Interesting Article...

Hello, everyone!! I recently came across this article that I found interesting (couldn't have anything to do with my training to be a Doula!), and thought I would share it! :)

It is the story of a woman who had a natural home birth following THREE cesarean births!!

Read the full story here.

Thank you to Michelle Duggar

Thank You Michelle Duggar from Douglas Phillips on Vimeo.

Statistics on the Baby Conference Attendees!

The votes are in!

We had a wonderful time last night doing a bit of polling at the Baby Conference here in San Antonio. And the questions all had to do with babies and the Baby Conference! :)

43% of the people at the Baby Conference traveled up to 1,499 miles to get here

28% of the people at the BC are first generation Christians

56% of the people at the BC married between the ages of 18-23

34% of the people at the BC have had at least one home birth

50% of the people at the BC have between 3-6 children

44% of the people at the BC have had 1 or 2 miscarriages

90%  of the people at the BC believe that abortion is wrong in all circumstances

91% of the people at the BC are currently home educating their children

94% of the people at the BC desire as many children as the Lord will give them

66% of the people at the BC have used birth control at some point in their marriage, but no longer use it

83% of people at the BC have not adopted

37% of people at the BC have a desire to adopt, plus 15% are seriously considering adoption

Notes from a Symposium on Biomedical Ethics for Birth

This afternoon there was a symposium held on Biomedical Ethics for Birth, with a panel of Doug Phillips, Geoff Botkin, Dr. Ed Payne, and Dan Becker. The Symposium was subtitled, The Brave New World Your Children are Inheriting.

This symposium posed some very though-provoking questions- Is In Vitro Fertilization right or wrong? Is IVF consistent with the right use of medicine? Does man have the right to determine 'quality of life'? What are some of the critical issues that Christians are facing?

I really appreciated Mr. Doug's sentiment, "Science is not the author of life. Doctors are not the authors of life. God is the Author of life!"

Dan Becker, of the Georgia Right to Life, asked, "By what standard?" Think about it. Where do we get our ideas and worldview when it comes to birth, life, and babies? Do we get our viewpoint straight from the Word of God? Or have we been so influenced by our surrounding culture that we view these things the same way it does?

Mr. Becker gave a startling statistic during the panel discussion: "90% of Down's Syndrome children are being aborted today." Shocking, isn't it?

Interestingly, the panel fell on two sides of the debate over IVF. Dan Becker represented the view that IVF is not inherently wrong, and, in fact, looks upon surrogacy and embryonic adoption as "a form of rescue" for these children.

Mr. Phillips, however, articulated the position that,

1.- There is such a thing as medical adultery, and we need to begin using this terminology.

2.- Any attempt to introduce elements from other people outside of the marriage is wrong, perhaps even sinful.

He went on, "I think we should take a stand against surrogacy. Period... I am an emphatic no-surrogacy man. It's clearly unnatural."

Mr. Phillips clearly propounded the position that while we should be concerned about the murder of children, embryonic adoption is not a way to rectify the situation. Thus, "it is better to be obedient than to disobey and 'save life'."

And as he said in closing, "It's either right or wrong."

We must defend life, especially that of the unborn.

We must draw a line in the sand, and stand firm in the face of opposition.

God Bless!

An Interview with Michelle Duggar

One of the messages I attended today was an interview of Michelle Duggar by Beall Phillips. It was an amazing time that gave an intimate look at the Duggar family!

One of my favorite parts of the discussion was when Beall and Michelle were discussing family size and allowing God to control the womb. My two favorite quotes, one from each of them, are as follows-

"It's not the number of children, it's the heart."

Michelle Duggar

"It's your heart attitude before the Lord that matters."

Beall Phillips

What a reminder that God cares about the state of our hearts in any issue, whether that be submitting to our Daddy, or allowing God to decide the number of children we have (or will have)!

Naming Babies

This morning, Doug Phillips gave a wonderful message on how to give your children (or future children) epistemologically self-conscious names!

He gave advice to pick names that reflect-

1.- A Vision for the Kingdom of God

2.- A Vision to inspire the recipient of the name

3.- A Vision to disciple the recipient through his name

4.- The meaning and context the parents ascribe to the name

5.- The fact that great generations give great names to their children


He went on to give five common approaches to naming babies-

1.- Virtue Names (such as Faith, Remember, Ebeneezer)

2.- Biblical Honor (such as Joshua, Mary, Adam)

3.- Historical Names (such as George Washington, Patrick Henry)

4.- Generational Honor (names that honor family members)

Mr. Doug pointed out that five of the Alamo defenders were named George Washington, and six of the Alamo defenders were named George, most likely after George Washington. Isn't that amazing?!

As Mr. Doug said, "Names are a huge deal!"

The Wonders of Embryology

Last night, Mr. Geoff Botkin gave a wonderful message on The Wonders of Embryology,  in which he showed photos similar to the one below.

Choose Life!

Doug Phillips gave a charge to all of us at the end of his lecture:

"Choose Blessings. Choose Life. Choose Life and Multiply!"

The Presuppositions and Ethical Guidelines for the Baby Conference

1.- Sufficiency of Scripture

2.- Humility before God

3.- The Fear of the Lord

4.- The Creation Order and Design

5.- The Dominion Mandae

6.- Sovereignty and Sanctity

7.- The Unity of Marriage

8.- The Right use of Medicine

9.- Children are a Blessing
"We apply for curses and reject blessings"

10.- Obedience is the Highest Priority
"It is not life at all costs, it is life according to God's Program."

The Baby Conference has begun!

The Baby Conference has begun! The purpose of the Baby Conference is to rally people to the cry- "We recognize that babies are not a burden, babies are a blessing!" as Adam McManus puts it.

Mr. Doug Phillips began the evening with his lecture, The Long War Against Babies.

"All across America, by the millions, Christians abort children throught abortifacients such as the Pill," Doug Phillips said. "One in five women never have any children, up from one in ten in the nineties."

He went on to say that it has been guessed that somewhere in the neighborhood of 70,000,000 infants have died because of abortifacients.

Mr. Doug raised questions such as,

How badly should married couples desire children?

Who is responsible for the opening and closing of the womb?

How many million children have died in the wombs of unwitting Christian parents?

The Baby Conference Begins Tonight!

Do You Love Children?

Jasmine Turner

Do you love children? Do you really love children?

Our culture is one that is unequivocally anti-children. American homes, have, for the most part, been stripped of all semblance of family, and turned into a meeting place for individuals who happen to be biologically related to one another.

James Turner, Rayah Pogue, and Jasmine Turner

Our culture hates biblical patriarchy. Our culture hates biblical womanhood and motherhood. Our culture hates courageous, visionary boyhood, and it hates sturdy, feminine daughterhood. But even more, it hates babies.

James Turner and Thomas Schepian

And I am firmly convinced that the reason our culture so viciously hates babies is 1) because children are distinctly called gifts from God in Holy Scripture, and 2) because we, as a culture, have rejected the biblical patterns God laid out for us in His Word.

Virginia Phillips

One of the greatest ways we can influence our culture is to whole-heartedly embrace God's roles for us as His people, especially us as daughters. For we are going to be the next generation's mothers.

Jerah Pogue

And embracing God's design for us as Christian daughters includes loving children!

Jerah and Rayah Pogue, Faith and Virginia Phillips, and other little girls at the
2010 Father and Daughter Retreat

God bless, and I hope to see you at the Baby Conference!

Happy Fourth from San Antonio!

Happy Fourth of July

from San Antonio, Texas!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful day celebrating the mercies of our Heavenly Father, and the many sacrifices of our heroic forefathers!

I wanted to share with everyone something I saw today in a store along the riverwalk:

Hope to see ya'll at the Baby Conference this week!

A Reversal Baby Turns One

Yes, a reversal baby turns one- tomorrow!

Just over two years ago, some dear friends, Mark and Mary Herring, had a reversal, and one year ago tomorrow, their first reversal baby, Sarah Elizabeth, was born.

But that's not all! In May of this year, they found out that they're expecting once again, due in December 2010. 

 

The Lord is so good! May we all rejoice with the Herrings that He opened their eyes to His truth about the blessing of babies, and that He has so mercifully bestowed two more marvelous blessings upon them!

 

 

 

“Behold, children are a gift of the Lord,

The fruit of the womb is a reward.”

Psalm 127:3

 

“How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them;

They will not be ashamed

When they speak with their enemies in the gate.”

Psalm 127:5

 

Happy Birthday, Sarah Elizabeth!

 

The Blessing of Children

Truitt Hendeerson, Sarah Henderson, Sophie Henderson, Ethan Davis, Hannah Davis, Austin Davis, James Turner

“Behold, children are a gift of the Lord,

The fruit of the womb is a reward.

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,

So are the children of one's youth.

How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them...”

 

Psalm 127:3-5

 

 

Isn't that wonderful? God calls children gifts, rewards, blessings, and arrows all in one passage! Yet in our culture, children are looked upon as none of these.

In fact, our culture has a totally different vernacular than the Word of God when it comes to children- they're often referred to as burdens, inconveniences, and pains.

This stems from a worldview that is diametrically opposed to Biblical Christianity and its command to “be fruitful and multiply” (Genesis 1:28) Yet this mentality pervades even most evangelical churches!
 
Speaking of the way the world views debt and children, Doug Phillips says, “We apply for curses, and abort our blessings.”
 
 

Sarah and Blake Henderson

 

 

Millions of children all over the world are aborted every year. Just since Roe v. Wade in 1973, more than 50 million babies have been aborted in America alone. That averages at nearly one and a half million babies a year, and around four thousand babies killed every day.


Sickening isn't it?
 
 

Austin Davis, James Turner, Truitt Henderson, and Ethan Davis

 

 

And that number doesn't even take into account the countless “unknown” abortions caused by contraceptives, such as the Pill, which are abortifacient. Or the many children that are refused by parents who choose to “play god” and cut off their seed through tubals.


It seems that many have forgotten that babies are not fetuses- they're human beings! Precious children that the Lord Jesus created in His Own Image. Babies are not blobs. Babies are not kittens. Babies are humans, and sinful though they may be, they have eternal souls!
 
 

Rayah Pogue

 

 

So what can we do?

First, we can ask God to change our hearts. We must ask Him to help us stop looking at babies and children the world's way, and start looking at them the way He intended us to.
 
 

Sarah Elizabeth Herring

 

 

Second, we must begin to accept with open arms the wonderful blessings that the Lord sends to us, whether they come in the form of a pregnancy, reversal babies, or adopted children.
 
 

Rayah Pogue, Kourtney and Kaitlynn Thompson, and Jerah Pogue

 

 

And last of all, we should shout from the roof tops (or blog posts :p ) that children are a blessing, and praise God for the ones we have!
 

Why not come celebrate life at the

Baby Conference?

 

 

Children are a Blessing!

I would highly recommend Nathaniel Darnell's article on The Lost Appeal of the Pill at Persevero! to everyone, as it is very timely in its observations on the Pill.

And congratulations to David and Monica Brown on their great news- "Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, So are the children of one's youth." (Psalm 127:4)

Hope to see ya'll at the Baby Conference!

Baby Conference Topics Announced

The lecture topics for the Baby Conference have been announced! With speakers ranging from Doug Phillips, Kevin Swanson, and Geoff Botkin to Jennie Chancey, Kim Coghlan, and more, the Baby Conference promises to be one of Vision Forum's best conferences! Some of the topics covered will be:

The Message & Mission of Christian Adoption

Naming Babies

The Glory of the Fruitful Womb

The Wonders of Embryology

Why We Must Be Ladies Against Feminism

The Hopeful Theology of Miscarriage 

Hope to see ya'll there!

May's Best Books

It is so hard to believe that June is almost over! It's also very exciting because that means that it is only ten days until we leave for the Baby Conference! :) 

I also just realized that I hadn't posted about the books I read in May! Since we did the Great Authors Webinar, I read many of the books that those authors wrote during the month. But overall, I think the two best books I read were Killer Angel: A Short Biography of Planned Parenthood’s Founder, Margaret Sanger by George Grant, and The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum by R.J. Rushdoony. Both of these books reflected a common theme that has been on my heart and mind these past few months as I've contemplated babies, birth, children, education, and life in general. (Perhaps this has been encouraged by my great anticipation of the Baby Conference, and also that my Mamma and I are attending a Doula Course in late July)


Not a book for young children, Killer Angel, while being very discreet, was shocking and nauseating. While I  knew that Margaret Sanger was a wicked woman, as I read the book I gained a chilling realization that she was even more despicable and vile than I realized. It is easy to see how she was one of the most dangerous people in history, falling in the ranks of Hitler.

The Philosophy of the Christian Curriculum was a wonderful book, as well. It caused me to stop and consider some of my own ideas about education, and curriculum in particular. I would not recommend this book to the new home educator, simply because of Rushdoony's stance on home education. However, I would highly recommend it as a very useful tool, when read with caution, and most of all, a Biblical view of education, as according to Deuteronomy 6:7.

Something that was once again thrust before my view as I read these books, was that ideas have consequences, and also that culture is religion externalized.


The way we look at education impacts our view of curriculum, and our methods of teaching our children. In the same way, the way we look at babies and children impacts our view of family, church, and state.

Margaret Sanger's view of children (and, in some cases, entire people groups) as a burden, inconvenience, etc. gave us the Pill, abortion, and euthanasia. We must embrace a Biblical view of life, babies, children, and family if we will reform our culture! And for that reason, I would greatly encourage you to attend Vision Forum's major 2010 event- The Baby Conference: A Historic Summit on the Triumph of Life over the Culture of Death.

 I hope to see some of you there!