Elena LaVictoire's Public Library

Results showed that the frequency of VBAC success rose with increasing number of prior VBACs, from 63 percent with no prior VBACs to 88 percent for women with one and 91 percent for those with two or more prior VBACs.

The corresponding incidence of uterine rupture, a serious complication of labor, declined from 0.87 percent to 0.45 percent and 0.43 percent. The rates of other complications followed similar patterns with increasing number of prior VBACs.

In contrast, the investigators note, repeated cesarean deliveries are associated with higher risks of complications like placenta accreta (when the placenta implants too far into the uterus) and trauma to internal organs in the mother, as well as more frequent hysterectomies and blood transfusions.

"Women planning large families ... should be reassured by the increasing success rates and decreasing risks associated with VBAC attempts in successive pregnancies," Mercer and his associates conclude.

Alison has lived and thrived well beyond the expectations of the doctors that have treated her. Juana and the family hold onto a cautious hope that their days with her — however difficult at times —– will continue.

The medical advances in the field withstanding, Alison’s future is still uncertain and her condition is tenuous.

“She’s just so sensitive in a sense that if she gets a bad case of bronchitis, it might go wrong,” the physician assistant, Guerra, says. “But so far, so good. She always responds well when she gets treatments and surprises everybody. She’s just a fighter.”

From Alison’s bedside in the ICU unit, Juana says her one wish for Christmas is that her daughter not be in pain, that she continues to progress and advance and, most of all, that she can be with her “princess.”

“Spending the day with her is beautiful. Her smile and everything,” Juana says. “She is the most amazing gift God has given me.”

I pledged that I wouldn't take out loans. Nor would I accept money from anybody, especially my mother, who, appalled by my experiment, offered to rent me an apartment each time I called home. My heat would be a sleeping bag; my air conditioning, an open window. I'd shower at the gym, eat the bare minimum and find a job to pay tuition. And -- for fear of being caught -- I wouldn't tell anybody.

Living on the cheap wasn't merely a way to save money and stave off debt; I wanted to live adventurously. I wanted to test my limits. I wanted to find the line between my wants and my needs. I wanted, as Thoreau put it, "to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life … to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms."

It wouldn't be hard for me to remain frugal. After buying the van and making my first tuition payment, I was only a few dollars away from having to rummage through Dumpsters to find my next meal. I was -- by conventional first-world definitions -- poor. While I faced little risk of malnutrition or disease like the truly poor, I still I didn't own an iPod, and I smelled sometimes.

The study also concluded that the more children a married couple has, the greater the life satisfaction, especially for women.

The rate unexpectedly fell to 10 percent, from 10.2 percent in October, as employers cut the fewest number of jobs since the recession began. The government also said 159,000 fewer jobs were lost in September and October than first reported.

If part-time workers who want full time jobs and laid-off workers who have given up looking for jobs are included, the so-called underemployment rate also fell, to 17.2 percent from 17.5 percent in October.

The better-than-expected figures provided a rare dose of good news for a labor market that's lost 7.2 million jobs in two years. The unemployment rate hadn't fallen since July. Still, the respite may be temporary.

The speech continued in that vein. It was as though Obama had taken one of his old campaign speeches and merged it with a text from the library of ex-President George W. Bush. Extremists kill in the name of Islam, he said, before adding that it is one of the "world's great religions." He promised that responsibility for the country's security would soon be transferred to the government of President Hamid Karzai -- a government which he said was "corrupt." The Taliban is dangerous and growing stronger. But "America will have to show our strength in the way that we end wars," he added.

It was a dizzying combination of surge and withdrawal, of marching to and fro. The fast pace was reminiscent of plays about the French revolution: Troops enter from the right to loud cannon fire and then they exit to the left. And at the end, the dead are left on stage.

You might think, then, that doing something about the employment situation would be a top policy priority. But now that total financial collapse has been averted, all the urgency seems to have vanished from policy discussion, replaced by a strange passivity. There’s a pervasive sense in Washington that nothing more can or should be done, that we should just wait for the economic recovery to trickle down to workers.

This is wrong and unacceptable.