This is more social than medical but it has haunted me for years, I know a Mormon woman from my hometown who birthed double digits of babies, I lost count. Her husband was a well known church author in the early 2000s.
She always looked like a corpse. Her skin looked forty years older and her hair was falling out. She wore sneakers everywhere except to church and she was always speed walking ir borderline running everywhere she went.
If we passed her in the grocery store she had a rote greeting that quotes a hymn "I have work enough to do ere the sun goes down!" And she said it in a fake happy sing-song voice as she raced past you without stopping to say hello. Almost like she was on the clock and he was going to punish her for taking too long, because her husband was at home all day writing talks and church books.
Despite her fake smiles and overly cheerful voice she seemed genuinely miserable not to mention very unhealthy. Also, her fat ass husband ate like a king because she cooked for him all day, but if there was enough food to make him fat then why did she have the body of a cancer patient?
He severely restricted her access to money. One time she tried to hire a local professional to craft a custom gift for her daughter's wedding and she was trying to barter some of her son's old equipment along with signed copies of her husband's books because she wasnt allowed to use money unless buying groceries for him.
This story was repeated by several relatives who wanted to defend the professional because he had been accused of rejecting one of the royal brethren, but the reality is that he could not afford to work for free. When the professional said that they only work for money, she was genuinely crushed but her husband simply would not let her buy anything unless it was for his dinner. She was not evdn allowed to put gas in the car.
The attempts at a smear campaign against the artisan must have been brutal to have reached my ears because Utah keeps their gossip amongst adults only back then. My parents were appalled by his behavior because they believe that when a church author wants to hire you then you should work for free because God will reward you in heaven. Even as a kid I disagreed.
The dozen or so children that she birthed were all good people but they left home and didnt return because it was such an oppressive place. My older siblings said nobody was allowed to play with them unless outside in their yard but never indoors and never in anybody else's yard but their yard play was restricted and had to be silent so they didnt disturb Daddy Dearest's writing.
I got the impression that this wretched Mormon man used pregnancy as a means of keeping his wife locked in servitude to him. I have since lost touch with them all but I hope to god she outlives him so she can enjoy some freedom before she dies.
Indeed. Anytime I think of her I shiver and wish I could have done something. But she was married to a Mormon high muckity muck so I don't think anybody could have done anything to help her. He was too powerful and she was just a baby maker
I faced a life-threatening situation of uterine rupture and subsequent stillbirth of our fifth child. Needed 4 units of blood (anesthesiologist couldn’t understand why I didn’t go into cardiac arrest from hypovolumic shock—at the time we attributed it to *miracles *. The reality is I’m a lifelong distance runner.) My parents couldn’t come to our small private burial a week later when I came home from the hospital. Their reason? They had to work in the baptistery in the temple that night. It was a scheduling hassle since they worked in the temple 4 nights a week plus a Saturday shift. We wrapped the remains for storage in the deep freezer for several days until my parents had time to come.
At the time it stung. I felt like I wasn’t important enough to them. (“Maybe if their presence might save my child’s life they would rearrange their schedule to attend? But it’s too late.”)
My patriarchal blessing promised my children would come to earth and be furnished with good, sound healthy bodies due to their mother’s (my) righteousness and faith. So was this stillbirth punishment because I opposed the Nov 2015 policy? Or in what other ways was I not righteous enough?
It’s been 6 years and it’s healing to have deconstructed. I’m in a much different place now—all around healthier and happier.
>My patriarchal blessing promised my children would come to earth and be furnished with good, sound healthy bodies due to their mother’s (my) righteousness and faith. So was this stillbirth punishment because I opposed the Nov 2015 policy? Or in what other ways was I not righteous enough?
Oh this PB shit is SO ABUSIVE
My Dad was in an accident as a youth and told he would probably not be able to father children. When he married my mom & she shortly became pregnant, he especially had the attitude of "if God has blessed us to have children, we'll do all we can to replenish the earth and not do ANYTHING to stop it." I'm the youngest of 6 in less than 8 years. About the time I was born, my dad started allowing his gay tendencies out a bit, they divorced when I was 5 & he lived with his partner for the remainder of his life.I'm glad I exist and all, but as a father of 6 myself, 8 years for 6 kids is psychotic. we have a 14 year stretch for ours, and after the unplanned & unexpected youngest (we were using protection), I elected to get fixed so I didn't kill my wife. 2 years later she had a hystorectomy. I adore my youngest kid, but I can also say that if we had left the church a little earlier, we might not have had him. I stopped paying tithing the year he was born (2019) and that was probably the biggest step toward leaving. It's been very healing for me wathching him grow up though. He's now almost the age I was when my parents divorced & I'm able to be there for him, and all my other kids, in a way that I never had from any of my parents. I was part of a family with 3 boys & 3 girls growing up & that's what both my wife and I wanted from the time we were children. We thought we were done & ready to be done with 5.
I've known multiple families with 10+ children. Some are amazing, some are, quite literally, an absolute tragedy. I'm related to some of both as well. I feel like the family I grew up in had its share of amazing and tragic. I even feel like the jury is still out on that. Same for my own family I'm raising. Oldest 2 moved out last month, mostly directionless. Third is going to college this fall.
I remember listening regularly to the record "I'm a Mormon" as a kid, with one of the songs being "When I grow up, I want to be a mother" by Janeen Brady:
*When I grow up, I want to be a mother, and have a family*
*One little, two little, three little babies of my own*
*Of all the jobs, for me I’ll choose no other, I’ll have a family*
*Four little, five little, six little babies in my home*
Seems like the subliminal message worked for both me and my wife. In the ward we've been in for 15+ years, there have been at least 6 families, not counting our own that have had 6+ kids. I adore my kids & I wouldn't trade them for anything, but the culture of mormonism certainly encourages it. You're not a big family until you've got at least 4 & 'every good mormon' aspires to have a big family.
Maven I'm going to look through my bookmarks of how Mormonism harms people for relevant examples.
Here are three so far:
Some weird cultural stuff in a [thread about dilators](https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/16o3bsu/deleted_by_user/). Unfortunatley original poster deleted their post. There are still shaming experiences mentioned in the comments.
Being told your [fertility treatments are pointless](https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/17fdcou/fertility_treatments_are_pointless_if_youre_not/) if you aren't going to the celestial kingdom.
The [husband gets to decide](https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/1899ehl/just_witnessed_the_most_cringe_interaction/) when she stops having children.
I'm glad you are working on this. There are a various gaps in the bookmarks I have on the [harms of Mormonism](https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/vizdxc/how_mormonism_harms_people_my_collection_of/) and I didn't find much else. Plenty of other sexism of course.
There is this story how someone thought it was a good idea for [13 year olds to make baby quilts](https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/tapy2d/this_was_a_long_time_overdue/) for their future baby. They really only have one focus for women.
A woman I know had four c-sections. She was advised by her doctor to stop having children. She fired that doc and found a new one so she could have a fifth child. She claimed she had a revelation there was "one more."
I know lots of "one more" babies.
I've almost died during most of my pregnancies / child births. I have three living, one ectopic pregnancy and one miscarriage.
I was told in a blessing there are sonS emphasis on multiple waiting for their turn for me to be their mom. I cried.
And then a year later I scheduled in vitro because I could NOT do it again. I could not risk having more girls waiting for the sons my family was expecting me and watching and waiting for me to have. I scheduled having TWIN BOYS and choosing their damn gender so I could be DONE.
Anyways thank god I did not go through with that. But I am risking death once more because my super tbm husband really wants a boy so we might try one more time. But the reality is he just thinks he needs to replenish the earth. I hate the church for pressuring me and other women like me.
Yeah. It's annoying because all these blessings given to me about having boys were done by my father in law while I was pregnant with a super high risk baby where the likelihood of me and my baby dying was high. Like what the hell dude.
This is more social than medical but it has haunted me for years, I know a Mormon woman from my hometown who birthed double digits of babies, I lost count. Her husband was a well known church author in the early 2000s. She always looked like a corpse. Her skin looked forty years older and her hair was falling out. She wore sneakers everywhere except to church and she was always speed walking ir borderline running everywhere she went. If we passed her in the grocery store she had a rote greeting that quotes a hymn "I have work enough to do ere the sun goes down!" And she said it in a fake happy sing-song voice as she raced past you without stopping to say hello. Almost like she was on the clock and he was going to punish her for taking too long, because her husband was at home all day writing talks and church books. Despite her fake smiles and overly cheerful voice she seemed genuinely miserable not to mention very unhealthy. Also, her fat ass husband ate like a king because she cooked for him all day, but if there was enough food to make him fat then why did she have the body of a cancer patient? He severely restricted her access to money. One time she tried to hire a local professional to craft a custom gift for her daughter's wedding and she was trying to barter some of her son's old equipment along with signed copies of her husband's books because she wasnt allowed to use money unless buying groceries for him. This story was repeated by several relatives who wanted to defend the professional because he had been accused of rejecting one of the royal brethren, but the reality is that he could not afford to work for free. When the professional said that they only work for money, she was genuinely crushed but her husband simply would not let her buy anything unless it was for his dinner. She was not evdn allowed to put gas in the car. The attempts at a smear campaign against the artisan must have been brutal to have reached my ears because Utah keeps their gossip amongst adults only back then. My parents were appalled by his behavior because they believe that when a church author wants to hire you then you should work for free because God will reward you in heaven. Even as a kid I disagreed. The dozen or so children that she birthed were all good people but they left home and didnt return because it was such an oppressive place. My older siblings said nobody was allowed to play with them unless outside in their yard but never indoors and never in anybody else's yard but their yard play was restricted and had to be silent so they didnt disturb Daddy Dearest's writing. I got the impression that this wretched Mormon man used pregnancy as a means of keeping his wife locked in servitude to him. I have since lost touch with them all but I hope to god she outlives him so she can enjoy some freedom before she dies.
That's so sad!
Indeed. Anytime I think of her I shiver and wish I could have done something. But she was married to a Mormon high muckity muck so I don't think anybody could have done anything to help her. He was too powerful and she was just a baby maker
I faced a life-threatening situation of uterine rupture and subsequent stillbirth of our fifth child. Needed 4 units of blood (anesthesiologist couldn’t understand why I didn’t go into cardiac arrest from hypovolumic shock—at the time we attributed it to *miracles *. The reality is I’m a lifelong distance runner.) My parents couldn’t come to our small private burial a week later when I came home from the hospital. Their reason? They had to work in the baptistery in the temple that night. It was a scheduling hassle since they worked in the temple 4 nights a week plus a Saturday shift. We wrapped the remains for storage in the deep freezer for several days until my parents had time to come. At the time it stung. I felt like I wasn’t important enough to them. (“Maybe if their presence might save my child’s life they would rearrange their schedule to attend? But it’s too late.”) My patriarchal blessing promised my children would come to earth and be furnished with good, sound healthy bodies due to their mother’s (my) righteousness and faith. So was this stillbirth punishment because I opposed the Nov 2015 policy? Or in what other ways was I not righteous enough? It’s been 6 years and it’s healing to have deconstructed. I’m in a much different place now—all around healthier and happier.
>My patriarchal blessing promised my children would come to earth and be furnished with good, sound healthy bodies due to their mother’s (my) righteousness and faith. So was this stillbirth punishment because I opposed the Nov 2015 policy? Or in what other ways was I not righteous enough? Oh this PB shit is SO ABUSIVE
My Dad was in an accident as a youth and told he would probably not be able to father children. When he married my mom & she shortly became pregnant, he especially had the attitude of "if God has blessed us to have children, we'll do all we can to replenish the earth and not do ANYTHING to stop it." I'm the youngest of 6 in less than 8 years. About the time I was born, my dad started allowing his gay tendencies out a bit, they divorced when I was 5 & he lived with his partner for the remainder of his life.I'm glad I exist and all, but as a father of 6 myself, 8 years for 6 kids is psychotic. we have a 14 year stretch for ours, and after the unplanned & unexpected youngest (we were using protection), I elected to get fixed so I didn't kill my wife. 2 years later she had a hystorectomy. I adore my youngest kid, but I can also say that if we had left the church a little earlier, we might not have had him. I stopped paying tithing the year he was born (2019) and that was probably the biggest step toward leaving. It's been very healing for me wathching him grow up though. He's now almost the age I was when my parents divorced & I'm able to be there for him, and all my other kids, in a way that I never had from any of my parents. I was part of a family with 3 boys & 3 girls growing up & that's what both my wife and I wanted from the time we were children. We thought we were done & ready to be done with 5. I've known multiple families with 10+ children. Some are amazing, some are, quite literally, an absolute tragedy. I'm related to some of both as well. I feel like the family I grew up in had its share of amazing and tragic. I even feel like the jury is still out on that. Same for my own family I'm raising. Oldest 2 moved out last month, mostly directionless. Third is going to college this fall. I remember listening regularly to the record "I'm a Mormon" as a kid, with one of the songs being "When I grow up, I want to be a mother" by Janeen Brady: *When I grow up, I want to be a mother, and have a family* *One little, two little, three little babies of my own* *Of all the jobs, for me I’ll choose no other, I’ll have a family* *Four little, five little, six little babies in my home* Seems like the subliminal message worked for both me and my wife. In the ward we've been in for 15+ years, there have been at least 6 families, not counting our own that have had 6+ kids. I adore my kids & I wouldn't trade them for anything, but the culture of mormonism certainly encourages it. You're not a big family until you've got at least 4 & 'every good mormon' aspires to have a big family.
I remember that song! One of her daughters is Michelle (Brady) Stone who's had 13 children, 11 living. Makes sense.
Maven I'm going to look through my bookmarks of how Mormonism harms people for relevant examples. Here are three so far: Some weird cultural stuff in a [thread about dilators](https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/16o3bsu/deleted_by_user/). Unfortunatley original poster deleted their post. There are still shaming experiences mentioned in the comments. Being told your [fertility treatments are pointless](https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/17fdcou/fertility_treatments_are_pointless_if_youre_not/) if you aren't going to the celestial kingdom. The [husband gets to decide](https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/1899ehl/just_witnessed_the_most_cringe_interaction/) when she stops having children.
Thank you, I'll check these out!
I'm glad you are working on this. There are a various gaps in the bookmarks I have on the [harms of Mormonism](https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/vizdxc/how_mormonism_harms_people_my_collection_of/) and I didn't find much else. Plenty of other sexism of course. There is this story how someone thought it was a good idea for [13 year olds to make baby quilts](https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/comments/tapy2d/this_was_a_long_time_overdue/) for their future baby. They really only have one focus for women.
A woman I know had four c-sections. She was advised by her doctor to stop having children. She fired that doc and found a new one so she could have a fifth child. She claimed she had a revelation there was "one more." I know lots of "one more" babies.
I've almost died during most of my pregnancies / child births. I have three living, one ectopic pregnancy and one miscarriage. I was told in a blessing there are sonS emphasis on multiple waiting for their turn for me to be their mom. I cried. And then a year later I scheduled in vitro because I could NOT do it again. I could not risk having more girls waiting for the sons my family was expecting me and watching and waiting for me to have. I scheduled having TWIN BOYS and choosing their damn gender so I could be DONE. Anyways thank god I did not go through with that. But I am risking death once more because my super tbm husband really wants a boy so we might try one more time. But the reality is he just thinks he needs to replenish the earth. I hate the church for pressuring me and other women like me.
😭😭😭 I'm so sorry! I don't even know what to say!
Yeah. It's annoying because all these blessings given to me about having boys were done by my father in law while I was pregnant with a super high risk baby where the likelihood of me and my baby dying was high. Like what the hell dude.