Primordial Dwarfism
I watched a documentary called The Smallest People in the World by the ABC about Primordial Dwarfism, initially focusing on a TINY baby girl called Kenadie who was born with the condition before progressing on to talk to other, older people who also have the condition. It was utterly FASCINATING. Most people would be used to the archetypal impression of what a person with dwarfism would look like, but I was utterly taken back by how regularly proportioned people with primordial dwarfism, but just that EVERYTHING is shrunken down! There’s a wonderful gallery of professionally taken photos of Kenadie and other people with such conditions here. There’s also a video available here with more information (if you’d excuse the obnoxious interviewer lady).
Because most of the documentary I saw focused on Kenadie, I was just constantly enchanted by how tiny she was. She… looked almost like some sort of fantastical, magical creature! Oddly enough, I felt she made the people around her look like giants rather than herself looking too small. Most of all, she really reminded me of the classical illustrations of Matilda by Roald Dahl. I loved that book, Matilda was one of my favourite childhood figures.

It’s quite tragic how people with Primordial Dwarfism have so many health problems though and statistically die quite young. I think it’s rather amazing that they survive that length of time at all, given how shrunken down in size every part is… when you come down to it, the shrinkage is not perfect (for one, you can’t get smaller atoms, and maybe even not be able to get functioning, smaller cells), Primordial Dwarfism means less than normal of all parts of the body. Still, utterly fascinating it all is.

Foetal Theft
On a more macabre note, I watched another documentary called Foetal Theft on the Crimes and Investigations Network. It’s exactly what it sounds like, people who go out, find pregnant women and forcibly remove the growing foetus from the mother, often leaving the pregnant woman to die. Such cases are incredibly rare (thankfully!) and a synopsis of the show can be found here.

While it wasn’t too surprising that the documented cases were of women, with probable mental disorders and unstable romantic relationships who might possibly be wanting to steal baby to stop their partner from leaving them. What WAS surprising though was how all the women documented already have children! Many children in fact! Some perpetrators were even pregnant at the time! So it’s not some deranged, lonely woman craving for a child of her own, but for some reason, women who want another child to add to the ones she already has. Perhaps these women have found previously that their relationships with their partners can be healed by birthing a child that is theirs and in a fit of panic, wanted a child immediately to fill some sort of relationship breakdown? The documentary suggested that the need for control could be another central element.

It was also startling to see these foetal thieves (or as apparently some in the US have called them, “womb raiders”, har har) all simply refusing to own up to having done anything wrong. For example, the last woman, Solangela Cartagena, concocted an elaborate lie about how the pregnant woman she found WANTED to have the foetus cut out of her and she was simply obliging. This cannot be the case because the pregnant lady was found alive and recalled she was drugged right before she was kidnapped by Cartagena. It’s really tragic for all those involved.