by Kevin Burton
Today’s smiles from the Good News Network take us from Japan to Iowa, from senior years to the cradle, from life to give to life to live.
First, a story by Andy Corbley about older Japanese women, making a joyful contribution to society as a whole and to real people in need:
“When a Japanese handyman contractor faced an oversaturated market, they turned to a pretty unusual solution: a ‘rent-a-grandma.’”
“With few jobs available other than house cleaning for women over 60 , the company realized that for the same reason a person might want to hire a male handyman in his 60s during a homebuilding project, someone might want to hire a grandmother for a homemaking project,” Corbley wrote.
“Tokyo’s Client Partners started the OK! Obaachan (OK! Grandmother) service in 2011, and it has become a hit.
“I never get bored,” 69-year-old Taeko Kaji, one of the rent-a-grandmas, told the Australian ABC. “I get to go out and have these experiences and that’s why taking this job was the right decision for me.”
“Client Partners allows customers to hire the services of guides and interpreters. But concern in Japanese society over big city loneliness gave the company the idea to start renting friends, ‘aunts,’ and now even grandmothers.
“Some people may never have had a mother in the first place,” Client Partners chief executive Ruri Kanazawa told the ABC. “Our grandmother staff members, who cook for the guests and act like a mother to them, help provide the motherly warmth they need.”
“Along with loneliness the service may be seen as addressing another societal challenge in Japan: the size of the geriatric population, which is as big as anywhere else on Earth. There are fewer and fewer working-age Japanese to support the growing number of pensioners. Working can provide better economic security, but many jobs become unavailable, especially for women in their golden years,” Corbley wrote.
“In traditional societies, the elders take on just such roles: as wisdom-holders, storytellers, adjudicators, and teachers. Client Services’ grandmother contractors very much fulfil that position—for a healthy hourly wage of around $55.”
“For years, ABC News reports, Japanese society saw women work until marriage, then quit their jobs, stay home to raise the kids until they enter school, then put one foot back in the job market through contract or part-time work. This generation of women, if they were married, would be secured in retirement through their husbands’ pension plans.”
“This contributed in no small part to the incredible economic boom experienced during the second half of the 20th century, but some women, who may have never been married, or whose husbands died young, faced an extreme lack of available work.”
“Sharing their love and life experience with a young family is clearly an opportunity many are happy to have and happy to do.”
From that happy story, we turn to the tale of a young man whose chances at life were seemingly slim, and parents who are delighted he beat the odds:
“Born at just 21 weeks gestation – a staggering 133 days early – Nash Keen is now all giggles, said his parents Randall and Mollie Keen of Ankeny, Iowa.”
“The boy who was named by Guinness World Records as the world’s most premature baby, has beaten “impossible” odds to reach his first birthday on July 5.
“In early 2024, just six months after suffering a miscarriage, the then childless couple happily discovered Mollie was pregnant again.”
“When we went to our doctor’s office for the 20-week scan, I had some concerns about how I was feeling so I asked them to look at me closer—which they normally don’t do at that appointment—and they found I was already two centimeters dilated,” Mollie said.
“It was an expectant parent’s nightmare: Waiting in a hospital room for days surrounded by doctors and nurses, hoping their baby wouldn’t be born too early.”
“The couple learned that the neonatal intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital at the University of Iowa had recently started performing lifesaving measures on babies born at 21 weeks gestation. If the baby could hold off until midnight on July 5, it had a chance.”
“Mollie’s contractions subsided for two days. Then, on July 5, just hours after she surpassed the 21-week mark, baby Nash was delivered.
“It was a moment described by Dr. Malinda Schaefer, an obstetrician who deals with high-risk pregnancies, as being part of a new frontier in maternal fetal medicine.
“We want what is best for patients, so we really try to convey that we do not know what the outcomes will be for these extremely premature births,” Schaefer said. “And it is important for parents to understand most survival rates are low, and if babies do survive, they have a very high risk of long-term complications, even at 22 weeks.”
“Nash was fortunate, as the medical team was able to quickly provide medicine to support organ development and lower the risk of certain complications. He was also head down, which is better because it was similar to a full-term birth.
Thankfully, Dr. Schaefer recalled, “Nash just came out very easily.”
“As Schaefer and others tended to Mollie, they handed off Nash to the intensive care team. Although he weighed just 10 ounces—less than a can of soda (285 grams)—Nash was big enough for a breathing tube and the smallest equipment.”
“Still, Nash’s chance at surviving was technically nonexistent, because at the time no baby had ever been born so early and survived.”
“We never want the parents to lose hope, but we have to be very honest with them,” said Patrick McNamara, MD, division director of neonatology. “I would have told his parents, ‘The chance is zero, but I hope I’m wrong and we will do everything we can to help him.’”
“Doctors describe Nash as incredibly resilient. Around the one-month mark, they began to breathe a little easier, to believe that Nash had a real chance of going home.”
“As he began to grow, Nash underwent numerous echocardiograms for his heart and endless monitoring and medication—all with lots of love from his parents.”
“Nash’s resilience carried him through months of recovery—and after 189 days in the hospital, his parents finally got the all-clear to take him home in January 2025.”
“The care team recently resolved one of his ongoing health issues, chronic pulmonary hypertension. He also has a minor heart defect, but it should resolve itself as he gets older.”
“Now, his parents say Nash is growing and changing every day, just like any other baby.
The medical team’s goal for the boy is, by the time he’s five years old and goes to kindergarten, that no one will know that he was born so early.”
“I never lost hope for Nash,” Mollie said. “I want him to see his story as a source of strength.”
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