I Regret Eating My Placenta

Eye problems – Not wanting to see what is going on in the family.

this is like some stone age/sympathetic magic level shit

I don't want to even address that shit seriously but even if you believed in it couldn't you see how simplistic it is? Fevers are the manifestation of anger, because they both involve "burning up." Come on. Use your imagination at least.

Accidents = pee/poop accidents or all accidents?

Babies give themselves asthma by being scared little babies. COWBOY UP LITTLE BABIES if you want to breathe! xp

Well "bedwetting" is separate so I guess just like any accident?
xpost

I also like how "childhood diseases" is somehow separate from the rest of these, including colic.

In summary, Louise L. Hay did not work very hard on that list.

Childhood diseases – Childish behaviour in the adults around them.

she should think long and hard about this one

cowboy up, ulysses

A word in defence here of that beautiful ball of fire in the sky we call the sun; the burning star that gives life to everything on planet Earth and, without which, we would not exist.

The sun has such great healing powers that it actually purges anything out of the human body that should not be there, not create a state of disease crisis but sometimes creates a healing crisis in the form of the big C word.

Tabacco and masturbation!

"Your dick smells like smoke!?"

Ceci n'est pas une pipe

"in the form of the big C word."

That was particularly confusing to me because I am a foul mouthed harridan and thought she was referring to "cunt."

you're not dying you just have a healing crisis

maybe the sun is so hot because it's angry all the time. chill out, sun!

I regret starting 'I Regret Eating My Placenta'

lol no I don't, this tangent is amazing

Wait, is the daddy in that xojane article Ethan Hawke?

considering they're vegan, it's more likely to be methane hawke tbh

http://www.today.com/parents/umbilical-cord-burning-modern-moms-embrace-ancient-practice-1D80023427

I feel like, even though I'd probably eat placenta pills if I ever give birth, the only proper response to all of this is

https://41.media.tumblr.com/22b09e0817c4cc60236c4d002fea0e9c/tumblr_nl0murJH6o1r73e4ko1_540.png

(I almost just C&P'd that jpeg link into an email to super important high level rich people and oh god am I glad i caught that)

"it’s a way to cherish the moment and get loved ones involved in the milestone for baby and mom."

There are a lot of ways to do this that don't involve an open flame around your newborn but at least nobody is claiming any medical benefits of cord burning. It's just ceremonial and I can't get mad at that, even if I might roll my eyes a lil bit.

No I totally agree. I just find it kind of fascinating that people keep trying to come up with still more things to do with the freaking umbilical cords.

(btw I know there are no proven medical benefits to eating placenta but there are also no harmful effects and if it might do something good I can understand wanting to encapsulate it plus it just seems like it would be kinda bad ass)

I just find it kind of fascinating that people keep trying to come up with still more things to do with the freaking umbilical cords.

LOL yeah. Bolo ties? (brb opening Etsy store)

Just make sure you know what else (if anything) is going in the capsules! Nothing but 100% pure placenta for you, missy.

As far as what white nonsense it is, given this "Cord burning, a practice that’s been around in various cultures for many years," I'm going to guess "cultural appropriation." I can't find anything about the actual origins of cord burning, but I read a really good piece about baby wearing and cultural appropriation that I think would probably be applicable here. None of which is to say that white women should burn the cord or wear their babies (I'm a fan of the latter personally) but just to do it in a way that respects, rather than coopts or minimizes, the origins of the practices.

Here it is! http://the-toast.net/2014/11/17/cultural-appropriation-birthing-community/

None of which is to say that white women SHOULDN'T burn the cord, I meant to say.

Parents of color often talk about how we are met with two common reactions when we do things that we have reclaimed as part of connecting with our own cultures. Either people tell us that we are “backwards” and that these things are “primitive,” they tell us that there is science (because what our ancestors did obviously was not based in any science) and new theory, etc. Or they exoticize us and our cultural practices wanting to hear all about it and, if we are open to sharing, they suddenly become “experts” on the subject and we shortly thereafter find them teaching or writing obnoxious articles such as the one linked here. Much like many other “natural parenting” methods that have become popular again in white cultures, there is little introspection of how colonization has tried desperately to break families of color from breastfeeding, babywearing, and other traditional healing methods. Midwives and doulas have become associated with a degree of privilege, often completely inaccessible to the most marginalized communities who would actually benefit the most from such access. Home birth is taken for granted as something that a white family can choose, but families of color for whom it was a family norm in the past are now forced to accept invasive medical procedures under threat of having their children removed from the home with charges of medical neglect.

I have pretty strong opinions about home birth being a generally bad idea, but this paragraph is spot on, IMO.

eating your placenta is basically the adult version of eating your boogers

tbh i felt a lot of sadness when the umbilical cord stump of my first son fell off, it meant he was really no longer a newborn and that brief phase was done. i don't know why i felt so emotional about it, i didn't want to get rid of it. the dried stump sat on top of his dresser for a months, we even talked about burying it. i'm well aware that this makes sound pretty loony and tbh i probably am, i have no explanation for the attachment i had to this little dried piece of tissue. eventually it became dusty and gross and we just threw it out. when our second son was born and his umbilical cord stump fell off, i felt nothing towards it and immediately said "fuck this the stump is going in the trash"

I was just being funny with the picture because that quote/character are hilarious. I didn't really mean white nonsense literally more like privileged nonsense because the whole birth/afterbirth plan thing is really sort of just that that to begin with which is not to say that I don't understand the desire to make or have one. And yes I'm sure it is cultural appropriation of some sort though you're right that nothing specific turns up. Gonna read that toast article. I was actually just talking about baby wearing and how it's how people have done it for ages recently. I want to wear all the babies if I ever do have any.

x-post - I was reading something earlier about people planting umbilical cords with trees to grow alongside their kids and my exact thought was that seems like something you'd do with your first kid but not any after that.

not you specifically, of course

Ivy's cord fell off when she was in the NICU. I wasn't there when it happened. I wasn't involved in any of the cord care. I just came in one day and there was this weird little dried up thing sitting next to her bassinet. I didn't even figure out it was her cord for a couple of hours. I feel deeply sad about all of the time Ivy spent in the NICU but I feel particularly sad about that. So I get the urge behind a lot of this stuff.

At this point, it's also hard to avoid an emotional kneejerk negative reaction about a lot of this stuff because even though I would not have burned the cord or eaten my placenta or given birth in my tub, I also didn't have the choice. I didn't get to listen to music or hold my baby until 12 hours or so after she was born. So part of me mourns not having the choicedespite my anti-woo stance in general, which is why that quoted paragraph makes so much sense to me. And then I also get righteously angry at any suggestion that not embracing the whole passel of natural childbirth woo is somehow harmful. Cutting the cord before it stopped pulsing was nowhere near as harmful as not getting Ivy supplemental oxygen in the moments after she was born, you know?

all of that makes a ton of sense to me carl

I don't know if baby wearing was important for Ivy, but it was super key for me. Ivy seemed fine just snoozing in her bassinet but I desperately needed to cuddle her as much as possible. I'm a pretty cuddly person in general and given the circumstances of her birth, I really felt like I missed out on something super important in those first weeks. That's a huge reason why I am pretty casual about co-sleeping. I feel like I shouldn't encourage it, but I really like it. She just snuggles right up to me and it's like oxytocin city.

Baby wearing is also ultra convenient. Highly recommend it.

Yes CA, absolutely. I know several women who had elaborate birth plans and opinions and ideas of what their all natural births were going to look like who ended up having necessary medical intervention and were then really upset because I honestly think they hadn't even considered that that might happen.

I hadn't yet read the paragraph you quoted when I was talking about privilege but yes that is absolutely 100% spot on.

Thanks, guys. Validation is good!

for both our boys we put in a ton of work planning a natural childbirth (not a home birth though) and each time things did not go as planned in any way, we had to way more interventions than we anticipated and both boys were born cesarean. we did everything we could to make it happen each time but it just didn't work out for us. we generally feel a lot of resentment towards the natural birth movement, and while we understand and support so many of its principles, there is definitely a vibe that if you don't birth naturally, use various interventions, or have a cesarean birth, then your birth was a failure. the number of times we were told by natural birth devotees that labor/birth is not painful and can even be "orgasmic" (fuuuck that, really?) while my wife had one excruciatingly painful 40-hour labor and another excruciatingly painful 25-hour labor just makes us very angry.

not angry in the sense that we were entitled to a natural birth, more angry in the frequent misrepresentations that the natural birth movement gives. again, i support SO much of what the natural birth movement does, it is deeply needed but at the same time many of its adherents are not willing to admit that labor and birth varies so widely across women and often medical interventions are a wonderful thing.

we would have been FUCKED if we tried to do a homebirth yet it was still encouraged by many people we talked to

and by "natural birth movement" i mean the american natural birth movement that we've experienced mostly on the east coast of the US just to be clear

So much OTM. I mean, just in this thread I talked about a post on a midwifery message board where a midwife said that it ultrasounds were bad, even if they diagnosed complications that would be fatal without intervention (like the one I had!), because the death of a baby is less important than women connecting with their intuition. What the fuck? I mean, what the fucking fuck?

Also you know what really fucking sucks? C-sections. THEY SUCK. I don't want to scare anybody and they are a wonderful, amazing, life saving procedure that I am extremely grateful for but holy shit they aren't FUN and it took me about a year to stop having PTSD-like reactions about mine, and other than the resident anesthesiologist bobbling my epidural the first time, my c-section was pretty routine. It was just very, very unpleasant. Also nobody told me that uncontrollable shaking was a common reaction to an epidural so I literally thought I was dying. So the idea that individual mothers are getting c-sections because they are easy or whatever just makes me furious.

So the idea that individual mothers are getting c-sections because they are easy or whatever just makes me furious.

totally! recovery *at best* is like a 2-month deal, our baby was born 6 weeks ago and my wife is just now able to lift and hold our 28-lb toddler and it still hurts her

I am sending major empathy vibes to your wife rn.

"orgasmic" (fuuuck that, really?)

There is a video on youtube that claims to be a lady O-ing during birth and it's just . . . no fucking way.

I support whatever anyone wants to do but I also know that I'm a total wuss when it comes to pain and would probably be 20 mins in and begging for all the drugs available to me. I do think midwifes are awesome that birth is sometimes medicalized necessarily for routine pregnancies and for that reason I like the idea of midwife-led birthing centers within hospitals where the mother also has immediate access to doctors and interventions etc. Also I stress routine. Anyone that thinks all ultrasounds are dangerous can get fucked.

A Santa Cruz, California, family -- who asked not to be identified for privacy reasons but still allowed their faces to be put on a website associated with a a national news agency -- takes part in a cord burning ceremony.

zing

They put their kids in matching pajamas so they would be harder to dox individually.