The kids are off limits, but Sarah Palin's dangerous judgment calls are not. Somehow it's okay to criticize Britney Spears for driving her baby around without strapping him into a car seat, and to question Spears' mother about the unwed teen pregnancy of her other daughter, Jamie Lynn. But it's not okay to question Sarah Palin, who could be Vice President and has made her family choices one of the centerpieces of her campaign, about her judgment? Her behavior has been not just odd, but dangerous.
As a fellow sports-mom, the accounts of Sarah Palin's decision-making just get weirder and weirder. I know, the kids are off limits. But her judgment calls are not.
Today's Washington Post front-pages yet another story on Palin that leaves me saying, "Whhaaat?"
Before I get to the second half of the sentence, about Palin getting a warning from her public safety commissioner, my brain was shouting, "What were you thinking?":
Palin held her baby in her arms as the warden drove a short distance around the facility.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
That's parenting 101: Most states won't let you leave the hospital without the baby being properly strapped into a newborn car seat. Britney Spears made national attention, and took universal criticism, for the same offense.
And then there's the birth of said baby itself. Palin's own account of the baby's birth is that she and her husband were in Houston when she awoke with mild contractions and leaking amniotic fluid. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, when a pregnant woman's water breaks, she should go right to the hospital because of the risk of infection. That's true even if the amniotic fluid simply leaks out.
Even though she was in premature labor (the baby was not due for another month), with a high-risk pregnancy (due to her age) of a special needs baby (diagnosed in utero with Down syndrome), she did not seek medical treatment. Instead, she delivered a speech to the energy conference of a Republican governors group, got on an airplane (you're not supposed to fly after you're 7 months along, and certainly not while you're in labor), flew to Dallas, flew another leg to Seattle, and then a final leg to Anchorage--before driving 45 minutes to the hospital.
This is not just weird to me, it exhibits recklessness and extremely poor judgment. IMHO.