of sextuplets faces loss of Medicaid-funded nurse
WYOMISSING - A Berks County woman with year-old sextuplets and 4-year-old twins will appeal for continued nursing help from Medicaid beyond a one-year cutoff.
Kate Gosselin, whose husband has a 90-minute commute to a state job in Harrisburg, said she cannot safely manage eight small children.
The sextuplets - only the second set born in Pennsylvania and among fewer than 30 sets born worldwide - arrived 8 weeks premature but are thriving as they near their first birthday Tuesday.
"I will shout from the highest mountain that these are my children and I love them and I need help," Kate Gosselin said.
While the Gosselins appreciate the volunteers who streamed through their home in the early months, the children's routines improved with the arrival of Angie Krall, a licensed practical nurse who spends 30 hours a week with the family. Medicaid provides the temporary nursing support for premature babies, Gosselin said.
"She's fine-tuned and I trust her," Kate Gosselin said of the nurse, Angie Krall. "She's as good as a parent in this home."
The family cannot afford to pay Krall on their own, she said. Jonathan Gosselin, an information technology specialist who now works in the Gov.'s Office, was unemployed for much of last year.
Kate Gosselin said she feels society has a responsibility to help with the children, since modern medicine promotes the use of fertility drugs, which can lead to multiple births.
She has talked by telephone with Bobbi McCaughey, the Carlisle, Iowa, woman who delivered the world's only set of surviving septuplets in November 1997. McCaughey named the loss of privacy and the oversight of volunteers as among her biggest difficulties, Kate Gosselin said.
On the bright side, the Gosselin babies seem to have skirted the health problems that can plague premature babies and multiples. Each now weighs between 18 and 22 pounds.
"I look at six healthy babies and I feel a lot better, because it could be a lot, lot worse," Jonathan Gosselin said.
I think I'll should sue Compaq and Dell. My butt has gotten bigger since I bought my first puter
Grrrrr. Call someone who cares, lady. You chose to take fertility drugs, knowing they can cause multiple children. Your choice, not society's. To use a nice proverb, this is your dishwashing liquid, you soak in it.
No, what you need to do is cross your legs and learn to say no or use birth control. You breeding is not my responsibility to pay for. It is yours you dumb B****.
I'm for the government helping her. If the government is
going to spend a billion dollars to treat illegal aliens
then I'm for the government heping this mother with
nursing care for thirty hours per week.
America has spent unimaginable amounts of money to
help foreigners, to build derilct "projects" in
the inner cities, to wage wars, to pay for food
stamps, and to give free medical care to the "poor."
Helping this mother (a citizen) with child care
is the least the Feds could do. Maybe we could
make her pay it back when the kids are on their own?
Worse. Rather than adhere to most responsible protocols, she chose to have more than two embryos implanted at the same time. Tick, tick, tick - DING! Quadruplets on top of twins.
The only one responsible for her situation is her.
Of course, she consults the only other living moron permitted to procreate after Darwin gave explicit instructions that she NOT DO SO, nature having rendered her infertile. This genius implants more than SEVEN embryos in one cycle and has a litter. I wonder how many the quack, who should have his/her license to practice revoked, actually implanted. My guess is more than seven.
The mom has quite a sense of entitlement, deciding that since society came up with the drugs, and she could pay for them, she had a right to have children she didn't intend to care for herself.
I think she likes the LPN better than the volunteers--she can't order the volunteers around, or they'll quit, she has to be nice to them.
Since she's an RN, she may feel that an employee, the LPN, is easier to manage than a lot of friends and neighbors. She thinks she MUST have the help, and she'd rather have somebody subordinate to her.
I maintain that any really competent RN can manage to feed, clothe and do the laundry for 8 children, plus take care of herself and the house. After all, the children are all healthy, right? Okay, then. No IVs, no medicare record-keeping, no supervision, just Mom and the kids.
Do it, woman. Quit giving RNs a bad name. They're YOUR CHILDREN! You don't get a free maid.
I agree with you.
What do Catholics think about this?
I had 5 kids,my neighbor had 7,another neighbor had 9 and on the next street was a family with 10 and a family with 12.
Tough s*** Ms Gosselin-------no one in my neighborhood got a damn thing and I don't want to give you a damn thing.
I hope you don't get bashed for saying that! I firmly believe that there are REASONS why some people aren't able to have children, most of the time it's because they have larger hearts than most people and would be ABLE to give an adopted child a wonderful loving home...bash away, I can feel it comin'!!
Perfect answer.
Their formula comes from the WIC program;
If they feel that society doesn't owe them anything, why on earth are they taking welfare for this brood of kids they elected to have?
Did society force the drugs on her?
I'm glad she didn't abort the children but if she can't afford them, adoption is an option.
I agree.
I take it that you have been blessed with twins.
I wouldn't trade my twins for anything. They are a lot of fun now that they are old. However, they got sick at 6 weeks old and almost died. It wasn't a twin thing. They're identical and so they are both genetically inclined to have lung problems. They both got Respiratory Synctial Virus (RSV) and almost died. It was very hard to have 2 sick babies.
We were very lucky ours weren't preemies because they can have lots of problems.
There are just so many risks that it is not something that I would choose.
I wouldn't even mind another baby now, but I'm older and my risk for having twins is high now. I won't risk it.
Yes my B/G twins will be 17 in July and my oldest will be 19 in Sept. I had 3 in diapers & 3 on bottles,it was the hardest time in my life. MY hubby had to work 2 jobs just to keep us in formula! . It's not easy multiple births!
While I do empathize with her situation knowing what it's like to have to take care of that many chidlren at once with such similar needs, I think her attitude is a bit arrogant. She chose to use fertility drugs knowing full well that it could result in multiple births and should have been willing to accept the consequences of that choice. I might even go so far as to say that her community has a certain responsibility to help out, but to pay a trained professional becausde she has her "fine-tuned" sounds downright snobbish, as if she feels entitled to a paid nanny who happens to be a qualified LPN. Perhaps she'd like the taxpayer to provide her with a cook, a maid and a driver as well.
I believe it's her husband who works in the governor's office.
I can answer that for you. Subsidized adoption. Most children with special needs qualify for adoption subsidies. This is because they require highly specialized care and most people couldn't afford them without the subsidy and therefore these chilren would otherwise have virtually no chance of a loving home and family. And before you say that that's not our responsibility, keep in mind that we are paying for the upkeep of these chilren whether they are adopted, in foster care or institutionalized. Personally, I'd rather see the same money (actually, I don't believe it is as much) go to provide for their care in homes where they are loved and wanted and where they can maximize their potential than to have them warehoused indefinitely in an overburderned foster care system only to have them institutionalized when they age out.
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