Alice Pregnancy Addict (alicesbaby)

[jegfile]

Finally an update from Alice! (She is my first fundie so will always have a special place in my heart!). I found her update on Heather (her doula) very interesting... of course Alice wants her healed so she can come and spend a couple of weeks with her! Surely there are other doulas around? They probably won't be like Heather, going above and beyond the call. Alice sounds like a very draining person.

[ladyaudley]

Just coming here to post about that, jegfile! "i don't want to be selfish, but..." ugh.  "neil is needed day and night for the children" come on, Alice. Aren't your oldest 11 and 9? They can supervise their siblings playing while their dad occasionally pops in from next door, where you're having another one. Hospital is a different matter of course. 

Bollocks. I really like the name Rosalie, but I doubt I'd name a child of mine the same thing as Alice. And no matter how much she protests, those older boys definitely look like they'll need braces. 

 

[jegfile]

I find it very interesting that Alice's parents don't make their grandchildren's births a priority. I remember reading Alice's sheepdip diary before she had kids and she called her mother her best friend. Mom was present for the first two boys' births I think. Why not now?

And sprinkled throughout that entry is a common phrase... "we can't afford it"... Neil had a pretty good job at one point and they've moved out of London. I thought they would have more disposable income now. 

[ladyaudley]

I think it's because they don't agree with her having all these children.

[Howl]

Help! I've forgotten the name of our favorite British pregnancy obsessed mum,  the name of her blog, but NOT the obsession with the minutiae of pregnancy, with a girl baby, lack of obsession with her (is it 6?) little boys who may be accidentally unschooled, her depressed and commute weary husband and what not.  I worry about her, her kids, and her husband.  I even googled "crazy british pregnancy obsessed mum blog" but just found links to blogs of much saner women.  Perhaps if I'd added "batshit" to my search? 

Help a girl out here.  Is she still blogging? 

Parsnips, heh heh. 

The good thing is that googling "crazy british pregnancy obsessed mum blog" brought up a blog I hadn't gone to for years: Hyperbole and a Half, which is not related to pregnancy as far as I know. 

hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/

You're welcome! 

Edited April 8, 2016 by OnceUponATime
adding tags

[DutchMommy]

I think your looking for Alice: alicesbaby.blogspot.com

Not much happening over there, her last update was a month ago...

[ladyaudley]

yes, good old Alice. I keep checking up on her because she's in my country, but she's gotten downright boring. Wish I had the snooping power to find her Facebook to keep me entertained. 

[meee]

She's got pretty strict privacy settings, but here you go https://www.facebook.com/alice.kirkham?fref=ts&ref=br_tf

[Eternalbluepearl]

My goodness her blog gives new meaning to wall of text! 

[Howl]

So, she's got her girl, and she's pregnant with #8, another girl?  She seems to have begun making connections with other mums with large families.  Yup, she's a wall of text blogger.  It would be so wonderful if she would just put her olders in school so they learn the basics.  OK, caught up now.  All the kids are so cute and look so sweet, although I'm sure they have their moments.  

At least there is more than a year gap between #7 and #8, who is on the way.   Phew! 

[IreneIssh]

Wow. I could not get over all her pregnancy updates. She updates on her pregnancy constantly, and this is her eighth! Man, when you said she was pregnancy obsessed, I had no idea it would take that form. 13 weeks, 1 day, 13 weeks, 2 days. She was even blogging about when we was a few days past ovulation, before she took a pregnancy test! Damn! 

This post was seven days past ovulation, and she is picking out names for fun: http://alicesbaby.blogspot.com/2015/04/names.html

[nelliebelle1197]

Wait, I did not realize Alice already had 7 and 8 is coming!

[DaffyDill]

1 hour ago, nelliebelle1197 said:

Wait, I did not realize Alice already had 7 and 8 is coming!

Yup, number 7 was the long awaited girl child, Lydia, and now Alice is pregnant with another girl, who she intends to call Rosalie, unless she changes her mind...

She must be about 36 weeks now, and Oh I hope she stops after her two girls...those poor little boys seem to have very little time given to them for schooling.

[Howl]

Yes, there's a lot of concern about how alice will handle life when her fertile years are over.  There's also some concern about whether she is giving her children a real education; she is committed to "homeschooling".   

[BackseatMom]

I'm sorry, but I cannot think of one single example of homeschooling a large family (6+ kids) that didnt seem borderline neglectful (or all the way neglectful).  Can anyone point me towards an example that shows its possible to do well?

[DaffyDill]

2 hours ago, Howl said:

Yes, there's a lot of concern about how alice will handle life when her fertile years are over.  There's also some concern about whether she is giving her children a real education; she is committed to "homeschooling".   

From reading her blog and even her Facebook, the only thing she is committed to is her ovulation chart, with the number of kids she has a close second.

Poor Neil. Though he does need to man up and put a stop to the incessant baby making.

[nelliebelle1197]

3 hours ago, DaffyDill said:

Yup, number 7 was the long awaited girl child, Lydia, and now Alice is pregnant with another girl, who she intends to call Rosalie, unless she changes her mind...

She must be about 36 weeks now, and Oh I hope she stops after her two girls...those poor little boys seem to have very little time given to them for schooling.

 

1 minute ago, DaffyDill said:

From reading her blog and even her Facebook, the only thing she is committed to is her ovulation chart, with the number of kids she has a close second.

Poor Neil. Though he does need to man up and put a stop to the incessant baby making.

I honestly thought she was still pregnant with girl 1. I cannot keep up.

[BlackberryGirl]

Homeschooling a large family CAN be done well, but it isn't usually.. I've mentioned this before, I think. My hubby is a teacher and one of the other teachers in his school is a Mennonite man. His wife has home schooled all 7 or 8 of their kids, the youngest must be about 10 now.  The older kids have ALL gone on to college, one owns a business somewhere down south, and one of the older girls is a professional musician.  It is possible for homeschoolers to do it right, but they have to value education. These kids were always immersed in stuff in the community.. Theater, sports, community orchestra etc. there were at least 2 or 3 years between kids too..The guy is a good teacher, he taught all 3 of my kids and we had no issues with him.

[campused]

YES! I fell down this rabbit hole then the whole upgrade happened and I couldn't find any threads about Alice and I didn't know her blog. I even asked around in chat to see if anyone knew. I'm glad I'm not alone in wanting to know what she was up to! Hah 

[browngrl]

1 hour ago, BackseatMom said:

I'm sorry, but I cannot think of one single example of homeschooling a large family (6+ kids) that didnt seem borderline neglectful (or all the way neglectful).  Can anyone point me towards an example that shows its possible to do well?

I have a fundie light friend (she became very religious after she got married). She has 9 children - all home schooled. The children seemed well educated to me. I'm not sure of what curriculum she uses but she suppliments the God stuff with lots of English math and science. She hires grad students to teach subjects beyond her expertise and had a full time nanny (a young woman from their church) to mind the younger children when she was teaching the older ones. The kids have access to lots of books and to computers.  I don't much care for the religious bits ( as she has become more fundie our friendship has attenuated  so I'm not sure if the kids are going to go on to university ) but what I saw of her training was quite respectable.

Edited December 11, 2015 by browngrl

[Pseudoname]

Wow.  Just....wow.  She definitely seems to rather 'focused' doesn't she.

So Alice has a few blogs.  On her Blessed Mummy to Six Precious Little Ones blog she discusses her lack of homeschooling, calling it Unschooling.  This blog is also just hard to read walls of text .

Quote

School is... going differently than I had originally planned! We are unschooling at the moment. Makes me feel flappy, but it's working for the boys very well right now. I would MUCH prefer to be doing structured lessons, but that's for a whole 'nother post that I am sure I won't have time for. The great thing about homeschooling is flexibility! We can change things any time to fit. Right now, this fits. That's about all on that for now.

http://arthursmummy.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/so-it-has-been-while.html

Quote

My kids are learning more than I expected them to, without formal lessons, which is so encouraging and uplifting! But I would so like to get time sorted out somehow, so that I can do more of the type of schooling I really want to be doing - at least covering the 3 r's formally, would make me feel better, and I think Neil would prefer that too. They ARE learning the 3 r's without me doing that, bizarrely! But yeah... I would like to do it a bit differently. I nearly typed "better", which is telling of my need to stop with this thing that general society has going on, where unschooling is weird and totally not going to work! It's not better, it's just different. And different is okay. Isn't it? It IS okay to be different. That's one of life's harder lessons, and you have to battle it all. your. life. if it applies to you (which it always has anyway).

http://arthursmummy.blogspot.com.au/2013/07/the-pace-and-panic.html

So in 2013 Alice wasn't organised enough to homeschool her kids the way that she (and her husband) would really prefer it to be done, and in 2015 it appears that things really haven't changed in terms of homeschooling.  I guess it is hard to wrangle kids and homeschool them without sister-moms.

[Joyleaf]

4 hours ago, Pseudoname said:

So in 2013 Alice wasn't organised enough to homeschool her kids the way that she (and her husband) would really prefer it to be done, and in 2015 it appears that things really haven't changed in terms of homeschooling.  I guess it is hard to wrangle kids and homeschool them without sister-moms.

I agree. Looking at this post she finds other stuff to do instead of teaching her kids:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152586428533544&set=a.447817048543.229146.659598543&type=3&theater

(A picture of her kissing Lydia "Shameless selfie, and selfies (of myself) make me cringe BUT this is what I am typically doing most of my day - currently instead of teaching maths to Arthur. *sigh* She's such a delightful distraction!")

[Closed Womb]

6 hours ago, campused said:

YES! I fell down this rabbit hole then the whole upgrade happened and I couldn't find any threads about Alice and I didn't know her blog. I even asked around in chat to see if anyone knew. I'm glad I'm not alone in wanting to know what she was up to! Hah 

Before the upgrade, when I (or some other Alice follower) would update, it would get bumped to the front page.  Now things apparently get archived and no one really sees anything new unless you specifically check her archived threads.  (I might be wrong on the exact terminology, but the point is, too old = buried and, at least for me, difficult to find.)  It's probably the one thing I really dislike about the new format.  

[DaffyDill]

On 11 December 2015 at 10:06 PM, Closed Womb said:

Before the upgrade, when I (or some other Alice follower) would update, it would get bumped to the front page.  Now things apparently get archived and no one really sees anything new unless you specifically check her archived threads.  (I might be wrong on the exact terminology, but the point is, too old = buried and, at least for me, difficult to find.)  It's probably the one thing I really dislike about the new format.  

That was me commenting (sometimes) and there were a couple of others.

I totally agree with the quick archiving though. You just lose stuff. I can generally find it, but it takes a few seconds to realise where it's gone. My brain is aged, I think 

[ladyaudley]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's a bit obsessed with Alice! Yeah, I wasn't surprised when she said on her FB that she'd rather snuggle Lydia than teach Arthur maths. That about sums up her teaching. I remember a while ago when she whinged about someone daring to ask Arthur about subtraction, because he'd learned addition and the person (rightfully) assumed that he also knew about subtraction. Wall o' text ensued about how dare that person question her teaching choices...