mynextmistake

Oh I know. I wasn’t criticizing Jinger, just noticing the difference. My skin was beautiful when I was pregnant with my daughter — the severe anemia that led to many afternoons in a chair hooked to an IV drip totally removed the ruddiness from my complexion. All in all, though, I think I would have preferred the acne.?

Okay. Clearly people’s experiences differ. Not that i’m complaining; I think anything that increases the likelihood that Derick will get a vasectomy is fabulous. I don’t know what he meant by “we didn’t have a choice.” If he didn’t want to be on TV he didn’t have to sign up to be on TV. I’m sure his Walmart salary would have supported a family, especially in semi-rural Arkansas where the cost of living is low. If not, Jill could have gone to work, either as an actually licensed midwife or as a cashier or waitress or something to supplement their income. Even if the cost of turning down TLC was the loss of JimBob’s support, they would have gotten by. I suspect what he means is “we signed up thinking I could control the narrative, but it turns out we had no say in what was aired and we still had to allow filming because we’d signed a contract. Now I am desperate not to look as stupid as I am so I am pretending to be a martyr to evil liberal television.”

Huh. My cousin couldn’t find a urologist willing to do a vasectomy on him even though he was 34 and already had 4 kids. I guess it varies.

Far be it for me to defend Derick and Jill, but were they really tangentially involved in a murder? They knew a guy, he got murdered, that doesn’t mean they were involved.

Wow. And to think that we wasted all those months physically interacting with our child instead of just passing objects through her cell door. I pray for a lot of things for my child... happiness, health, bravery. I’ve never prayed for her to be glad she’s a girl. How bizarre. Being a parent should mean that you want your child to have a joyful, fulfilled life. If my child decides down the road that she identifies as male then I will pray he is a happy, healthy, brave boy. It must be so hard to have parents like Derek and Jill whose love is so clearly conditional. Poor kids.

What a terribly unbalanced diet these people have. Carrots, onions, and rice/potatoes cooked with a ton of oil and soy sauce? Why not add some chicken, shrimp or tofu and maybe a green vegetable or two to that and have a real dinner? They can obviously afford protein, we’ve seen them cook steak often enough. And why can’t any of the Duggars eat plain vegetables? They always cover everything in some kind of sauce that has a ton of sodium. They are the type that assume they are healthy because they are thin and don’t pay any attention to whether their diet contains proper nutrients. Derick is just a sad little man. Get off Twitter and get a job.

I’ve heard it’s really difficult to find a doctor who would do a vasectomy on a man Derick’s age. If he could find one, I agree it would be a viable option. I really don’t think he enjoys fatherhood. He strikes me as someone who never wanted kids but felt like he had to have some because it’s what was expected of him. The problem is that those people inevitably make shitty parents. I’m not sure that Jill is able to make friends. She seems like the most emotionally stunted of the adult kids, and even the relatively social ones don’t seem to have wide circles of friends. Relatives and inlaws galore, but no real friends. I think Jana and Laura DeMaisie might be the only real friendship i’ve seen among the Duggar crowd, and that is so unusual that some people have started speculating that Jana is gay and they’re a couple. I think it’s really telling that of all the adult Duggars, only Jinger has been able to successfully move away from home. I just don’t see Jill being able to manage it.

Jinger’s skin looks terrible in that photo, almost as bad as it was in the TTH. Could be pregnancy hormones, I guess? That book sounds like something a teen/college women’s ministry group would read together. As the pastor’s wife at a small church Jinger would be expected to participate in (if not lead) that kind of group so I don’t think it’s weird she posted about it on Instagram.

What’s he going to do, though? Drag Jill to an OB and demand she have an iud inserted against her will? Shove the pill down her throat every morning? Jill was brought up to believe that the only thing that can make a woman special and valued is having as many children as possible, and I think she’s dumb enough to believe that babies can save a failing marriage. She’s not going to agree to birth control just because her “headship” demands it. He could use condoms or have a vasectomy, but I think those are his only options. He could probably insist on moving away, but last time he did that it ended quite badly. Jill becomes a wreck if she can’t see her family every day or have Jana available to watch her kids on a moments’ notice. And the more of a wreck Jill becomes, the more Derick suffers. I think if he didn’t have this missionary ambition, he would just divorce Jill and become an every-other-weekend kind of dad. He can’t do that though because an indifferent divorced dad isn’t getting a job with cross church or any other church.

So his alleged reason for being hateful is that the Bible tells him to, but when the Bible tells him to do something he doesn’t want to do he just ignores that part. Huh. Interesting. Derick’s not a happy guy. That’s been clear for a long time. He resents the hell out of Jill for being herself. My dad used to say smart people realize they’re marrying a finished product and stupid people think they’re marrying raw materials. In this case I think Derick married Jill thinking he could change her into someone else, the perfect missionary wife who was willing to constantly try new things and to take birth control so they didn’t have 15 kids. The warning signs were there from the beginning — it’s not like she drastically changed her personality after they got married — but he ignored them. Now he’s stuck in backwoods Arkansas with two kids (and probably a third on the way soon, if it isn’t already) and the most fulfilling thing he can find to do is poke strangers on Twitter. That’s just sad.

You weren’t DATING, Derick. Dating is for sinners like homosexuals and women who wear shorts. You were COURTING. Duh.

I have a ton of sympathy for this baby and none at all for this mother. Maybe that makes me a bad person, I don’t know. But unless Venessa and the apprentices were holding her captive, she could have called for an ambulance anytime. As a mother, it is your responsibility to make sure your children are looked after. This mother made a ton of choices along the way that ended up disabling her child, from not getting routine prenatal care (if she had, she would have known she was strep-b positive and would have received antibiotics during labor) to choosing to do a homebirth with poorly-trained lay midwives to following their suggestion to keep the baby at home even after it started showing signs of respiratory distress. If that were my kid, I would have been on the phone with 911 in a hot minute. But that would never have been my kid, because I cared enough about her safety to get prenatal care and have a doctor present when I gave birth. This woman and her fellow fundies disgust me. Fetuses are sacred, but babies are disposable. Terrible priorities for terrible people.

“First you fill a cup (I use Solo brand plastic) with some water. I don’t bother to measure it but if the cup starts overflowing you’ve put in too much and need to start over. When you’ve got the water right, add some ice and vah-lah, ice water! Don’t forget that this is vegetarian ice water so you need to make sure to cook your meat before you add it to the cup!” Accompanied by the world’s only trademarked picture of ice water, of course.

Isn’t there also a possibility that the pool of women who get to age 40 without having been pregnant is selecting for women with fertility problems?

No way. Walmart is too expensive. She either got that outfit at Goodwill or she made Jana stitch it together from the tattered remnants of the eleven million denim skirts that have been worn by at least 5 of the Duggar girls.

I am in the United States (in a very red state actually) and I don’t think anyone has tried to shut us down. It’s really a very interesting job, and I like it a lot. However, it is definitely not for everybody. If you are at all shy about examining or touching other people‘s private areas, like I imagine Jill is, you’d definitely want to pick a different specialty.

I work in a reproductive health clinic. I’m not sure there is an adjective to describe how Jill would feel if she worked my job on an average day.

Yep. It’s impossible to get through nursing school, much less a nursing career, without seeing quite a bit of penis. There’s no way JB would let any of his girls into such a hotbed of iniquity.

It once took us 35 minutes to go around the block. I’m not exaggerating. Toddlers are sloooooow.

I have a 2.66-year-old and this is what an hour walk for chick-fil-A would be like: Minute 1 — walk. Minutes 2–5 — stop because child is thirsty. Give her water. Minutes 6-7 — walk. Minute 8 — stop because child wants water. Remind her she just had water. Tell her if you give her more water you will run out sooner. Minutes 9-12 — listen to child scream because suddenly water is the most important thing on earth. Minute 13 — give in and offer child water. Watch as child drops the cup and tells you she’s not thirsty. Minutes 14-20 — walk while singing 32 verses of The Eensy Weensy Spider to keep child entertained. Minutes 21 - 25 — stop while child attempts to tie her shoes even though she’s wearing Velcro sandals. Minute 26 — tell child that for the love of God it is impossible to tie Velcro. Minute 27-35 — watch as child throws herself down on the ground and screams that she hates you and everything you stand for. Minute 36 — continue to watch child scream as you seriously reevaluate your life choices. Minute 37 — tell child that if she wants Chick-Fil-A she has to keep walking. Minutes 37-47 — repeat Minutes 27 - 35, with added screaming about how child HATES CHICKEN, even though she’s demanded it for dinner for seven days in a row. Minutes 48-60 — realize that you are only 100 yards from your hotel. Trudge back while dragging child by the hand and wondering if serving her vending-machine Cheetos instead of chicken for lunch makes you a bad mom.

I can’t bring myself to hate on these two. They both seem like genuinely sweet kids and I think they’re really in love.

Fair point. I am going on what we’ve seen, which is what appears to be a healthy, normally-developing infant. It’s possible he has health problems that are hidden. I guess I would have expected to have seen a prayer request or two if that were the case, but maybe not.

1) Well, of course it is. This board is pretty much *all* speculation, based on a heavily edited TV show and a series of puff pieces in celebrity magazines. In my case, it’s informed speculation about what is likely to have happened after a woman a) attempts a VBAC at home with only illegal lay attendants present, b) presents at the hospital after 40 hours of said attempt, c) has a C-section and d) delivers a full-term infant who then spends 2 weeks in the NICU but shows no ongoing signs of any congenital or systemic health problems that might have already been present in utero. Is it possible that Sammy was peachy-keen, that Jill’s appearance at the hospital and C-section were due to her own fatigue, and that complications completely unrelated to the botched homebirth then put Sam in the NICU for 2 weeks without leaving any long-term manifestations? Sure. Is it likely? No. Occam’s razor and all that. Even if I were to give Jill the benefit of every doubt I’ve ever had, and assume that Sam’s health problems had nothing to do with her 40 hour VBAC labor at home without qualified attendants, it would still be the case that it was stupid of her to attempt that in the first place. Excusable, perhaps, in an uneducated woman with no health knowledge. But this is someone who holds herself out as not only a midwife, but a licensed professional midwife. She should’ve known better. As to Joy’s labor, who cares if she was the only midwife present? The point is that a breech baby is a common, easily-recognized complication of pregnancy that can often be corrected before labor if it is noticed. Jill apparently never picked up on the fact that the baby was breech. The fact that there may have been other attendants present does not excuse her failure. If you want to call yourself a midwife, you have to expect to be held to a certain standard of care. 2) That was basically my point. She has no critical thinking skills or common sense. 3) My understanding was that Erin‘s coagulation disorder caused miscarriage and potentially serious complications *if not properly treated.* Erin got proper treatment. She is smart enough to have sought out actual medical care for her condition and has followed medical recommendations about pregnancy, birth, and postpartum care. That’s the difference between her and Jill. No competent doctor would have told Jill “hey, you should totally attempt a VBAC at home without qualified medical personnel present for your next kid!” I have to assume that somewhere along the line, someone did their job and warned her of the risks. She disregarded them, again despite being what she claims is a licensed professional midwife.

I feel as though I am being defrauded by his pants and those of his brothers. Even Jeremy‘s pants aren’t cut that snug.

A huge part of being smart is learning to recognize what you don’t know. Jill has never shown any evidence of being able to do that. Quite the contrary, in fact; she insists on handling her deliveries and those of her sisters as though she were a qualified midwife, when all of the evidence suggests she is completely incapable of attending to a birth competently. Jill ended up having two C-sections for fetal distress because she was unable or unwilling to recognize complications in time to avert them. Joy ended up in the hospital with a C-section because Jill failed to recognize that her baby was breech, which is something she could literally have learned to do by watching YouTube videos. The gaps in her knowledge and judgment have to be explained by something. Assuming she viewed her midwifery training as a serious endeavor and worked at it, I can only conclude that she was intellectually incapable of assimilating or using the information she was taught. And honestly, I think these women are being cut too much slack because of the way they were raised. The way they were raised sucked. I’m not going to disagree with that. They have the right to feel angry, or bitter, or indifferent, or whatever else they feel in response to the deficiencies in their upbringing. But I also think they have the obligation to reflect on that before they propagate it on the next generation. Jill can make bad choices for Jill, either because she is stupid or because she’s been so hamstrung by her upbringing that she cannot function as a normal adult. I won’t begrudge her that. But her bad choices are now endangering not only her children, but her siblings’ children. Her upbringing shouldn’t excuse that. Look at the Bates girls, in comparison. They had a very similar upbringing in the sense that they were members of large families without very much money and had basically the same expectations placed upon them as the Duggar girls did. Yet, from what we have seen, they all seem to be competent mothers and individuals. Erin Bates didn’t say “I have a potentially life-threatening condition, but I’m going to have a homebirth anyway! Whee!” She got prenatal care and went to the hospital. The worst thing we can say about Alyssa Bates is that she wears too much makeup and took her baby to church too early. The worst thing we can say about Jill Duggar is that she may have nearly killed herself, both her kids, and her nephew. There is more going on there than upbringing. She’s either too dumb to recognize her limitations or too smug to care. If I looked like Carlin Bates, I’d rock it too. Why not?