Afterbirth

[Niel]

*********GROSS WARNING**********










You have been warned





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Niel,
Your explanation is clearer now. Yes, ethically, it is all right to consume it. However, it is understandable that many people have an emotional or mental block about consuming it. Perhaps my definition of cannibalism is different; I see it as no different from someone drinking their own urine, children eating boogers or biting, then injecting their nails. All these are also waste products produced by the human body. Yuck factor? That I agree with 100%.

That makes sense. I have a sliding scale of gross that is a tad random, probably just based on cultural norms. Some bodily fluid consumption doesn't bother me in the slightest but urine grosses me out. Nails doesn't at all but placenta does.I'm not against anybody doing it but I just don't think I could.

 

[Circe]

Circe, he never exhibited the placenta photogram. But here is one of the cow's liver. The organic chemicals in the liver and in its decay react with the cibachrome paper when it is laid on the paper causing chemically induced electron capture in the dye linked silver halide crystals which makes an 'image' of the liver when the paper is developed.

Huh, cool! I don't know if he's read Elizabeth Hand's Generation Loss, but if not, I recommend it highly ... a good chunk of it has to do with this subset of photography and its reception. This makes it much easier for me to visualize what she was describing ... thank you!

 

[ForteKitty]

This guy threw a placenta party for his friends. http://havingapoo.blogspot.com/2007/07/placenta-party.html

 

[amc80]

That makes sense. I have a sliding scale of gross that is a tad random, probably just based on cultural norms. Some bodily fluid consumption doesn't bother me in the slightest but urine grosses me out. Nails doesn't at all but placenta does.I'm not against anybody doing it but I just don't think I could.

Do people eat nails? On purpose?

 

[Dreamer_D]

People eat skin, nails, boogers... all sorts of gross things

But don't get me started on booger eating. For some reason it grosses me out more than eating a placenta My older son has the nasty habit and it makes me want to barf every time I see it! I have convinced him that eating boogers caused the canker sore he got once that was very painful, and so now he is better about using a tissue. I think that is probably mean to lie to him like that, but I'm sure he will have many worse things to complain about to his future wife and/or therapist!

 

[lioness]

This guy threw a placenta party for his friends. http://havingapoo.blogspot.com/2007/07/placenta-party.html

Why oh why did I click on that link??

 

[VapidLapid]

This guy threw a placenta party for his friends. http://havingapoo.blogspot.com/2007/07/placenta-party.html

what I find most peculiar in this article is that they used "...Jim's placenta...". I suppose Jim might be a woman's name or acquired nickname, but I could find no clarification in the story. My best case scenario is that the baby is Jim, and hence it was his placenta.

 

[Niel]

This guy threw a placenta party for his friends. http://havingapoo.blogspot.com/2007/07/placenta-party.html

what I find most peculiar in this article is that they used "...Jim's placenta...". I suppose Jim might be a woman's name or acquired nickname, but I could find no clarification in the story. My best case scenario is that the baby is Jim, and hence it was his placenta.

I can only assume that's the baby's name.

 

[NOYFB]

But no humans were harmed, injured or killed in the process. It is no longer required for its function, your body considers it a waste product, and thus is ejected by the body.

There are other waste products ejected from my body and I wouldn't eat those either.

 

[Enerchi]

^^^^^
Exactly, lil misfit.

 

[Niel]

In my mind I imagine the effects of eating it to be akin to drinking V

 

[NOYFB]

This thread reminds me of 2 Girls 1 Cup...just saying.....

 

[madelise]

This thread reminds me of 2 Girls 1 Cup...just saying.....

...you... watched that.... too?

 

[NOYFB]

This thread reminds me of 2 Girls 1 Cup...just saying.....

...you... watched that.... too?

Only until I realized what it was...because DH's friends were talking about and I had no idea what it was. As soon as I figured it out I was mortified and went in the other room where I could still hear his friends grossing about it but still....watching it. Boys are gross. Some things can never be unseen....

 

[madelise]

This thread reminds me of 2 Girls 1 Cup...just saying.....

...you... watched that.... too?

Only until I realized what it was...because DH's friends were talking about and I had no idea what it was. As soon as I figured it out I was mortified and went in the other room where I could still hear his friends grossing about it but still....watching it. Boys are gross. Some things can never be unseen....

Yes! Boys are! It was NYE, I was drunk, and my friends sat on my back to prevent me from moving! They showed me that and the pain Olympics. Gahhhh.

 

[VapidLapid]

http://www.last.fm/music/The+Anemic+Boyfriends/_/Guys+Are+Not+Proud

a great record from my youth!

 

[soxfan]

This thread reminds me of 2 Girls 1 Cup...just saying.....

I see what you did there...

 

[armywife13]

I never asked to see or have mine. I was too busy trying to convince my surgeon to give me some lipo and a tummy tuck during my c - section.

 

[TC1987]

Mine went into the bio-waste at the hospital. I'm a vegetarian, I sure as hell wasn't going to eat it.

haha!

I endured one year of diploma R.N. school before deciding it wasn't for me. I swear it was the whole labor/delivery mother/baby OB fascination those instructors had that turned me OFF. I don't have children of my own, and I'm at the age when we can have nice things now because the kids have all gotten jobs and moved far away. The placenta story: When we started the l/d clinical, the instructors offered us the opportunity to see and touch a placenta. So, of course, because this was before I realized I had no farking interest in motherhood or childbirth whatsoever,I said "Sure." Then we had to gown and glove up in isolation gear and cap and mask and shoe covers and all. The instructor took a placenta out of the med waste container, flopped it into a pan, and we took turns handling it. It felt kind of like a muscular bag. I can't imagine anyone eating it. Put it back in the medical waste bucket is fine with me.

I have completely quit the nursing business. I'd rather work with people from afar, like more than arm's length away. I thank the mother/baby labor/delivery unit for making that preference clear to me.

 

[iluvshinythings]

I have a terrible story regarding my afterbirth. (is it mine or is it my daughters?) Anyway, my daughter is 27 so I gave birth back in the dark ages. I was in labor a long, long time and hadn't eaten for more than 24 hours. My daughter finally arrived, her dad (my ex) cut the cord. I was ecstatic because this very long, painful process was over and I had a beautiful baby girl. My doctor didn't believe in epidurals. I still hate him for that to this day. So, I finally deliver the baby and I think it's over and then they tell me I have to also have to deliver the placenta. I was not happy! So a couple of nurses and the doctor massaged my tummy and it finally comes out. I was not the least bit curious about it. Then I got stitched up. Another thing I was never warned about. So finally, placenta delivered, stitches done and we were allowed about 30 minutes of bonding before they took the baby to the nursery to do whatever they do. In a matter of minutes my room went from full of people (the nurses, doctor, baby, ex) to just me all alone. I realized I was starving and they had left my lunch a couple of hours earlier. It was a cheeseburger and fries and it looked wonderful even though it was cold. So I got myself as together as possible and started eating my lunch. After about two bites something a few feet away caught my eye. There was my placenta sitting in a big, metal bowl. Lunch over!!!

I still have flashbacks.

My college roommate is a midwife and she's had many patients consume the placenta. Some make soup, some dry it and consume it in capsules. The first time she mentioned it I was shocked. I had never heard of such a thing. She says the most popular option is to plant it under a tree.

 

[msop04]

I saw mine (not particularly by choice) as the dr was sweeping around up in there to get the rest of it out. They showed it to me in a bowl; it looked like a huge menstrual flow clot, or at least that's how I remember it.

Also a vegetarian and even though it came from my body, not interested in the least in eating it, smelling it, burying it, etc. At the most, I could deal with burying it, but the thought of eating it really makes me a little sick, just as eating any meat does.

...and this is where I almost lost my lunch.

 

[justginger]

There's genuinely not much (medically) that grosses me out anymore. I see the novelty in most things - you must, when you have to handle severed, gangrenous limbs! I routinely handle placentas, they usually arrive in a white bucket, but have also been in Tupperware and a knotted closed plastic bag, as previously described. They're far more annoying than gross to me - the logistics of culturing a placenta are a pain, but in many cases it's quite important to make sure it is negative for Listeria and S. agalactiae.

We do have placentas that are required to be returned to the patient when we are done with them. They are stored in a cold room for a period of weeks, and then sent back to the originating ward. In general I'm ok with people doing whatever they want with it - despite an undeniable squickiness factor, and I wouldn't choose to do anything but chuck it in the medical waste. However, when something has gone wrong enough that you have to have the placenta investigated by the microbiology department, I think at that point you need to let it go. At that point, I do think there's a good chance that ingesting it comes with more risk than potential reward.

However, I have been told that the very persistent people, who want it back despite potential infection, do it due to cultural traditions. I've been told that some Aboriginal and Maori (and TSI?) peoples have ceremonies and burials.

 

[MonkeysInk]

I own a business that serves the birth community, so many of my friends are birthy people. I am not squeamish about blood or birth or really much of anything. I did not consume my placentas, but I know many people who have and here are my two best weird stories:

There is a local doula that does encapsulations. She uses the length of umbilical cord to weave a dream catcher as a souvenir. Weirdest thing I've seen done with a placenta.

A friend of mine is a doula and we were chatting on the phone when she was on the way home from a birth. She says "hang on" and I near her order a Starbucks. She gets to the window and I hear this flurry of explanation. She had a placenta wrapped in bags on her front seat (dropping it off to be encapsulated) and an herbal bath packet next to it. (You boil it like tea and use it to make a soaking bath that helps soothe mom's bottom and dry baby's cord. It's magical.) Apparently the barista was losing it over what looked like a giant bag of weed next to a big bag of bloody mess, and she was trying to explain before the barista called the police.

 

[lioness]

A friend of mine is a doula and we were chatting on the phone when she was on the way home from a birth. She says "hang on" and I near her order a Starbucks. She gets to the window and I hear this flurry of explanation. She had a placenta wrapped in bags on her front seat (dropping it off to be encapsulated) and an herbal bath packet next to it. (You boil it like tea and use it to make a soaking bath that helps soothe mom's bottom and dry baby's cord. It's magical.) Apparently the barista was losing it over what looked like a giant bag of weed next to a big bag of bloody mess, and she was trying to explain before the barista called the police.

I can't stop laughing!!!!

 

[amc80]

I can't stop laughing!!!!

Ditto. That's an awesome story!

 

[TC1987]

haha!

 

[LoversKites]

Hahaha. made me laugh