2014 Book List

The books I read this year are:

- The Hobbit by J.R. Tolkien (reread)
- The Arcade Catastrophe by Brandon Mull
- The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan (reread)
- The Son of Neptune by Rick Riordan (reread)
- The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan (reread)
- The House of Hades by Rick Riordan
- The Crown of Embers by Rae Carson
- The Bitter Kingdom by Rae Carson
- Enter the Zombie by David Lubar
- Eulalia! by Brian Jacques
- Artemis Fowl, The Last Guardian by Eoin Colfer
- Divergent by Victoria Roth
- It's All Too Much by Peter Walsh (reread)
- Goliath by Scott Westerfield
- The $1000 Challenge by Brian J. O'Connor
- The Clutter Cure by Judi Culbertson
- Family Inc. by Andrew and Caitlin Friedman
- Insurgent by Victoria Roth
- Allegiant by Victoria Roth
- City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
- City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare
- City of Glass by Cassandra Clare
- Where Did You See Her Last? by Lemony Snicket
- City of Fallen Angels by Cassandra Clare
- City of Lost Souls by Cassandra Clare
- City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare
- Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan
- Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink
- The Book of Mormon (reread)
- David & Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell
- Don't Panic, Dinner's in the Freezer by Martinez, Howell, and Garcia
- Five Kingdoms (Sky Raiders) by Brandon Mull
- Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preus
- Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry & Ridley Pearson
- Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery
- The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani 
- The School for Good and Evil - A World Without Princes by Soman Chainani 
- The Secret Zoo by Bryan Chick
- The Land of Stories by Chris Colfer
- Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery
- Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery
- Anne of Windy Poplars by L.M. Montgomery
- The Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan
- Anne's House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery
- Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery
- Rainbow Valley by L.M. Montgomery
- Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery
- Jasotron 2012 by Bill Amend

My favorite new books that I read were the whole Anne of Green Gable series by L.M. Montgomery, The House of Hades and The Blood of Olympus (final two of the Heroes of Olympus series) by Rick Riordan, Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink, and Five Kingdoms - Sky Raiders by Brandon Mull. 

He is the Gift

Merry Christmas! I hope you've had a wonderful day. I just want to share with you my testimony of Jesus Christ. I know that he is our Savior. I've felt his love in my life.

I can see how a lot of people would be like, "Why do we even need Jesus Christ? What's the point?" But I can tell you that knowing of him, and having his gospel in my life, has been an incalculable blessing to me. He promised: “He that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” (John 8:12).

This awesome Christmas video came out a couple weeks ago. It's called "He is the Gift." We watched it last night on Christmas Eve, and loved it.

I hope you have a great Christmas night!

Rilla of Ingleside: Abridged vs. Unabridged

I finished reading Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery this week. It's the last book in the Anne of Green Gable series, and I loved it. I think it's one of the very best in the whole series.

When I went to go rate it on Goodreads, I noticed someone's comment that "It was recently drawn to my attention by a fellow Goodreads reader that the editions of Rilla of Ingleside, for which we had become accustomed, are abridged versions of the original edition that L.M. Montgomery published. Somehow along the way, an abridged edition appeared through an American publishing house and that abridged version became the standard (accidentally)." 

I was like, "Whaaaaaat?" and investigated further. And it turns out this is true! The book I borrowed from the library, a Bantam Book published by HarperCollins Publishers in 1992, and which claims that "This edition contains the complete text of the original hardcover edition; Not one word has been omitted," is abridged. 

One of the abridged versions

A new, "restored" version of Rilla of Ingleside was published by Viking Canada in 2010, and the editors explained in this interview how the abridged version of Rilla came to be the standard book on the shelves, masquerading as the unabridged original: 

"This new edition of Rilla of Ingleside includes the tag “A new, unabridged and fully restored edition” on the cover. What does this mean?
In the 1970s, a reprint edition of Rilla of Ingleside silently cut 4,500 words, or 4% of the original text (to put it another way, that’s fourteen pages of text that are missing). That edition was reprinted by Bantam-Seal in the 1980s and remains in print today. This new edition restores the full text of the original edition, published in 1921.

What types of material were cut?
There doesn’t seem to be a clear pattern of deletions: some pertain simply to adverbs that are no longer in general use (verily, ignominiously), whereas others involve entire scenes that have been excised. Most of the cuts occur in the first half of the book, which indicates that the abridgment was done primarily for length. Most of the cuts seem fairly arbitrary."

This other page explains the same thing: "A later reprint of Rilla of Ingleside silently abridged the text by 4,500 words, and it is this text that has been available to North American readers since the 1980s. A restored, unabridged, and annotated edition, edited by Benjamin Lefebvre and Andrea McKenzie, was published by Viking Canada in October 2010. It contains the full text of Virna Sheard’s poem “The Young Knights,” which Montgomery excerpted as her epigraph."

The new, unabridged version

So, I went looking for the differences in the abridged vs. original text. I wanted to read the 4,500 words that I had missed when reading the abridged version. But I couldn't find a single comparison online! It appears that one person did do a comparison a couple years ago, but the link is now broken and the webpage doesn't exist anymore.

Soooo, I went through and compared the abridged Bantam Book copy of Rilla of Ingleside I have with the free, unabridged Project Gutenberg copy of Rilla of Ingleside. I didn't find all the words that were cut, but I did find about 3,600 of them. Definitely all the big passages, and a whole bunch of the little ones. *If anyone reading this has found more of the differences, please feel free to post them in a comment!* I've compiled them below, for anyone that mind find them useful!

Rilla of Ingleside: Abridged vs Unabridged Text

Bantam Page Number	Abridged Text	Original Text
4	"...chasing him out of her domain..."	"...chasing him ignominiously out of her domain..."
5	"He would do anything for Jem, I believe."	"He would do anything for Jem, I verily believe."
12	She was not pretty but there was a certain charm of interest and mystery in her face.	She was not pretty but there was a certain charm of interest and mystery in her face, and Rilla found her fascinating.
12	At all other times she was a stimulating companion.	At all other times she was a stimulating companion, and the gay set at Ingleside never remembered that she was so much older than themselves.
13	She knew that Rilla longed to be "out"—to go to parties as Nan and Di did, and to have dainty evening dresses and—beaux!	She knew that Rilla longed to be "out"—to go to parties as Nan and Di did, and to have dainty evening dresses and—yes, there is no mincing matters—beaux!
13	Walter was, as ever, the handsomest of the Ingleside boys.	Walter was, as ever, the handsomest of the Ingleside boys. Miss Oliver found pleasure in looking at him for his good looks—he was so exactly like what she would have liked her own son to be.
13	That sonnet sequence was really a remarkable thing for a lad of twenty to write.	That sonnet sequence was really a remarkable thing for a lad of twenty to write. Miss Oliver was no partial critic and she knew that Walter Blythe had a wonderful gift.
15	Everybody at Ingleside was fond of him, even Susan.	Everybody at Ingleside was fond of him, even Susan, although his one unfortunate propensity of sneaking into the spare room and going to sleep on the bed tried her affection sorely.
23	A little girl indeed! She whisked out of the kitchen in high dudgeon. Her spirits rose again when she found herself one of the gay crowd bound for the Four Winds light.	A little girl indeed! She whisked out of the kitchen in high dudgeon. Another time she wouldn't go down to show herself off to Susan—Susan, who thought nobody was grown up until she was sixty! And that horrid Cousin Sophia with her digs about freckles and legs! What business had an old—an old beanpole like that to talk of anybody else being long and thin? Rilla felt all her pleasure in herself and her evening clouded and spoiled. The very teeth of her soul were set on edge and she could have sat down and cried. But later on her spirits rose again when she found herself one of the gay crowd bound for the Four Winds light.
25	The gulf beyond was still silvery blue in the afterlight. Rilla loved life. She was going to have a splendid time.	The gulf beyond was still silvery blue in the afterlight. Oh, it was all glorious—the clear air with its salt tang, the balsam of the firs, the laughter of her friends. Rilla loved life—its bloom and brilliance; she loved the ripple of music, the hum of merry conversation; she wanted to walk on forever over this road of silver and shadow. It was her first party and she was going to have a splendid time.
32	Rilla looked about her and thought how lovely her first party had been. She would never forget it.	Rilla looked about her and thought how lovely her first party had been. She would never forget it. The room re-echoed to laughter and jest. Beautiful young eyes sparkled and shone. From the pavilion outside came the lilt of the fiddle and the rhythmic steps of the dancers.
32	Why didn't Jack Elliott speak—if he had anything to tell?	Why didn't Jack Elliott speak—if he had anything to tell? Why did he just stand there, glowering importantly?
34	Walter Blythe was always saying odd things.	Walter Blythe was always saying odd things. That old Piper of his—she hadn't heard anything about him since their playdays in Rainbow Valley—and now here he was bobbing up again. She didn't like it, and that was the long and short of it.
35	It does not do to laugh at the pangs of youth. They are very terrible because youth has not yet learned that "this, too, will pass away."	It does not do to laugh at the pangs of youth. They are very terrible because youth has not yet learned that "this, too, will pass away." Rilla sighed and wished she were home, in bed, crying into her pillow.
36	Why, for mercy's sake, did boys try to dance who didn't know the first thing about dancing; and who had feet as big as boats?	Why, for mercy's sake, did boys try to dance who didn't know the first thing about dancing; and who had feet as big as boats? There, he had bumped her into somebody! She would never dance with him again!
41	Susan sat as if paralysed, her piece of pie half-eaten on her plate.	Susan sat as if paralysed, her piece of pie half-eaten on her plate. Susan never did finish that piece of pie—a fact which bore eloquent testimony to the upheaval in her inner woman for Susan considered it a cardinal offence against civilized society to begin to eat anything and not finish it. That was wilful waste, hens to the contrary notwithstanding.
43	"Your father says it will be over in a few months and I have as much faith in his opinion as I have in Lord Anybody's."	"Your father says it will be over in a few months and I have as much faith in his opinion as I have in Lord Anybody's. So just let us be calm and trust in the Almighty and get this place tidied up. I am done with crying which is a waste of time and discourages everybody."
49	"Amen to that," nodded Mrs. Norman. "Bat-blind as most of them were somebody had foresight enough to see to that."	"Amen to that," nodded Mrs. Norman. "Bat-blind as most of them were somebody had foresight enough to see to that."  "Maybe England'll manage not to get into trouble over it," said Cousin Sophia plaintively. "I dunno. But I'm much afraid." "One would suppose that England was in trouble over it already, up to her neck, Sophia Crawford," said Susan. "But your ways of thinking are beyond me and always were. It is my opinion that the British Navy will settle Germany in a jiffy and that we are all getting worked up over nothing." Susan spat out the words as if she wanted to convince herself more than anybody else. She had her little store of homely philosophies to guide her through life, but she had nothing to buckler her against the thunderbolts of the week that had just passed. What had an honest, hard-working, Presbyterian old maid of Glen St. Mary to do with a war thousands of miles away? Susan felt that it was indecent that she should have to be disturbed by it.
50	"Don't you tell me one Britisher isn't a match for ten foreigners."	"Don't you tell me one Britisher isn't a match for ten foreigners. I could polish off a dozen of 'em myself with both hands tied behind my back!"
50	"They've a kind of presentiment that it wouldn't be healthy for their complaint."	"Lord love you, they've a kind of presentiment, so to speak, that it wouldn't be healthy for their complaint."
54	"Even the old cat at the manse has passed away."	"Even the old cat at the manse has passed away. He breathed his last at a quarter to ten last night and Bruce is quite heart-broken, they tell me. It's time that pussy went where good cats go. He must be at least fifteen years old. He has seemed so lonely since Aunt Martha died."
54	"Ellen West used to be always railing at the Kaiser and we thought her crazy, but now I see that there was a method in her madness."	"Ellen West used to be always railing at the Kaiser and we thought her crazy, but now I see that there was a method in her madness. This tray is packed, Mrs. Dr. dear, and I will go down and put in my best licks preparing supper. I wish I knew when I would cook another supper for Jem but such things are hidden from our eyes."
55	"The beast has more sense than most humans," said Mary Vance.	"The beast has more sense than most humans," said Mary Vance. "Well, did we any of us ever think we'd live to see this day? I bawled all night to think of Jem and Jerry going like this. I think they're plumb deranged."
56	"Let them European nations fight it out between them," said Abner Reese.	"Let them European nations fight it out between them," said Abner Reese.  "When he was a boy I gave him many a good trouncing," shouted Norman Douglas, who seemed to be referring to some one high in military circles in Charlottetown. "Yes, sir, I walloped him well, big gun as he is now."
57	Rilla felt as if she were in some fantastic nightmare.	Rilla felt as if she were in some fantastic nightmare. Were these the people who, three weeks ago, were talking of crops and prices and local gossip?
57	Nothing to do now but to go home—and wait.	Nothing to do now but to go home—and wait. The doctor and Mrs. Blythe walked off together—so did Nan and Faith—so did John Meredith and Rosemary. Walter and Una and Shirley and Di and Carl and Rilla went in a group. Susan had put her bonnet back on her head, hindside foremost, and stalked grimly off alone.
61	Her first impulse was to turn and flee. But that would not do.	Rilla's first impulse was to turn and flee. But that would never do.
61	"You're the doctor's miss, ain't ye?"	"You're the doctor's miss, ain't ye? Have a cheer?"  Rilla did not see any chair which was not cluttered with something. She remained standing.
62	Yet a feeling of pity for the desolate, orphaned mite took sudden possession of her.	Yet a feeling of pity for the desolate, orphaned mite which had "come out of the everywhere" into such a dubious "here", took sudden possession of her.
62	"I ain't a-going to trouble myself with it, I can tell yez. I told Min it'd have to be sent to an orphan asylum till we'd see if Jim ever came back to look after it. She didn't relish the idee."	"I ain't a-going to trouble myself with it, I can tell yez. I brung up a boy that my sister left and he skinned out as soon as he got to be some good and won't give me a mite o' help in my old age, ungrateful whelp as he is. I told Min it'd have to be sent to an orphan asylum till we'd see if Jim ever came back to look after it. Would yez believe it, she didn't relish the idee."
62	"I hadn't time—took me all the time there was looking after Min."	"I hadn't time—took me all the time there was looking after Min. 'Sides, as I told yez, I don't know nithing about kids."
63	"Sure, if yez wants to," said Mrs. Conover amiably.	"Sure, if yez wants to," said Mrs. Conover amiably. "I hain't any objection. Take it and welcome."
64	"Better not let the wind blow on it," admonished Mrs. Conover. "Take its breath if it do."	"Better not let the wind blow on it," admonished Mrs. Conover. "Take its breath if it do." Rilla wrapped the tattered little quilt around the soup tureen. "Will you hand this to me after I get into the buggy, please?" "Sure I will," said Mrs. Conover, getting up with a grunt.
71	"...lies down patiently to wait for the next train. One day some boys threw stones at Monday and old Johnny Mead, who never was known to take notice of anything before, snatched up a meat axe in the butcher's shop and chased them through the village."	"...lies down patiently to wait for the next train. Mr. Gray, the station master, says there are times when he can hardly help crying from sheer sympathy. One day some boys threw stones at Monday and old Johnny Mead, who never was known to take notice of anything before, snatched up a meat axe in the butcher's shop and chased them through the village. Nobody has molested Monday since."
76	"Business as usual is England's motto, they tell me, Mrs. Dr. dear, and I have taken it for mine."	"Business as usual is England's motto, they tell me, Mrs. Dr. dear, and I have taken it for mine, not thinking I could easily find a better. I shall make the same kind of pudding today I always make on Saturday. It is a good deal of trouble to make, and that is well, for it will employ my thoughts."
76	"A sock a day is my allowance."	"A sock a day is my allowance. Old Mrs. Albert Mead of Harbour Head manages a pair and a half a day but she has nothing to do but knit. You know, Mrs. Dr. dear, she has been bed-rid for years and she has been worrying terrible because she was no good to anybody and a dreadful expense, and yet could not die and be out of the way. And now they tell me she is quite chirked up and resigned to living because there is something she can do, and she knits for the soldiers from daylight to dark."
76	"And they say Joe Milgrave would too, only he is afraid that if he does that Whiskers-on-the-moon will not let him have Miranda."	"And they say Joe Milgrave would too, only he is afraid that if he does that Whiskers-on-the-moon will not let him have Miranda. Whiskers says that he will believe the stories of German atrocities when he sees them, and that it is a good thing that Rangs Cathedral has been destroyed because it was a Roman Catholic church. Now, I am not a Roman Catholic, Mrs. Dr. dear, being born and bred a good Presbyterian and meaning to live and die one, but I maintain that the Catholics have as good a right to their churches as we have to ours and that the Huns had no kind of business to destroy them. Just think, Mrs. Dr. dear," concluded Susan pathetically, "how we would feel if a German shell knocked down the spire of our church here in the glen, and I'm sure it is every bit as bad to think of Rangs cathedral being hammered to pieces." And, meanwhile, everywhere, the lads of the world rich and poor, low and high, white and brown, were following the Piper's call.
76	"I don't believe I could bear another parting from him."	"I don't believe I could bear another parting from him—now that I know the war will not be over as soon as we hoped when he left first."
78	"I have always said that the devil was in him and that I will tie to." Susan opened the door and looked in.	"I have always said that the devil was in him and that I will tie to." "It is my opinion that the cat has hydrophobia," said Cousin Sophia solemnly. "I once heard of a cat that went mad and bit three people—and they all died a most terrible death, and turned black as ink." Undismayed by this, Susan opened the door and looked in.
79	Anything like Doc's shrieks while the process was going on was never heard at Ingleside.	Anything like Doc's shrieks while the process was going on was never heard at Ingleside. Susan was in mortal dread that the Albert Crawfords would hear it and conclude she was torturing the creature to death.
79	"The Huns themselves couldn't have worked more havoc here," she said bitterly.	"The Huns themselves couldn't have worked more havoc here," she said bitterly. "But when people will keep a Satanic animal like that, in spite of all warnings, they cannot complain when their wedding bowls get broken."
80	"I must take up my knitting then and knit hard till the papers come, Mrs. Dr. dear."	"I must take up my knitting then and knit hard till the papers come, Mrs. Dr. dear. Knitting is something you can do, even when your heart is going like a trip-hammer and the pit of your stomach feels all gone and your thoughts are catawampus."
80	"...the Kaiser will not eat his Christmas dinner in London this year."	"...the Kaiser will not eat his Christmas dinner in London this year. Do you know, Mrs. Dr. dear,"—Susan's voice lowered as a token that she was going to impart a very shocking piece of information,—"I have been told on good authority—or else you may be sure I would not be repeating it when it concerns a minster—that the Rev. Mr. Arnold goes to Charlottetown every week and takes a Turkish bath for his rheumatism. The idea of him doing that when we are at war with Turkey? One of his own deacons has always insisted that Mr. Arnold's theology was not sound and I am beginning to believe that there is some reason to fear it."
83	"When I wake up in the night and cannot go to sleep again," remarked Susan, who was knitting and reading at the same time, "I pass the moments by torturing the Kaiser to death. Last night I fried him in boiling oil and a great comfort it was to me, remembering those Belgian babies."	"When I wake up in the night and cannot go to sleep again," remarked Susan, who was knitting and reading at the same time, "I pass the moments by torturing the Kaiser to death. Last night I fried him in boiling oil and a great comfort it was to me, remembering those Belgian babies." "If the Kaiser were here and had a pain in his shoulder you'd be the first to run for the liniment bottle to rub him down," laughed Miss Oliver. "Would I?" cried outraged Susan. "Would I, Miss Oliver? I would rub him down with coal oil, Miss Oliver—and leave it to blister. That is what I would do and that you may tie to. A pain in his shoulder, indeed! He will have pains all over him before he is through with what he has started."
83	"I dare say the Austrians and Russians would think Saskatchewan and Musquodoboit about as bad, Susan," said Miss Oliver.	"I dare say the Austrians and Russians would think Saskatchewan and Musquodoboit about as bad, Susan," said Miss Oliver. "The Serbians have done wonderfully of late. They have captured Belgrade." "And sent the Austrian creatures packing across the Danube with a flea in their ear," said Susan with a relish, as she settled down to examine a map of Eastern Europe, prodding each locality with the knitting needle to brand it on her memory. "Cousin Sophia said awhile ago that Serbia was done for, but I told her there was still such a thing as an over-ruling Providence, doubt it who might. It says here that the slaughter was terrible. For all they were foreigners it is awful to think of so many men being killed, Mrs. Dr. dear—for they are scarce enough as it is."
84	"When mother saw the hat and the tag she just looked at me. Mother is some expert at looking."	"When mother saw the hat and the tag she just looked at me. Mother is some expert at looking. Father says she looked him into love with her years ago in Avonlea school and I can well believe it—though I have heard a weird tale of her banging him over the head with a slate at the very beginning of their acquaintance. Mother was a limb when she was a little girl, I understand, and even up to the time when Jem went away she was full of ginger. But let me return to my mutton—that is to say, my new green velvet hat."
86	"All the girls have always said Irene was jealous-minded and I would never believe them before."	"All the girls have always said Irene was jealous-minded and I would never believe them before. But now I feel that perhaps she is."
89	"He is not quite such a nuisance as he was; he has got some backbone and can sit up quite nicely, and he loves his bath now and splashes unsmilingly in the water instead of twisting and shrieking."	"He is not quite such a nuisance as he was; he has got some backbone and can sit up quite nicely, and he loves his bath now and splashes unsmilingly in the water instead of twisting and shrieking. Oh, shall I ever forget those first two months! I don't know how I lived through them. But here I am and here is Jims and we both are going to 'carry on.'"
91	"I do not believe—I know. That does not worry me. We must just trust in God and make big guns."	"I do not believe—I know. That does not worry me. What does worry me is the trouble and expense of it all. But then you cannot make omelets without breaking eggs, so we must just trust in God and make big guns."
91	"'Big guns are good but the Almighty is better, and He is on our side, no matter what the Kaiser says about it.'"	"'Big guns are good but the Almighty is better, and He is on our side, no matter what the Kaiser says about it.' I would have gone crazy many a day lately, Miss Oliver, dear, if I had not sat tight and repeated that to myself."
91	"...I was not flippant, Miss Oliver, dear, only calm and confident in the British navy and our Canadian boys." "I hate going to bed now," said Mrs. Blythe.	"...I was not flippant, Miss Oliver, dear, only calm and confident in the British navy and our Canadian boys. I am like old Mr. William Pollock of the Harbour Head. He is very old and has been ill for a long time, and one night last week he was so low that his daughter-in-law whispered to some one that she thought he was dead. 'Darn it, I ain't,' he called right out—only, Miss Oliver, dear, he did not use so mild a word as 'darn'—'darn it, I ain't, and I don't mean to die until the Kaiser is well licked.' Now, that, Miss Oliver, dear," concluded Susan, "is the kind of spirit I admire." "I admire it but I can't emulate it," sighed Gertrude. "Before this, I have always been able to escape from the hard things of life for a little while by going into dreamland, and coming back like a giant refreshed. But I can't escape from this." "Nor I," said Mrs. Blythe. "I hate going to bed now."
95	"...I cannot console myself with the thought that the tales are not true."	"...I cannot console myself with the thought that the tales are not true. When I read a novel that makes me want to weep I just say severely to myself, 'Now, Susan Baker, you know that is all a pack of lies.'"
95	"Now that he has enlisted she wishes she had never said a word to him."	"Now that he has enlisted she wishes she had never said a word to him. You know Josiah Cooper and William Daley, Mrs. Dr. dear. They used to be fast friends but they quarrelled twenty years ago and have never spoken since. Well, the other day Josiah went to William and said right out, 'Let us be friends. 'Tain't any time to be holding grudges.' William was real glad and held out his hand, and they sat down for a good talk. And in less than half an hour they had quarrelled again, over how the war ought to be fought, Josiah holding that the Dardanelles expedition was rank folly and William maintaining that it was the one sensible thing the Allies had done. And now they are madder at each other than ever and William says Josiah is as bad a pro-German as Whiskers-on-the-Moon."
103	"I hope he will not let his mother hear him talking like that."	"I hope he will not let his mother hear him talking like that," she thought as she stacked the hoes and rake away.
121	"I only know that it seems they do have to go, unless we all want to be Kaiserised."	"I only know that it seems they do have to go, unless we all want to be Kaiserised—for I can assure you that the Monroe doctrine, whatever it is, is nothing to tie to, with Woodrow Wilson behind it. The Huns, Dr. dear, will never be brought to book by notes."
136	"...she was well-known to be a heedless creature."	"...she was well-known to be a heedless creature. One day she found a nest of five eggs as she was going across the fields to church with a brand new blue silk dress on. So she put them in the pocket of her petticoat and when she got to church she forgot all about them and sat down on them and her dress was ruined, not to speak of the petticoat. Let me see—would not Tod be some relation of yours? Your great grandmother West was a MacAllister. Her brother Amos was a MacDonaldite in religion. I am told he used to take the jerks something fearful. But you look more like your great grandfather West than the MacAllisters. He died of a paralytic stroke quite early in life."
141	"Do not let yourself slump like poor Cousin Sophia."	"Do not let yourself slump like poor Cousin Sophia. She said, when the word came, 'Ah, it is nothing but a rift in the clouds. We are up this week but we will be down the next.' 'Well, Sophia Crawford,' said I,—for I will never give in to her, Mrs. Dr. dear—'God himself cannot make two hills without a hollow between them, as I have heard it said, but that is no reason why we should not take the good of the hills when we are on them.' But Cousin Sophia moaned on. 'Here is the Gallipolly expedition a failure and the Grand Duke Nicholas sent off, and everyone knows the Czar of Rooshia is a pro-German and the Allies have no ammunition and Bulgaria is going against us. And the end is not yet, for England and France must be punished for their deadly sins until they repent in sackcloth and ashes.' 'I think myself,' I said, 'that they will do their repenting in khaki and trench mud, and it seems to me that the Huns should have a few sins to repent of also.' 'They are instruments in the hands of the Almighty, to purge the garner,' said Sophia. And then I got mad, Mrs. Dr. dear, and told her I did not and never would believe that the Almighty ever took such dirty instruments in hand for any purpose whatever, and that I did not consider it decent for her to be using the words of Holy Writ as glibly as she was doing in ordinary conversation. She was not, I told her, a minister or even an elder. And for the time being I squelched her, Mrs. Dr. dear. Cousin Sophia has no spirit. She is very different from her niece, Mrs. Dean Crawford over-harbour. You know the Dean Crawfords had five boys and now the new baby is another boy. All the connection and especially Dean Crawford were much disappointed because their hearts had been set on a girl; but Mrs. Dean just laughed and said, 'Everywhere I went this summer I saw the sign "MEN WANTED" staring me in the face. Do you think I could go and have a girl under such circumstances?' There is spirit for you, Mrs. Dr. dear. But Cousin Sophia would say the child was just so much more cannon fodder."
143	"...when they get it into their heads that this war is not a correspondence school."	"...when they get it into their heads that this war is not a correspondence school. They will not," said Susan, energetically waving a saucepan with one hand and a soup ladle with the other, "be too proud to fight then."
152	Cousin Sophia was also there, knitting.	Cousin Sophia was also there, knitting. All the boys were going to be killed in the long run, so Cousin Sophia felt in her bones, but they might better die with warm feet than cold ones, so Cousin Sophia knitted faithfully and gloomily.
153	"I must be getting old, Gilbert." Mrs. Blythe laughed a trifle ruefully. "People are beginning to tell me I look so young. They never tell you that when you are young. But I shall not worry over my silver thread. I never liked red hair."	"I must be getting old, Gilbert." Mrs. Blythe laughed a trifle ruefully. "People are beginning to tell me I look so young. They never tell you that when you are young. But I shall not worry over my silver thread. I never liked red hair. Gilbert, did I ever tell you of that time, years ago at Green Gables, when I dyed my hair? Nobody but Marilla and I knew about it." "Was that the reason you came out once with your hair shingled to the bone?" "Yes. I bought a bottle of dye from a German Jew pedlar. I fondly expected it would turn my hair black—and it turned it green. So it had to be cut off." "You had a narrow escape, Mrs. Dr. dear," exclaimed Susan. "Of course you were too young then to know what a German was. It was a special mercy of Providence that it was only green dye and not poison." "It seems hundreds of years since those Green Gables days," sighed Mrs. Blythe. "They belonged to another world altogether. Life has been cut in two by the chasm of war. What is ahead I don't know—but it can't be a bit like the past. I wonder if those of us who have lived half our lives in the old world will ever feel wholly at home in the new."
164	There were days when they waited in despair for the end as foot by foot the Germans crept nearer and nearer to the grim barrier of desperate France.	There were days when they waited in despair for the end as foot by foot the Germans crept nearer and nearer to the grim barrier of desperate France. Susan's deeds were in her spotless kitchen at Ingleside, but her thoughts were on the hills around Verdun. "Mrs. Dr. dear," she would stick her head in at Mrs. Blythe's door the last thing at night to remark, "I do hope the French have hung onto the Crow's Wood today," and she woke at dawn to wonder if Dead Man's Hill—surely named by some prophet—was still held by the "poyloos." Susan could have drawn a map of the country around Verdun that would have satisfied a chief of staff.
183	"The Huns have not got all the cleverness in the world."	"The Huns have not got all the cleverness in the world. Have you not heard the story of Alistair MacCallum's son Roderick, from the Upper Glen? He is a prisoner in Germany and his mother got a letter from him last week. He wrote that he was being very kindly treated and that all the prisoners had plenty of food and so on, till you would have supposed everything was lovely. But when he signed his name, right in between Roderick and MacCallum, he wrote two Gaelic words that meant 'all lies' and the German censor did not understand Gaelic and thought it was all part of Roddy's name. So he let it pass, never dreaming how he was diddled."
191	"...and Rainbow Valley a haunt of delight with wild asters blowing all over it—our old 'farewell-summers.'"	"...and Rainbow Valley a haunt of delight with wild asters blowing all over it—our old 'farewell-summers.' I always liked that name better than 'aster'—it was a poem in itself."
207	"But I will not forget myself again."	"But I will not forget myself again. Only if things do not go as smoothly in the kitchen for a few days I hope you will make due allowance for me."
212	The aeroplane soared and dipped and circled, and soared again, until it became a mere speck far over the sunset hills.	The aeroplane soared and dipped and circled, and soared again, until it became a mere speck far over the sunset hills. "'With the majesty of pinion Which the Theban eagles bear Sailing with supreme dominion Through the azure fields of air.'" quoted Anne Blythe dreamily.
213	"...he had a wild desire to get back home to the old planet and the companionship of fellow creatures.	"...he had a wild desire to get back home to the old planet and the companionship of fellow creatures. He soon got over that feeling, but he says his first flight alone was a nightmare to him because of that dreadful sensation of ghastly loneliness."
222	"...and such an army cannot be defeated."	"'...and such an army cannot be defeated.' No it cannot. We will win in the end. I will not doubt it for one moment. To let myself doubt would be to 'break faith.'"
222	"He may be a pacifist, but he knows a good investment when it is handed out to him."	"He may be a pacifist, but he knows a good investment when it is handed out to him. Five and a half per cent is five and a half per cent, even when a militaristic government pays it."
238	"...and gone down to defeat in spite of it."	"...and gone down to defeat in spite of it. Ours is 'but one more To baffled millions who have gone before.'"
238	Susan was already planning a new line of defence for the channel ports.	Susan was already planning a new line of defence for the channel ports. "As long as we can hold them," she declared, "the situation is saved. Paris has really no military significance." "Don't," said Gertrude sharply, as if Susan had run something into her. She thought the old worn phrase 'no military significance' nothing short of ghastly mockery under the circumstances, and more terrible to endure than the voice of despair would have been.
238	"Depend upon it, girls, that part of the message can't be true." This point of view cheered them all a little, and helped them through the evening.	"Depend upon it, girls, that part of the message can't be true. I'm going to try to try a long-distance call to town myself." The doctor was no more successful than Rilla had been, but his point of view cheered them all a little, and helped them through the evening.
240	"Is the British navy anchored in those three miles?" demanded Susan scornfully.	"Is the British navy anchored in those three miles?" demanded Susan scornfully. "It is the opinion of a man who knows all about it," said Cousin Sophia solemnly. "There is no such person," retorted Susan. "As for the military critics, they do not know one blessed thing about it, any more than you or I. They have been mistaken times out of number. Why do you always look on the dark side, Sophia Crawford?" "Because there ain't any bright side, Susan Baker." "Oh, is there not? It is the twentieth of April, and Hindy is not in Paris yet, although he said he would be there by April first. Is that not a bright spot at least?"
241	Gertrude shivered with pain.	Gertrude shivered with pain. She looked up at the pictures hanging over Rilla's desk and felt a sudden hatred of Mona Lisa's endless smile. "Will not even this blot it off your face?" she thought savagely.
244	"That is when astronomers think the collision took place which produced this new star."	"That is when astronomers think the collision took place which produced this new star. It makes me feel horribly insignificant," she added under her breath.
242	...they all plucked up heart and courage to carry on, just because a faithful little dog at the Glen station was still watching with unbroken faith for his master to come home.	...they all plucked up heart and courage to carry on, just because a faithful little dog at the Glen station was still watching with unbroken faith for his master to come home. Common sense might scorn—incredulity might mutter "Mere superstition"—but in their hearts the folk of Ingleside stood by their belief that Dog Monday knew.

How Firm a Foundation

This week I was having a rough time with some anxiety (general anxiety, not about one issue in particular). As I was folding laundry one night, I started to sing one of my favorite hymns, How Firm a Foundation.

I love this song. I've always loved it; it's always been so powerful to me and such a strengthening hymn. But as I sang it this week, I felt like Heavenly Father was speaking to me directly through the words, reminding me that he is always, always be there for me. I just wanted to share this song with you, as it has been such a strength to me.

How firm a foundation, ye Saints of the Lord,

Is laid for your faith in his excellent word!

What more can he say than to you he hath said,

Who unto the Savior, who unto the Savior,

Who unto the Savior for refuge have fled?

In ev'ry condition--in sickness, in health,

In poverty's vale or abounding in wealth,

At home or abroad, on the land or the sea--

As thy days may demand, as thy days may demand,

As thy days may demand, so thy succor shall be.

Fear not, I am with thee; oh, be not dismayed,

For I am thy God and will still give thee aid.

I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand,

Upheld by my righteous, upheld by my righteous,

Upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand.

When through the deep waters I call thee to go,

The rivers of sorrow shall not thee o'erflow,

For I will be with thee, thy troubles to bless,

And sanctify to thee, and sanctify to thee,

And sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.

When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie,

My grace, all sufficient, shall be thy supply.

The flame shall not hurt thee; I only design

Thy dross to consume, thy dross to consume,

Thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.

E'en down to old age, all my people shall prove

My sov'reign, eternal, unchangeable love;

And then, when gray hair shall their temples adorn,

Like lambs shall they still, like lambs shall they still,

Like lambs shall they still in my bosom be borne.

The soul that on Jesus hath leaned for repose

I will not, I cannot, desert to his foes;

That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,

I'll never, no never, I'll never, no never,

I'll never, no never, no never forsake!

Collage.com Photo Book Review

*I was provided with a free hardcover and softcover photo book from Collage.com to do this review. The opinions I write below are my own. :)*

A while ago the photo company Collage contacted me and asked if I'd like to review their "One-Click Photo Books." Being the photo book nut that I am, I immediately said yes. :) So I used Collage's website to make and order two books, and I have to tell you, I really really liked their software! Making these photo books was probably the easiest photo book making process I've ever had.

I was able to make two books with Collage: a 11.5"x8.5" hardcover (the same size and format I usually order from Shutterfly) and a 8"x6" softcover. For the hardcover, I decided to make a Christmas present book with some of my favorite pictures from the last year. I chose the pictures and uploaded them to Collage's site, and then clicked their "auto place" button. The "auto place" button immediately placed all the pictures in the book, and gave me an option to make a collage on the cover using all of the pictures. I clicked "yes" to that option, it made the cover - and my book was done! It was seriously that easy. I did rearrange a couple of the pictures on the pages, but that only took a few minutes. I was pretty satisfied with how it put them automatically and there wasn't much to do.

One thing I loooove about Collage's software and wish every photo book company had in their software was what I found when I rearranged pictures on the pages. When I would click and drag a picture, the page would shift around, giving me lots of options for the layout while maintaining each picture's original aspect ratio (shape). One thing I don't like about Shutterfly is that if I want to maintain each picture's aspect ratio (keep it portrait or landscape, and make it show the whole picture), I have to customize each layout that I'm working with. It's really time consuming. I absolutely love that on Collage it maintains the aspect ratio for each picture, and still has a lot of layouts for each page that are so easy to switch between! It's seriously amazing! I know I sound ridiculous, but I seriously love love love Collage's software when it comes to page layouts. It is the best, and so easy.

Okay, so here are the books. Here is the 11.5"x8.5" hardcover:

 Close-up of the cover collage:

 Some of the inside pages (it's a standard, 20-page book):

 And the back, which is white with a small "Collage.com" logo in the middle:

Collage has different background options that you can apply to individual pages or the whole book, but I chose white for the whole book because I just like white. The picture quality is good (though perhaps not quite as sharp as Shutterfly), and the paper quality is good. I did miss the paper end pages that you find in Shutterfly's books or MyPublisher's - the Collage book starts right in on the picture pages without end pages. The binding seems good and secure.

Here's the 8"x6" softcover. For this book, I chose a bunch of pictures of family members, and made it as a kind of "Where's Waldo?" of family for the girls to play with. When it came and I gave it to Toddler, it was an instant hit. She sat on the couch and went through each page, naming each family member. It was just the right size for her to open and look at herself. She carried it around all day, and even insisted on going to sleep with it that night. :)

The two sizes compared (The 8"x6" softcover vs the 11.5"x8.5" hardcover):

And the inside:

So, Collage.com's One-Click Photo Books in a nutshell: I looooved the software. I don't think I can emphasize that enough. This was some of the easiest, best photo book software I have ever worked with. Making a book literally only took a few minutes, and rearranging pictures was so easy that it was fun. Whoever made Collage's software knew what they were doing.

The books themselves are good quality. Again, I wish that the hardcover had endsheets - they're such a good feature! - but the pictures and pages themselves were good quality, and the binding was tight.

If you'd like to check out Collage.com's photo books (or any of their other products - they also make photo blankets, calendars, canvases, etc.), click here: Collage.com.


To see my other photo book reviews, check out the posts below:

Shutterfly Photo Book Review
Shutterfly Premium Leather Layflat Photo Book Review
Shutterfly Calendar Review
York Photo Photo Book Review
AdoramaPix Photo Book Review
MyPublisher Photo Book Review
Photo Book Comparisons

10 reasons I'd never ever ever have a home birth

Home birth in the United States is dangerous. If your baby is born at home, they have at least 3 times the risk of dying than they do if they were born at a hospital, and somewhere around seventeen times the risk of permanent brain damage. US home birth midwives are unregulated, and the vast majority are so uneducated, inexperienced, and unskilled that they would not qualify to practice in any other developed country.

So, here are the top ten reasons that I'd never ever ever have a home birth.

 
1. Appalling rates of Death at home births

Study after study after study has shown that home birth in the United States has at least 3 times the neonatal death rate that hospital birth has. That means that at least three times as many babies die in labor or at birth at home than at the hospital.

To be very clear: these studies are all on planned, midwife-attended home births.

• This study, published February 2014 and with a huge sample size of 10,453,778 births in the US, found that home birth has 4 times the death rate of hospital birth: Term neonatal deaths resulting from home births: an increasing trend, Neonatal Mortality Risk Increased for Home Midwife Births.
• This analysis from Arizona in 2013 found that home birth triples the risk of your baby dying: Outcomes of Home vs. Hospital Births Attended by Midwives: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.
• These CDC statistics from data collected in 2008, released in 2013, show that "the neonatal mortality rate for planned homebirth attended by a non-nurse midwifes (CPM, LM) is 3.5 times higher than comparable risk hospital birth attended by a CNM (certified nurse midwife).": CDC Wonder Database Homebirth Statistics.
• These statistics, gathered by the state of Oregon in 2012 and released in 2013, found home birth had a death rate of term babies 8 times higher than hospital birth: Intrapartum Fetal and Neonatal Deaths Associated with Planned Out-of-Hospital Births in Oregon (2012). Eight times! Judith Rooks, past president of the American College of Nurse-Midwives and the CNM in charge of collecting the data, said: "Many women have been told that out of hospital births are as safe or safer than births in hospitals…But out-of-hospital births are not as safe as births in hospitals in Oregon, where many of them are attended by birth attendants who have not completed an educational curriculum designed to provide all the knowledge, skills and judgment needed by midwives who practice in any setting."
• And this data, collected by the Midwives Alliance of North America themselves, found that babies born at home died 5.5 times more often than babies born at hospitals: MANA Home Birth Data 2004-2009. And if you looked at various subgroups - such as breech babies - the numbers were truly shocking. MANA reported, "Of 222 babies presenting in breech position, 5 died either during labor or the neonatal period." That's a rate of almost 22.5 deaths per 1000 babies born. Breech babies born in the hospital have a rate of 0.8/1000. So breech babies born at home died at a rate 28 times higher than those born in the hospital. That's HUGE.

Four times the death rate, three times the death rate, three and a half times the death rate, eight times the death rate, five and a half times the death rate - one thing that all these studies have in common is that they clearly show giving birth at home significantly increases the chance that your baby will die during birth.

Homebirth advocates like to say that "babies die in hospitals too," but the difference is that babies don't die preventable deaths at hospitals. At a homebirth, at least two out of every three babies that die die for causes that would not have killed them in a hospital.


2. Appalling rates of Brain Damage at home births

One study that came out this year, Home birth and risk of neonatal hypoxic ischemic encephalopathy, found that babies born at home birth have 17 times the amount of brain injuries that babies born at hospitals do. Seventeen times! These brain injuries are caused by lack of oxygen to the baby during labor and delivery. It's really not surprising that dramatically higher rates of brain injuries occur at home births, since the lack of electronic fetal monitoring equipment at home makes it almost impossible to tell if a baby is being deprived of oxygen during labor.

In the hospital, the nurses and doctors are continually monitoring your baby during labor and will act if your baby is in distress (meaning, if she's not getting enough oxygen). If needed, the doctor can give you a c-section, and that can save your baby's brain function. Thus, the rates of brain damage are much, much lower at the hospital.  At home, midwives have only a doppler to listen to your baby's heartbeat, and that can't tell them the same information that electronic fetal monitoring can. So, your midwife misses the warning signs, and doesn't act. And even if she does realize the baby's not getting enough oxygen, what can your midwife do? At the hospital, doctors can perform an emergency c-section in minutes and save the baby's life and/or brain function. At home, midwives can...send you to the hospital. Or do nothing. And every minute the baby is deprived of oxygen, the brain damage worsens.

Correspondingly, another study published in 2012, Selected perinatal outcomes associated with planned home births in the United States, found that three times as many babies at home births have seizures than babies born in the hospital.

Going right along both with the increased rates of brain damage at home birth and increased numbers of seizures at home births, researchers have found that having a baby at home instead of the hospital increases the risk of that baby having a five-minute Apgar score of 0 by over ten times.

Apgar scores are assigned to babies at 1 minute and 5 minutes after birth to assess how the baby is doing. They measure complexion (from blue or gray to pink), pulse, reflex (response to stimulation), activity, and respiratory effort (how well the baby is breathing). A score of 10 is perfect; a score of 0 means that there are no signs of life. And babies born at home have over ten times the risk of showing no signs of life five minutes after they are born compared to babies delivered by OBs in the hospital. Ten times the risk that your baby will have no signs of life after five whole minutes! Many of those babies are eventually resuscitated, but what kind of brain damage will there after going so long without any oxygen?


3. Lack of equipment at home

Both of these points - higher rates of death at home birth and higher rates of brain damage at home birth - bring me to my next point: your home does not have the same equipment a hospital does. And no matter how big the bag your midwife brings with her is, she will still not have the same equipment a hospital has.

 ***Thank you to everyone who contributed to this section.***

Resources the hospital has that your midwife does not:

• Electronic Fetal Monitoring. Does your home have electronic fetal monitoring (the equipment, mentioned above, that will tell you if your baby is being deprived of oxygen)? No. Your midwife will have a doppler to listen to the baby's heart rate at intermittent time intervals. Does that seem good enough? It isn't. Here are two good articles about electronic fetal monitoring that explain why: Electronic fetal monitoring gives much more information and Electronic fetal monitoring halves early neonatal mortality.

Electronic fetal monitoring gives much more information explains what EFM can tell you that a doppler can't. In a nutshell, by just listening to the baby's heart rate with a doppler you will miss patterns in the heart rate like decreased variability, absence of accelerations, and subtle late decelerations - all signs of a baby deprived of oxygen and in distress. An EFM tracing will show these things, the nurses and doctors will see and act on it, and your baby's life and brain function will stay intact. At home...nope. You cannot measure variability with a doppler and it's almost impossible to determine if there are no accelerations or if there are late decelerations. So, at home, you cannot tell if your baby is being deprived of oxygen during labor.

By the time your baby's heart rate shows bradycardia - a sustained abnormally low heart rate (something your midwife can detect) - it's almost certainly too late. So a baby can have a heart rate in the normal range the entire period of labor, and still drop mostly dead (and almost certainly brain damaged) into the midwife's hands. That wouldn't happen in a hospital, because their distress would have been picked up on the monitors and interventions would have been performed to save them. Home birth advocates often complain about "unnecessary interventions" in the hospital, seemingly without realizing that these same interventions save lives and brain function. When you decrease interventions, you increase brain damage. When you decrease interventions, you increase deaths.

Electronic fetal monitoring halves early neonatal mortality explains about a study published in 2011, "Electronic fetal heart rate monitoring and its relationship to neonatal and infant mortality in the United State," published by the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology in a "Report of Major Impact," that shows that electronic fetal monitoring cuts early neonatal death (from birth to 7 days) rates in half. I'll repeat that with less words - Electronic Fetal Monitoring cuts early neonatal death in half. EFM allows nurses and doctors to immediately see that a baby is in distress, and act in time to save them from death and brain damage. At home you do not have that.

• An operating room. This goes along with the EFM mentioned above. If it's discovered during labor that your baby is being deprived of oxygen, a c-section could save their life and their brain function. In the hospital, an emergency c-section can be performed in minutes. At home, you have to get to the hospital before a c-section can be performed. And as I explain below, from moment of the decision at home "This is an emergency, let's go to the hospital," to an emergency c-section at hospital, it will be at least over thirty minutes. And every minute matters during an emergency.
• A resuscitation team that can do the specialized work required for a newborn. If your baby is born with breathing issues, or not breathing at all, hospitals have a resuscitation team who are well-practiced in advanced resuscitation skills and who immediately begin to work on your baby with equipment for suctioning, ventilation, oxygenation, intubation, central line IV access, administration of emergency drugs, monitoring, and lab value assessments.  Home birth midwives often say that they are trained in NRP (Neonatal Resuscitation Program), and they indeed might have taken a class, but they cannot perform true NRP at home because they do not have the equipment, medications, or training necessary to do so. This article goes more into that: A neonatal resuscitation class does NOT mean that a midwife is actually qualified to resuscitate a baby. Additionally, hospitals have a team of professionals with the appropriate equipment to deal with a maternal resuscitation. What happens at home if the baby and mother need emergency attention at the same time?
• More staff. At a home birth, there are at most two midwives, and more usually one, dealing with the needs of two people. At a hospital, the staff is able to greatly outnumber you if it looks like it might be necessary. In the event of an emergency like a tight nuchal cord, shoulder dystocia or other  problem, there will be many hands to immediately help. If your labor is prolonged, a change of shift means the staff will be adequately rested. At home births, there is no change of staff for your midwife, and there are no extra teams of people to help when needed.
• More practice. Homebirth midwives are considered "experienced" if they've attended more than a hundred births. OB residents get that much experience in their first few months. When the Labor & Delivery unit is quiet, the staff run drills on coping with things like shoulder dystocia.
• Supplies. Hospitals have the stuff they need to take care of you. They bought it in bulk. When appropriate, they have it wrapped up in sterile packaging. You are not responsible for making sure the hospital has enough chux pads, or suturing kits, or units of O-. There's a department of administrators that makes sure the hospital has the necessary supplies, and that they stored them correctly. 
• IV drugs to stop a postpartum hemorrhage before it really gets off the ground. According to MANA's own data, 15% of home birth mothers suffered excessive blood loss. Some midwives carry pitocin that they can inject, but in cases of severe postpartum hemorrhage that is not enough to stop the bleeding. IV drugs are needed, and those can only be administered by a CNM or at the hospital. CPMs and other lay midwives will not have those drugs.
• A Blood Bank. In addition to strong medications that a midwife cannot legally have or administer, the hospital has a blood bank on site. If the worst happens and you hemorrhage uncontrollably, the hospital has blood products that can save your life should other measures to control hemorrhaging fail. If you lose too much blood, and if it's not replaced soon enough, you go into irreversible hypovolemic shock and die. The blood bank can supply red cells, plasma, clotting factors and platelets ... whatever is needed. And they can supply it quickly. If your baby needs transfusions, the blood bank will use blood from O-NEG donors that has been rigorously screened.
• Oversight, accountability and witnesses. If something goes wrong at a homebirth, it is incredibly easy for a midwife to get away with something they did wrong. Reporting them to NARM (if they are a CPM) does basically nothing, and they can continue to practice without disclosing their history of injuries or deaths to their future clients. At the hospital, nurses, doctors, and CNMs have people watching over them every single day. They are accountable for their actions. They have insurance. If they make a mistake, their insurance will pay for your medical bills. Almost no home birth midwives are insured. If they make a mistake and you have huge medical bills because of it (or life-long medical bills to pay in the case of a brain-damaged child), there is no safety net for you to fall back on.

Homebirth advocates like to say that complications are rare, and you likely won't need any of this stuff at your birth. So let me remind you - the death rate at home birth is at least 3 times higher than the death rate at the hospital. The rate of brain damage is 17 times higher. A lot of women and their babies did need all this stuff at home - and it wasn't there.

 4. "Five minutes" from a hospital is too far from a hospital

The talk above of oxygen deprivation brings me to my next point - distance from the hospital.  People planning home births often say something like, "We live just five minutes from the hospital in case anything goes wrong!"

I want to ask you something - how long can you hold your breath? Can you hold it for five minutes? Try holding it for the next five minutes. Because every minute from the time something goes wrong until you are at the hospital, in the operating room ready for an emergency c-section, your baby will be holding their breath. Do you think they can live through that? Do you think they can live through that without brain damage?

"Five minutes from the hospital" is not really five minutes from the hospital. Sure, on a normal day, once you are in your car you might be able to drive from your house to the hospital in five minutes. But this is not a normal day. You are in labor, in severe pain, and there is an emergency occurring. It could take five minutes - or more - just to get from whatever room you are in to the car. Then it could take another five minutes to drive to the hospital, if the traffic happens to be good and you don't hit any red lights. And even if you drive up to and park in front of the ER, it will probably take another couple minutes to make it out of the car, inside the ER, and explain the situation. They have to evaluate you themselves, and make the decision to do an emergency c-section. Then they have to prep your for surgery. All of that takes at least another twenty minutes. At this point, it's been at least forty minutes from the moment of decision to go to the hospital until you're going into surgery. Can you hold your breath for that long? Can your baby? Is that "five minutes away?"

And if you think this would all be significantly sped up if you call for an ambulance at the moment of decision - think again. First, the ambulance has to get to you. If you're lucky, it will be at your house in five minutes or less. They load you up - another five minutes. Drive to the hospital - another five minutes. Unloading you, hooking you up to monitors, getting the story and your history, checking the baby, prepping you for surgery - another twenty minutes. At the very best, from moment of decision to incision to save your baby is 35 minutes.

So remember, "living five minutes from the hospital" really means "living over thirty-five minutes away from an emergency c-section." And every minute counts when your baby is deprived of oxygen.

*Edited to add* - this is a good piece about the same point: When Minutes Matter in Nursing


5. Home birth midwives are shockingly undereducated and unregulated.

In trying to understand why home birth is so dangerous, it's important to understand the "qualifications" of home birth midwives.

You know how when you go to the doctor's office, the doctor who sees you has to have gone to medical school and have a medical degree, and currently be licensed? Or when you go to the hospital, and a nurse attends you, she has to have gone to nursing school and have a nursing degree? Or if you see a Physician Assistant, they had to have gone to PA school and have a PA degree? Or even when you go to the dentist, the dentist had to go to dental school and get a dental degree and be licensed to practice? In short, when you see any medical professional they had to attend a regulated, certified school, obtain a degree, obtain a license, and pass tests and regulations that prove they are qualified to attend you?

Home birth midwives don't have to do that.

In other countries, they do. In the UK, in the Netherlands, in Canada - in every other first world country - they have to have degrees and licensure to prove that they know what they're doing. There are regulations and people closely watching over them to hold them accountable for their actions. In the US - nope. Regulations vary widely by state and in several states literally anyone can call themselves a "midwife" and immediately start practicing.  Many are "certified" as "Certified Professional Midwives" by the North American Registry of Midwives, but the certification requirements are weak. In 2012, the requirements were "strengthened" to include a high school degree.

Here are a couple charts that explain the difference between the midwives who work at doctors offices and in hospitals (CNMs) and home birth midwives (CPMs, LMs, lay midwives, etc.):

via

via

Even in countries idealized by home birth advocates, where home birth is integrated into the medical system and homebirth midwives have far more education and standards than they do in the US, it is still more dangerous to have a homebirth with a midwife than a hospital birth with an OB. In fact, in the Netherlands it's more dangerous to be a low-risk woman giving birth with a midwife than a high-risk woman giving birth with an OB. This study from the Netherlands found that "Delivery related perinatal death was significantly higher among low risk pregnancies in midwife supervised primary care than among high risk pregnancies in obstetrician supervised secondary care." More babies died from low-risk pregnancies under the care of midwives than from high-risk pregnancies under the care of OBs!

And this holds true both in the hospital and out! In this last study from the Netherlands, both hospital births and home births with midwives had higher neonatal death rates than hospital births with OBs.

Now, if you think you'll be safe at home birth if you choose a CNM instead of a CPM, think again. Researchers in 2009 found that home birth with a CNM had twice as many babies die than hospital birth with a CNM. Even if your midwife is a CNM instead of a CPM, you still won't be able to tell at home if your baby is being deprived of oxygen, you won't have an operating room if it becomes urgently needed, and you won't have a neonatal resuscitation team with all of the equipment that might be needed to save your baby.

The hypothetical situations you can imagine when you think about home birth midwives' lack of education and regulation - like, "If my labor suddenly goes from low-risk to high-risk at home, will my midwife know what to do? Will she have the skills and training to save my baby?" - clearly actually happen at home, as we can see from the numbers. With home birth midwives, three times as many babies die. With home birth midwives, seventeen times as many babies have brain injuries. These are the numbers that result from the faulty regulation and pitiful education requirements required of US home birth midwives.


6. The United States has one of the lowest perinatal mortality rates in the world (which tells you they have some of the best obstetric care and practices in the world)

Home birth advocates love to say that OBs are incompetent and the US medical system is weak, because "the US infant mortality rate is one of the worst in the world's developed countries."

The problem with this claim? Infant mortality is the wrong statistic to use. "Infant mortality" records the deaths of all babies who die in the first whole year of life. It is a measure of pediatric care, not obstetric care.

"According to the World Health Organization, the best measure of obstetric care is perinatal mortality, usually defined as deaths from 28 weeks of pregnancy (stillbirths) through 28 days of life. And according to the World Health Organization, the United States has one of the lowest perinatal mortality rates in the world, lower than Denmark, the UK and the Netherlands." You can see those numbers here: World Health Organization, Neonatal and Perinatal Mortality or read another article about it here: Infant vs. Perinatal Mortality.

Now, in the pro-homebirth movie "The Business of Being Born," they repeat multiple times that the US has a poor infant mortality rate (a caption even references it as the "newborn death rate," but they are talking about infant mortality rate, and the two are not the same thing!), while implying this means hospitals are dangerous and doctors don't know what they're doing.  But infant mortality is the wrong statistic to measure obstetric safety! Which tells us one of two things: Either the people who made this movie about obstetric safety don't understand how obstetric safety is measured, or else they are deliberately trying to mislead their audience. If you've watched "The Business of Being Born" and have any questions about the statistics it talks about in that movie, a doula at the blog What Ifs and Fears Are Welcome breaks down the movie in a great post, The Business of Being Misled. She also talks about it in her personal story, What Drew Me to Home Birth and What Turned Me Away. Another great post of hers is 5 Reasons We Decided Against Home Birth.

The US has some of the best obstetric care and practices in the world, and it's proved by the US's low perinatal mortality rate. I want to take advantage of that great obstetric care by giving birth in a hospital.


7. OBs give personalized care; home birth midwives give "one size fits all care."

In deciding to give birth at a hospital or at home, women will often hear things from home birth advocates like "homebirth midwives give so much more personalized care than OBs! They really know who you are and tailor their care to you!" This is, in fact, the opposite of the truth. OBs give personalized care; midwives give "one size fits all" care.

OBs will take everything about you into account when recommending a course of action - your age, weight, pre-exisiting conditions, medical history, previous complications, previous shoulder dystocias or c-sections or postpartum hemorrhages, if you have gestational diabetes or group B strep, if the baby is breech or very large or very small or twins - everything. They take everything into account and help you have a safe pregnancy and delivery. They make different recommendations to each person based on that person's medical history and current health.

Midwives, on the other hand? Sure, a midwife will chat with you and know all of your childrens' names and what your husband does for a living, but what about your medical care? Is her version of "personalizing your healthcare" to your risk factors telling you to ignore them? Will she base her recommendations on all of your medical history and current risk factors, or will she tell you that you, regardless of your risk factors, can manage a home birth? That you can have an unmedicated vaginal delivery? Of course she'll tell you that. Because if she tells you anything otherwise, she will lose you as a client. Midwives will tell you platitudes like "Your body is made for this." "Trust birth." "Women have been doing this for thousands of years." If they tell you that because of your blood pressure, or because your baby is breech, or because you had a previous cesarean, or because you are now past 40 weeks pregnant, or because it's your first baby, or because your pelvis is a different shape, or because you are group B step positive, that your baby's risk of death or injury is substantially higher in a home birth, they know they will lose you as a client. So, they don't tell you that. Another author sums it up better than I could about the lack of individualized care that comes from homebirth midwives:

"Personal characteristics are irrelevant. Advanced maternal age, maternal obesity, pre-existing maternal disease? It doesn’t matter because the counseling and treatment plan are always the same: you can and should have an unmedicated vaginal birth at home.

Medical history is irrelevant. Had a previous shoulder dystocia, C-section, postpartum hemorrhage? Who cares? You can and should have an unmedicated vaginal birth at home.

Complications are irrelevant. Baby is breech, have gestational diabetes, colonized by group B strep? Who cares? You can and should have an unmedicated vaginal birth at home.

Labor complications are irrelevant. Dysfunctional labor, prolonged rupture of membranes, pushing for 4 hours? Who cares? You should still stay home because you can and should have an unmedicated vaginal birth at home."
 

8. Our bodies are not perfect

Home birth advocates often say things like, "Your body is made for this," "Women have been doing this for thousands of years," and "Trust birth."

Our bodies were made for eating. Does that mean no one chokes? It doesn't really matter what our bodies are "made to do" - things can still go wrong, and people can be seriously injured or die. Human bodies are not perfect, and we cannot always predict what they are going to do.

And there is no shame in having an imperfect body. There is no shame in having complications in labor. We all have imperfect bodies. It's not something we can control. You didn't "fail," you aren't "broken" - you are human.

Just because birth is "natural," just because birth is "normal," does not mean that birth is safe.

Hemlock is natural. Does that make it safe?

Severe food allergies are normal. Does that make them safe?

"Normal" is a measure of frequency and "natural" means that you can find it in nature. Neither are a measure of safety. Birth can be safe, and it can also be dangerous. Birth does inherently carry risk. There is no reason that you should trust it. Yes, women have been doing this for thousands of years, and countless women and babies have died in birth in that time. Emergency situations can suddenly arise in completely healthy, "low-risk" women and babies during labor. If those situations are not dealt with properly, either because lack of education or technology, lives can be and are lost.

Home birth advocates like to claim that because women at home are moving and walking around, that complications are rare, and that the hospital itself makes birth dangerous. So I will remind you again -  there is a clear, three times higher rate of death of babies born at home. Complications are not rare, and they cannot be dealt with adequately at home.


9. Freestanding Birth Centers are Dangerous, Too

An important end note about birth centers:  When I was pregnant with my first and reading "What to Expect What Your Expecting" about hospitals, birth centers, and home births, I thought that a birth center was a kind of nice middle ground between hospitals and home births. I thought it was some kind of detached labor and delivery ward, like what you'd have at a hospital, just not attached to a hospital.

It is not.

First of all, and this is very important to understand, there are two kinds of birth centers. The first type is the kind that I originally thought they all were: they are attached to hospitals, and are staffed with licensed, nurse midwives. As this post explains, "If at any time during your pregnancy or labor complications arise, your care would shift to that of an obstetrician at the same birth center or hospital." Medical technology is available, everyone has insurance, and there are regulations and oversight.

The other type of birth center is a freestanding birth center, which is not directly overseen by a hospital. Choosing to give birth at a freestanding birth center is, in the words of Sara, whose son Magnus died at a birth center, choosing "a home birth in someone else's 'home.'" Freestanding birth centers are not some kind of detached labor and delivery wing. They do not have doctors. They do not have the equipment you would have at a hospital. They have the same midwives, with the same lack of education and regulation, that deliver babies at home births. Babies born at freestanding birth centers are more than three times more likely to have a 5-minute Apgar score of 0 (no signs of life) than those born at a hospital. Babies born at freestanding birth centers are almost twice as likely to have seizures than those born at the hospital. Babies born at freestanding birth centers are twice as likely to die than those at the hospital.

The excellent website "Safer Midwifery for Michigan" has a good post about birth centers called What We're Seeking: Defining "Birth Center". In it, they explain: "Freestanding birth centers do not have emergency medical equipment beyond oxygen.  They cannot intubate or give medications that would be used in a resuscitation circumstance. They do not use Electronic Fetal Heart Monitoring, instead using intermittent Doppler assessments.  Midwives working at a freestanding birth center may or may not be licensed as individual, may or may not carry insurance, and may or may not be trained in NRP (Neonatal Resuscitation Program). There is no requirement for any midwife at a birth center to have a license. The bottom line is that in the event of an emergency, they are under equipped for life saving measures."


And finally, the 10th reason I would never have a home birth:

10. I know their names.

I've read Aquila's story. And Mary Beth's. And Wren's. And Sam's. And Thomas's. And Zen's. And Grant's. And Angela's. And Sheppard's. And Magnus's. And Shridam's.  And Silas's. And Vylette's. And Brody's. And Sarai's. And Zinn's. And Gavin Michael's. And every one of these babies.

Gavin's mother said this on her Facebook page, In Light of Gavin Michael:

"Last year, today was my due date. I wish I had Gavin on this date or around it so I wouldn't have to go through what I have. He would be here and I'd spend my time raising him instead of sharing my story to help educate people.

Honestly, I didn't know anything compared to what I do now. I didn't know the risks and dangers of home birth. I didn't know people pretended to be more educated than they actually are. I didn't know there is no system set up for accountability. I didn't know babies were becoming injured or dying from home birth.

There are so many things I really did not know. I only was told the positive stuff but never the other side of things. I didn't know that when home birth goes bad, it goes insanely bad in ways that I couldn't imagine.

I've gone through many what ifs and thought about what I could have changed to have my son here alive today. The only way would have been if I had an OB. They would have explained risks to me truthfully. They wouldn't let me go so far over due. They would have been paying attention to the fluid levels.

So I could have picked any OB out there and my son would be alive. I wouldn't have cared if their bedside manner wasn't very good or if they didn't spend that much time with me for appointments. Being nice doesn't mean a baby is going to be ok.

I picked a home birth with a CPM because I believed it was safe and the midwife would know if something was wrong to protect us. To take care of us. To be there for everything.

I was wrong.

What to expect is that everyone in the home birth community will turn on you. They will support the midwife that caused your pain and blame the mother for what happened. They will never ask you what really happened or care about it. They prefer no one knows about what happened so others don't start considering the real lack of safety of home birth.

You will be slammed and bashed by many other women out there. You will be deleted if you try to tell anyone your story. You will be banned from pages for "fear mongering" when it's just you sharing your real story.

After all this, you get to live with the guilt for choosing a home birth. For trusting the person you hired to be your midwife. For believing in a world that does not exist.

And you will be alone because they have cast you out. People will know your name because they are watching what you do or say. They hope one day you will shut up and go away because they have already covered you up like you never happened.

This is true home birth and the dark side they do not want anyone to know about. This is why I share my story, even though people tell me off or get mad at me. Because there are women out there that are just like I was. They have no idea what they were getting into and I don't want them to go through this."

As the author of the blog in the last link in the list above says,

"These are 40 deaths that I wrote about in the past 2 years. And only the American homebirth deaths. And only the deaths that I heard about.

Homebirth represents approximately 1% of US births. When you look at term births of normal sized babies to white women, homebirth represents approximately 1.4% births. So if you are planning to tell me that “babies die in the hospital, too,” ask yourself if you’ve heard of nearly 3000 deaths of term babies in the hospital in the past 2 years.

Homebirth kills babies (and mothers) and the only people who appear to be unaware of that fact are homebirth advocates.

Thinking about homebirth? Maybe you should think about these babies (and their mothers), and think again."

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