Babies/Infants

The cleaning crew at a fairground in Millville, New Jersey made the grizzly discovery of a baby in a toilet tank. Officials are still trying to determine if the baby was full term or if it was an aborted fetus.

Investigators say an autopsy is needed to determine if the baby reached full term and was born alive or if it was still a fetus when it died.

A Cinco de Mayo celebration hosted by the Hispanic Business Association of South New Jersey was held at the fairgrounds on Sunday.

Police say they do not yet know the ethnicity of the baby or the circumstances under which it was abandoned.

OK, so this has nothing to do with (human) parenting, but damn if we didn’t need a cute little story as a break from all the child abuse news.

Seeing a dead kangaroo by the highway near her house in southern Australia was nothing new for Leonie Allan and her dog Rex, who were out for a walk on Easter morning.

But back home in their yard in Bells Beach, near Torquay, Rex kept pointing toward where they had seen the roadkill — he is a pointer after all — and eventually took off in that direction.

He came back a few minutes later and dropped a live baby kangaroo at Allan’s feet — a 4 1/2-month-old “joey” he had apparently gone back and rescued from the pouch of its dead mother, according to the Melbourne Herald-Sun.

Triplet births are fairly rare as it is, but one circumstance only happens — according to one pediatrician — once every 200 million births: identical triplets. Normally triplets are fraternal (3 eggs involved), or a mix of identical and fraternal (one egg that splits plus another egg).

MANHASSET, N.Y. (AP) — When they get older, Logan, Eli and Collin Penn may blanch at the notion they wore nail polish to their first news conference. But it’s the only way their parents know how to tell the boys apart right now.

The identical triplets were born Wednesday at North Shore University Hospital on Long Island — an event so rare that an obstetrician estimated it might happen just once in 200 million births.

Other research says it happens once in every 60,000 births — wow, some real accurate number reporting going on there, guys.

Well, we have to admit this way of abandoning a baby is certainly “creative”. A man in Queens, New York, flagged down a black “car for hire” (we’re assuming that means a limo or Town Car), got in with his 6-month-old baby, and after riding a few minutes he asked the driver to stop at which point he took off running leaving the infant girl behind.

The driver immediately took the infant to a firehouse in Corona, the police arrived and the baby was taken to St. John’s Queens Hospital, where she was in good condition.

Officials said the child had not been harmed. They had not identified her or her parents and had not determined whether the man who left her was a relative.

The police said the city’s Administration for Children’s Services would eventually take custody of the infant.

A newborn baby girl fell through the toilet in a moving train and onto the tracks moments after her mother prematurely gave birth, surviving nearly two hours before being found, relatives said Thursday.

The child’s mother, who uses the single name Bhuri, was traveling with relatives on an overnight train when she went to the bathroom shortly before midnight Tuesday and unexpectedly gave birth to a baby girl, said Arjun Kumar, her brother-in-law.

“Later, she fell unconscious and the baby fell through the toilet,” he continued. “Two stations later, we knocked at the door.”

Bhuri opened the door, soaked in blood.

“When we asked her about what happened, she said the baby had fallen through onto the tracks,” Kumar said.

OK, we know they do things a bit differently in places like India, but a hole in the bathroom that opens up right onto the train tracks isn’t exactly a “toilet”…

Couldn’t this “mother” have walked a few more steps and brought the infant inside? Colorado has a “safe haven” law, where you can surrender your to a hospital or fire station within 72 hours of birth without prosecution.

Denver Police were looking for the person Wednesday who left a newborn girl in a basket outside of a hospital. The baby died.

Police say they found the body at Presbyterian/St. Luke’s Medical Center located at 19th and Franklin. it happened at about 8:00 p.m. Tuesday.

Police say someone pressed an emergency call button outside the facility. A security guard went to check, and found the newborn girl laying in a basket.

The guard took the baby inside, where she was pronounced dead.

Investigators said they did not know if the baby was already dead when she was left outside of the hospital, or if she died afterward.

Investigators are treating this case as a murder. They ask anyone who may know something or who may have seen who left the baby to call them.

Now how come this case is being considered a murder, but the one where the mother dumped her baby in a garbage can isn’t?

The story of Jeff Hagenbuch is a tragic one — he went to being an elated father of triplets, to a grieving widower when his wife, Tina, died during childbirth last December. The Kalamazoo Gazette, has followed up with Jeff and reports that he is “carrying on” and slowly readjusting to life as a single father of 3:

In the weeks and months since Tina Hagenbuch’s death, her husband said he has had to learn to be patient and physically and emotionally demonstrative with his triplets.

“The biggest challenge so far is taking care of them without getting mad or frustrated,” Hagenbuch said.

Tina and Jeff Hagenbuch had been married for 18 months, but together for six years. They met on a blind date.

“I never wanted to get married until I met her,” Hagenbuch said of his late wife, Tina. “She was all about giving me a family.”

Tina Hagenbuch had two daughters, Skye, 22, and Tylar, 16, from a previous marriage, both of whom have stepped in to help out with their stepsisters and stepbrother.

At first when we read this we thought it was an update to this story, which is eerily similar.

If you’re going to have a home birth — which already sparks heated debate about the risks involved — make sure to fully vet that midwife!

Midwife Kusum Churcher-Wells is alleged to have failed to check the baby, known as JK, for jaundice during a home delivery in metropolitan Melbourne in April, 2005.

The baby’s father complained to the Nurses Board of Victoria (NBV), alleging the baby was rendered profoundly deaf and permanently disabled with brain damage as a result.

A formal hearing was conducted at the NBV in Melbourne this morning.

Ms Churcher-Wells faces one breach of failing to adequately assess and further treat JK’s jaundice and another of failing to refer JK to a medical practitioner to assess and treat the jaundice.

We’re, um, not even sure what to say except is a prison really the right environment to raise a kid? Seems like that baby is off to a bad start, but at least she’ll know at an early age how to shank somebody.

[Lisa Whitford] delivered a healthy baby girl last March and has successfully raised the infant in a provincial remand centre. And now - with the help of a University of B.C. law professor and two caring lawyers - she will become the first woman in B.C. to keep her baby in a federal prison.

Whitford, who will serve a four-year sentence for manslaughter at Fraser Valley Institution, will be the first inmate accepted into a little-used federal program that will allow her to raise 11-month-old Jordyn in a condominium on prison grounds.

“It’s just been an incredible struggle to keep that child with her and give this woman one last chance at her life,” her lawyer, Bruce Kaun, said Thursday.

“She’s doing really well… She’s very clean right now, and very articulate and very focused on raising the child.”

Whitford, who was sentenced on Wednesday, will be moved soon to Fraser Valley Institution, where she and Jordyn will live in a private unit with its own kitchen and a park nearby, but will still be surrounded by fences and monitored by guards.

Wow, they do things a bit differently in Canada, eh?

A miracle?

How else do you explain why an 11 month old baby was picked up and thrown by a tornado, surviving, while his 24 year old mother perished?

CASTALIAN SPRINGS, Tenn. — The muddy field was littered with debris after a wave of violent storms: Living room couches, strollers, children’s toys. So when two rescuers came upon a baby, they thought he was a doll.

Then he moved.

“We grabbed hold of his neck (to take a pulse) and he took a breath of air and started crying,” said David Harmon, a firefighter from a nearby county who was combing the field for tornado victims.

The boy was found at least 100 yards away from where his family’s house had been, possibly lifted by the storm’s fierce winds, according to witnesses at the scene on Thursday. There was no trace of exactly where the house stood. His mother, who did not survive, was found in the same field.

When asked, most parents would say they would give up their life for their kids, but a vast majority of us would never be in the position to have to make that call, anyway. But one UK mother did have to make that heartbreaking decision, and she chose to sacrifice her own life to save her unborn baby. About four months along in her pregnancy, Lorraine Allard was diagnosed with cancer of the liver — and it was in advanced stages. The only way to provide her a chance for survival was to start chemotherapy right away — a move that would necessitate the termination of her pregnancy. Allard decided instead to wait, saying that, “If I am going to die, my baby is going to live.” Her baby was born prematurely at 25 weeks, on November 18. Allard start treatment immediately after, but it was too late. Allard died last week. What a heartbreaking story…

Mr Allard, 34, an oil field technician from St Olaves, near near Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, and his wife already had three daughters, Leah, ten, Amy, eight, and Courtney, 20 months, when they learned they were expecting their first boy.

“We were going to have the full set and didn’t plan to have any more children after that,” Mr Allard said. But in October last year, Mrs Allard started getting stomach cramps and tests at James Paget Hospital in Gorleston revealed her liver was riddled with malignant tumours.

It is believed the disease spread from bowel cancer that had been growing unnoticed for years. Mr Allard said: “The doctors said they couldn’t do anything because she was pregnant. She told them straight away they were not going to get rid of it. She’d have lost the will to fight.”

His wife went into labour just a couple of weeks after the diagnosis and gave birth at the Norfolk and Norwich University NHS Hospital in Norwich.

“He was so tiny, just 1lb 11oz, so the nurse grabbed him and allowed Lorraine to give him a little kiss before he was taken to an incubator,” Mr Allard said.

A jar of baby food bought in a Target store in Philadelphia was supposedly found with maggots, claims a family who bought the Gerber food.

That is so disgusting! I certainly hope there wasn’t any jars sold that went unnoticed. Blech!

A Pittsburg family’s complaint that they found worms in jarred baby food has prompted the Target store in San Ramon to empty its shelves of the Gerber baby food flavor.

Officials at Target and Gerber are working together to determine when, where and how jars of Gerber baby food purchased at a San Ramon Target store may have become contaminated with insects, a Target spokesman said.

What a sad, sad story.

This Christmas season, a father will have to celebrate and mourn at the same time.

Donation/Trust information is as follows:

If you’d like to help the Smith Family, you can drop off items such as diapers, clothes and car seats at Victory Assembly of God Church, at 2561 W. Ruthrauff Rd., Tucson AZ, 85705-1853.

A memorial fund has been set-up as well. If you’d like to donate to that, just go to any Wells Fargo Bank and donate to the Debra L. Smith Family Memorial Fund.

During this holiday season, a Tucson father has three reasons to celebrate. Andrue Smith’s wife recently gave birth to triplet boys.

But tragically, his wife died after the babies were born.

Andrue is now struggling to cope with the loss of his wife and raising the babies on his own.
They’re daddy’s little boys. Legend, Tristian and Jaisyn were born six weeks premature, a week ago today.

“All I wanted was a son,” he told us.

I’m afraid to fly, although I do it when I have to, but I always think if there are babies and children on board, that somehow a crash would be more unlikely because the tragedy would be even greater. Unfortunately, for this tiny baby, mind over matter would not have been sufficient…

(CNN) — A renowned nuclear physics professor and a six-week old baby, due to meet his grandfather for the first time, were among the 56 people killed when a plane crashed in southern Turkey early Friday, agency reports have said.

The cause of the crash, which left no survivors, is not yet known.

Very, very strange. The police are keeping hush as to whether foul play was involved, yet a mother was found dead and her twin babies were underneath the bed. Who put them there? Obviously we don’t need to wait for the police to tell us that this was either a suicide or a homicide.

OLATHE, Kansas — Authorities responding to a neighbor’s report of a foul odor found malnourished 3-week-old twins under a bed in an apartment containing their mother’s decomposing remains.

Both infants were taken to a hospital Friday, where one, a girl, later died. Her twin brother was in critical condition Saturday. Authorities said their 36-year-old mother appeared to have been dead for several days.