Today I was talking with my sister on the phone about doulas, she plans on using one for her upcoming arrival in January. While on the phone we somehow got on the topic of the placenta, and I was reminded of a practice I had recently heard of: eating the placenta.
Supposedly this is done to help shrink the uterus back to normal size, help with milk production and to help stave off postpartum depression due to the high levels of certain vitamins and hormones contained within.
I remember a while back reading an article by Time Magazine columnist Joel Stein describing his wife's decision to do this. My initial reaction was "Eewwww, disgusting!" But as I read on he further described that she in actuality had this organ dried, pulverized into a powder and turned into capsule form. Ok, weird, but maybe not so gross. And if there are people who are in business providing this service for new moms, then I guess there must be more that one woman out there doing it.
I was telling Iffy about this today and he was totally repulsed. I assured him that I do not actually have any interest in doing this. But if it is in powder format sprinkled in soup, or a pill that you swallowed with a tall glass of water, then I dont think it's that gross.
However what I DO find to be a bit much is another crazy thing that people have found to do with their placenta when they are done using it to sustain their baby: make a placenta teddy bear. I am serious. Look at this.
I'm not eating any placenta, I'm not making it into a teddy bear either. Right now I am trying to decide if I can handle seeing it. I didn't get to look at it last time, and I kind of would like to. But as I have said before, I don't do well with blood coming out of a person. My main concern is that I will be asking to see it at a time when I will already be in a fragile state, i.e in surgery. It will be a time when I would rather just stay as happy and un-freaked out as possible. So I'm thinking on it. I'll probably just be too busy looking at my baby to care about the placenta anyways.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
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2 comments:
You totally want to see the placenta. I asked to see it with Lucas and it was the weirdest looking thing. And it is a lot bigger than I thought it would be. As far as eating it - I won't condemn it but I wouldn't choose to do it. And the teddy bear thing. . . that was probably concocted by some hippy on LSD. Hallucinogens are the only explanation.
My mom kept ours, froze them and buried all 4 of them together in her garden. She had all of us at home too so maybe that made it easier to do that.
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