DISCLAIMER: I express strong opinions here which are entirely my own, and I make no effort to be diplomatic. If you have a different opinion from me, my intent is not to offend, but you can hardly blame me for how I feel about this subject!
Okay. Phew. Now that THAT's out of the way.
So I know that I've talked about health insurance before. It's tricky when you're self employed. And here in Utah, there's no maternity coverage. So if I wanted to have an epidural, I would have to plan on spending about $2000.
That seems like an awful lot of money to spend on something that only lasts a few hours. And sometimes they're not even administered properly and so I wouldn't get the relief anyway, and I would STILL have to pay for it. So I may as well spend the money on something I really WANT instead of on the anesthesiologist.
In this case, this is what I really want:
So the point of this whole post is actually to tell you about what we're doing to PREPARE for natural child birth. My doctor and her PA both told me that if I don't prepare, it won't matter HOW much the epidural costs, I will get one. Okay. So I signed us up for a hypnobirthing class. By all accounts, this is an excellent method to help you through natural child birth.
I had already read the book before going to the first class, so I was pretty prepared. Not only was I prepared for the good stuff that I could buy into, but I was also prepared for the anti-medical stuff, that I don't have as much of a tolerance for. I know that the medical system isn't perfect, but I also know that swinging totally the other way and resisting any and all medical help isn't the answer, either. (It helps that we have a doctor whose opinions we really trust, and who we know has our best interests in mind.)
What we WEREN'T prepared for was the pot roast.
At our second class in the home of our hypnobirthing instructor, as soon as everyone was comfortably seated, our instructor apologized for any lingering smell of pot roast, explaining, "I've been processing placenta today, so you might still be able to smell it." She went on to describe what she does. She cooks the placenta, then dries the placenta, then pulverizes the placenta, and then encapsulates the placenta into gel gaps so that you can ingest it as pills.
(To do all of this, you need a license, and so to my minor relief, she also explained the process of how she then has to clean and sterilize the entire kitchen and any tools used... but you'd better believe I won't be drinking another glass of water in her house again!!)
This, my friends, is what we call CANNIBALISM! (This is the part where you may choose to be offended if you are a placenta-eater.) Oh my GOSH! There are NO WORDS! Except that there ARE words, and those words are HOLY CRAP, I HAVE SMELLED THE SMELL OF HUMAN FLESH THAT HAS BEEN ROASTED FOR THE PURPOSE OF EATING!!
I HAVE SMELLED CANNIBALISM!!
And the rest of that evening, any time we were doing a relaxation exercise, I couldn't actually relax because just as I was relaxing,
OHMYGOSH I JUST GOT ANOTHER WHIFF OF POT ROAST!
(If I could make that text flashing, I WOULD because THAT is how I felt.)
Okay, so the REASONING is that there are nutrients in the placenta. (Which, after we told my doctor about this today, and after she expressed the appropriate amount of horror, she pointed out that there probably aren't very many nutrients LEFT once you process it.) But you know what? There are also nutrients EVERYWHERE in the human body, and it's not as if I'm going to request my gallbladder once it's removed so that I can stew it up. I also didn't keep my bunions (but there was calcium in those boney outgrowths! And now I've lost that calcium FOREVER). And if Murray had to have a leg amputated (because we talk about weird stuff like this), it's not as if we'd roast up the thigh muscle for a family dinner!
Hey, we talk about burial vs. cremation vs. making dead bodies into diamonds in my family, too. Now this is a FOURTH alternative that we'd never considered. Maybe when my mom dies, we can just process her into pills and then we can all EAT OUR OWN MOTHER! Then we can all benefit from the source from whence we originally came.
I am scarred for life.
Have YOU ever smelled the smell of roasting human flesh?
20 comments:
I love you.
Yes, actually. I have. It was my own roasting flesh as a doctor was burning off an unsightly mole. I made some witty comment about, "hey! Now I know what burning flesh smells like!"
The Doc replied, "I am WELL acquainted with that smell."
Hahahahaha!
That is by far the worst thing I've ever heard. And the placenta part was bad, too.
I have not, thank goodness. But I do know someone who did take her "placenta tablets" after giving birth. The whole thing is pretty darned disgusting, if you ask me.
I went to elementary school across the street from a place that did cremation. Not my favorite smell.
You're not going to eat the placenta?!? Probably because that's nasty. I had a lady offer to prepare my placenta for me when I was pregnant with Ellie. That was, of course, after making a placenta print with the lingering blood. I declined.
Um, that's nasty. And now when I smell pot roast I'm going to think 'placenta'.
My parents did home birth and buried the placentas. I still have memories of opening the freezer and having to remember that the avocado green tupperware container had my little brother's placenta in it. Mine is apparently buried under a cottonwood tree by a stream in Wyoming.
Dude. You can order a burger at the hospital if you need protein. Wow.
I'm definitely horrified. Also, I don't think I'm hungry for lunch anymore...
After having read this post more than once, all I can think is "Oh. Oh my gosh." on repeat. Oh my gosh!!
A friend pointed out to me that to get any nutrients it must be consumed raw.
So...all that effort for nothing!
My mom worked at a birth center in Pennsylvania and several of the women would take their placentas home and turn them into placenta stew in their crock pots. No joke.
In German the word for placenta is "mother cake." Pretty interesting translation, no?
does it help if i tell you that all gel capsule pills are made from cows body parts? go gelatin! :)
And here I thought it was a little strange when people buried their placenta to nourish a tree...
I can't imagine I'll ever do that, but I've heard of people doing that before. It's supposed to be really nutritious. I think a bunch of animals eat them after they give birth. It's extremely nutritious, and full of hormones that do good things after you've just given birth...like, help you recover faster.
My mom always just buried them under trees or rose bushes.
That's super gross that you were smelling it at your class. Also, gross that she told you all about it while you were smelling it. Eww.
FYI, people save "cord blood" too. Not for eating. And it's expensive, so most people don't.
(Also, making people into diamonds is really cool.)
"You've gotta tell them! Soylent Green is people! We've gotta stop them somehow!"
Me and a midwife at my work were just talking about this. Yeah, supposedly it is uppsed to help with anemia, postpartum depression, etc. But I have never heard the raw thing. Gross.
But for me - I don't want to eat anything that has come out of my body - especially my crotch and especially something that might have brushed up against poo! Sick!
I may have thrown up a little bit. EW.
That is insane
Okay, FIRST off, I didn't "prepare" for natural birthing aaaaand I didn't have drugs or an epidural. It is possible. The hypnobirthing thing I just found....weird.
Secondly.........I have no words.
W-O-W
I'm a bit late on this conversation but I'm interested to see how natural childbirth went. With my last pregnancy I didn't want to pay for an epidedural either....I cursed myself and ended up with an emergency c-section that required payment to three additional OBs called in to patch up my uterus, plus payment to the neonatology team, and finally, the hospital had a special charge for high grade emergencies and use of the operating room in such circumstances. An epidural would have been much cheaper than our 25% co-pay which amounted to nearly $6,000. Awesome.
Anyway, my sister had her home-birth midwife dehydrated then mortar and pestled, and encapsallated her placenta. She felt her postpartum transition was much better. I guess if you've ever had a rough go of postpartum depression, you'd be more willing to look at all options. I think the smell would really bother me too and I agree, it seems like stewing a placenta would take out the nutrients. Still, what strikes me about the whole conversation and the whole home birth midwifery thing is the discomfort we feel with our bodies, form and function. Modern medicine birthing and otherwise has saved my life so I don't have any grudges there but there's nothing too ugly or gross about the more raw aspects of life....Uh, no pun intended.
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