Ballerina Farm

[JermajestyDuggar]

3 minutes ago, Smee said:

There are SO MANY red flags for abuse here. It's classic coercive control - the whirlwind romance and fast marriage, moving away from family and support networks, keeping her perpetually pregnant and exhausted. She's trapped. Their wealth doesn't make her less trapped, or more able to say no to him. 

Do they have doctors in attendance at these home births? Or is that another way to make sure no one is looking out for her?

Don’t forget how he basically stalked her. She didn’t want to date him so he got the seat right next to her on a flight he knew she was taking because his daddy owns the airline. So she was stuck next to him for a few hours. He basically forced her to talk to him. After that, they started dating. Of course. 

[Melissa1977]

7 hours ago, Smee said:

Do they have doctors in attendance at these home births? Or is that another way to make sure no one is looking out for her?

There have been several births at the hospital (once he wasn't there, so she could have an epidural). I'm not sure if she has done homebirths. Maybe he wants doctors in attendance to make sure HIS child is born with no risks. 

 

[Bluebirdbluebell]

30 minutes ago, Melissa1977 said:

There have been several births at the hospital (once he wasn't there, so she could have an epidural). I'm not sure if she has done homebirths. Maybe he wants doctors in attendance to make sure HIS child is born with no risks. 

 

She had two hospital births, but the rest of them are at home.

From the article that began this thread:

Quote

The bedroom is also where she had her children, with the exception of Henry and Martha, who were born in a hospital (a fact that did not escape some of her followers). “After that I was, like, I’m ready to go back home,” she says. “I just love having them at home. It’s so quiet.” She also gave birth to them without pain relief. None at all? She shakes her head. Why? “I don’t know, I just have never loved taking it.” She stops herself. “Except with Martha — I was two weeks overdue and she was 10lb and Daniel wasn’t with me … ” She lowers her voice. Daniel is currently out of the room taking a phone call. “So I got an epidural. And it was an amazing experience.” Where was Daniel that day? “It was shipping day [for the meat boxes] and he was manning the crew.” But the epidural was kind of great? She pauses — and smiles. “It was kinda great.”

 

[MariaariaM]

3 hours ago, Bluebirdbluebell said:

From the article that began this thread:

So... did she expect the journalist to keep that a secret? Can Daniel not read? Was she silently crying for help? Or is she just trying to pull more views?

[Xan]

2 hours ago, MariaariaM said:

So... did she expect the journalist to keep that a secret? Can Daniel not read? Was she silently crying for help? Or is she just trying to pull more views?

I think it's just something that troubles her and it slips out from time to time.

[bea]

I kind of wanted to cry reading that article.  To get into that school, she had to be REALLY good.  Like prima ballerina good.  And she just......gave it away.  Gave her whole self away, gave all of her SELF away. 

[Ozlsn]

4 hours ago, bea said:

And she just......gave it away.  Gave her whole self away, gave all of her SELF away. 

In tiny bits, gradually. From agreeing to date him after being stuck next to him on a flight to changing the ballet studio to a classroom it's been a steady erosion of her boundaries. 

[JemimaPuddle-Duck]

16 hours ago, Bluebirdbluebell said:

She had two hospital births, but the rest of them are at home.

From the article that began this thread:

 

I don’t know anything about the ballerina farm lady, but that seems obvious to me that she means she did the epidural because he wasn’t there to support her. No way I could do natural childbirth without my husband. I imagine she lowered her voice a little in that faux conspiratorial way that we all do when we know how many people are judging us for the thing we’re about to say. Because natural birth nazis are hardcore. 

[LongTimeLurkerOG]

8 hours ago, bea said:

I kind of wanted to cry reading that article.  To get into that school, she had to be REALLY good.  Like prima ballerina good.  And she just......gave it away.  Gave her whole self away, gave all of her SELF away. 

Coercive control, gaslighting, and trauma bond are very strong, damaging, and hard to break

[BensAllergies]

@JemimaPuddle-DuckI read the epidural story in the same way you did, especially after reading it through a second time as quoted above.

She was overdue and didn’t have her normal support so she took the “easy” way out. But she’s not “supposed to” enjoy the epidural per the sociocultural expectation of her unmedicated birthing circle, so she admitted it quietly - like she was sharing a secret with the interviewer but not actually caring if it got out that she loved it.

She’s not stupid. She knew anything she said could end up in the article. It makes no sense that it was a secret from Daniel. And how many times have we tried explaining something and assumed the audience understood the background and context? She probably assumed that anyone would understand she wanted the epidural because she didn’t have her support person that one time, and so didn’t bother qualifying her explanation with that detail.

I agree with others that the beginning of their relationship is full of 🚩 🚩 🚩. So is the fact that her husband casually said that she spends a whole week in bed being sick from exhaustion. She needs a nanny (since they can afford one), a trip to Greece with her sisters and/or best friends, and a vasectomy for her husband.

[Smee]

I think there's a kind of cognitive dissonance at play in her admitting that the epidural was "kind of great" but also saying all her other births were unmedicated because she "never loved taking" pain relief - she's adopted this (fairly common) idea that unmedicated = good and pain relief = inferior, and refuses to reassess that opinion in light of her one and only experience with pain relief. I was weirdly, irrationally anti-pain relief and proud of my first couple of unmedicated births, and then one day I just kind of stopped and thought "...but why?" So then I really wanted an epidural with #3 but she came too fast. 

[clueliss]

Popping in to share a couple of links to vlogs about this.

 

Jordan and McKay did a deep dive into this.(about 90 minutes)

Spoiler

 

As did Mormon Stories (and this one is over 3 hours)

Spoiler

 

 

[Howl]

Just listened to Mormon Stories on Ballerina Farm.  Very good.