How can it be that easy, to abandon babies?

Just learnt about a the shelter for babies in Singapore, Sanctuary House, which was set up since 2005 in this news. Their "business" has grown, sadly.

Not that I don't pity these abandoned babies, but adopting them is not the way.

Ideally, the parents must ... still be fully, or as much as they could to be responsible for them. Yes, the abandoned ones should be taken care of, but I think it is very unwise to directly or indirectly excuse their parents of their responsibilities.

Shouldn't it be considered a crime for one to not want to raise his/her children? Thus, they should be tracked down, and made to be responsible as much as possible. Similar to bankruptcy, but more than it, at the very minimal, a portion of their income/assets must be given to the child indefinitely.

In addition, since a child is related by lineage to his family members and relatives, as long as can track down any of them, they also be somehow made to bare the financial burden. The objective here is not so much as to reduce number of abandoned, but to make everyone aware of the consequence of irresponsible (aka extra-marrital) sex.

The above is really at the bare minimum because financial is just one of the many aspects in raising up children.

Thus, think about it, at present the society/nation/community is baring the burden, i.e. all of us are bearing such increasing burden. If people are concern enough to tell people off because they let kids step on MRT seats, then shouldn't we be more concern to scold [young] people who gets too intimate, regardless in public or in private.

Finding safe products for mother to be

Do you find it difficult to find suitable products for pregnant women? Most products that are not targeted at pregnant women typically advise against being used by pregnant women. Why is this so? I have a guess ... .

In this era of evidence-based medicine, the need for evidence is a necessity. Researchers conduct scientific studies to gather data and hopefully can arrive at statistically significant results. When a product is not targeted at pregnant women, they would not want to take extra risk to test it on pregnant women. Therefore, no data, so there is no evidence. It is also quite difficult to get pregnant women to volunteer to be their "guinea pig".

Beaute de Maman aims to provide health & beauty products that have been extensively studied and evaluated, allergy and obstetrician tested.

Furthermore, in order to ensure the safety of both mother-to-be and fetus, Beaute de Maman utilizes only natural and herbal ingredients, and develop products by a board-certified obstetrician to treat problems specifically related to the physiological and hormonal changes experienced by women during pregnancy.

They are offering free shipping with $25 purchase on domestic orders. You may
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I feel the need to mention that, I did not use it (obviously!), and neither did my wife.

Nature has its reasons

A research found that preterm birth tied to lifelong problems. The researcher said the re­search raises an im­por­tant ques­tion con­cern­ing the long-term ef­fects of ad­vanc­es in pre­na­tal and ne­o­na­tal care. “Preterm sur­viv­al is im­prov­ing now be­cause of in­ter­ven­tions we have in preg­nan­cy and ne­o­na­tal care. How­ev­er ... something looks good may not be good.
, it may be that we’re im­prov­ing sur­viv­al while ad­versely af­fect­ing the over­all health and qual­ity of life in the long run.”

In many things, Nature has its reasons, which many of them we are not aware and even dislike them. Recently, I think more people start to realize that fever is not a bad thing as it is the way our body handle illness. Getting rid of fever might be an act welcome by the causing agents of the illness.

Thus, for people who want to act smart by giving birth earlier for conveniency, think thrice to the power of many thrices! If ending our life prematurely is wrong, terminating a life in the womb prematurely should be equally wrong!

Family Rights

Read an article about TNT babies, which are babies born from Filipino moms who are not allowed to get pregnant. I always do not like the arrangement of foreign maid. What happen to their families, or even their life?

When we are tired of sweeping the floor, we can get a vacuum machine to ease the job. When we are tired of hand washing clothes, we can get a washing machine to ease the job. When we are tired of washing dishes, we can get a dish washer machine to ease the job. But, ... maids are not machines.

When we need help in caring for kids, we get nanny to helpout. However, it is OK if the nanny is part time. May be the kids go to the family of the nanny, which is OK for the nanny, though not so OK for the kids. May be, the nanny comes over but go home daily. But, foreign maids can't go home daily, some not even able to afford to do so yearly.

When will the world, and societies realize clearly the importance of Family Rights? We have Human Rights for many decades. Some "Human Rights", or I call them individual rights, are destroying Family Rights. Put it technically, when will more decisions be make in alignment to system thinking.

Everyone should have come from a family, and shall have the goal of setting up his own family. Having a foreign maid to sacrifice her family life for years so that my family life can be easier is quite terrible, I think. Some may think this is a win-win arrangment, but I say this is like only looking at revenues, but not all expenses. Or, I think such is a terrible "win-win" arrangment, while better ways must exist for a better win-win.

Four stretch mark creams recommended by Diva

Diva, who works in a hair and skin salon, created this blog about skin care. She (I guessed) is sharing her knowledge, experience, and performances of products used by her clients. She just posted a review on stretch mark creams. You may wonder why I, being a guy, choose to talk about stretch marks. My first reason is my wife is having this problem and so I would like to know more, and indeed Diva's blog is a good start for me. On further reading, I realized that I had the impression that stretch marks only happen to pregnant women, but I was wrong. Any fat guy or gal who managed to slim down can have it.

I guess it is a bit late for my wife to prevent stretch marks now, but hopefully during the next pregnancy. Nevertheless, I know of this good source for skin care products review and recommendation. Find out why Revitol stretch mark cream won the first ranking in her review, and also which the other three of the four best creams are.

In addition, you can read about others' experiences and solutions in the comments, and you are welcome to share your knowledge if you are also good in skin care.

This is a sponsored review.

Abortion is not the main problem

Some more statistics:
Teens accounted for 1,391 abortions last year, with 19 performed on girls under 15.
Of the 1,279 abortions by teenagers in 2005, 16 were performed on girls under 15.
youngsters between 16 and 23 found 13 percent of them were sexually active.
23 percent did not use any form of contraception.

How many of 1391 are first timers?
How many more abortions will these need?
Under 15 means oldest at 14. Abortion at age 14 means the "success" encounter was at 14 or earlier 13. Typically, the first time does not "succeed". Thus, highly possible that at 13 they are already sexually active!
There must be many more "lucky" ones "enjoying" their sexual life since 11, 12, 13!
This speculated possibility is itself the problem to be tackled. NOT the abortion rate, which is just the number of those small portion of "unlucky" ones.
A future problem that have to be handled now is those "lucky" ones, who lead such lives till they eventually "lucky" enough ("thanks" to the contraceptive technology) to get married, become children, and their children will be breaking their "records"!!

Based on academic records, criminal records, we roughly know who are suitable to become certain professionals such as teachers, army officers, ministers, etc. Any good idea to have some records to indicate the suitability of a person to become a parent??

What does 800 births by teen single mom in a year imply?

800 is not a small number, but it doesn't seem to suggest a serious situation.
Lets see if...
For some of these moms, this birth was not their first pregnancy.
For majority of them, this pregnancy is not a first time "success".
For many other teens, they might just have avoidedbecoming a mom, i.e. "succeeded to abort".

Lets give just the above 3 considerations some numbers...
On the average, assume that
this birth was the 2nd pregnancy;
this pregnancy was the 6th "try";
these 800 moms were the "very unlucky" ones at the ratio of 1:10.
These numbers were rough guesses, and I don't think they are the extremes.

Thus, there are at least 800*2*6*10 = 96000 sexual acts by unmarried teenage girls, in just a year.
Individual "freedom" does not give them rights to create or risk creating lives in such irresponsible manners!!!!

Why vs How

Imagine a day when pistols became very common. The problem of increased bullet-wounded deaths become significant.

What is more important to do between these two approaches:
a) To teach people at the earliest age possible and relevant on HOW to properly use pistols.
b) To strenthen the conscience and maturity of people from the earliest age possible on living a life that benefits everyone.

To me, it is obviously the latter.

Now, change "pistol" to "condom/contraceptive method", and "bullet-wounded deaths" to "extra-marrital births".

My answer is still (b). What's yours?

Outside marriage pregnancy

This evening we have some discussions about outside marriage pregnancy. I was pondering on the possibility of making it an illegal or punishable act. Still thinking... the argument could be similar to theft with a difference where the victim is someone to be born. Many acts are considered a crime because it causes harm to others or the society. Pregnancy outside of marriage do cause harm to the society, and people such as the to be born baby (obviously), the future/present husband/wife/children/parents. Could it be because of the common pitiful feelings towards the pregnant woman? Shouldn’t be since we punish those who survived their attempted suicide.

From another angle, deep inside our pure conscience, we know that acts such as stealing, robbery, murder, sex not between husband/wife and etc. are wrong and therefore society should have the proper mechanisms to educate, prevent and punish accordingly.