“You wanna leave what attached to what? Bad idea, Mom. Bad idea.”
When I first read this article I had no words. Like, I literally couldn’t form a complete thought. I shook my head and said, “Maybe I’m too tired to digest this fully,” and I went to bed.
My dreams were peppered with the shit horror movies are made of. But instead of being chased down by Freddie Kruger, it was a gigantic baby, running after me, pelting me with placenta pieces. Yeah, you read that right. PLACENTA.
So, a random granola mom decided to opt for a lotus birth with her first child. If the concept is new to you, as it was totally new to me, I’ll explain. A lotus birth is a new trend amongst first world countries, where the umbilical cord remains attached to the baby and the placenta until the cord dries up and falls away on its own. In this woman’s case, that was 6 days after giving birth. Gnarly.
I understand that natural births and natural solutions to man-made situations are important to parents right now. I get that shit, I really do, but do new moms really have a concept of how much gear and bullshit is involved when you have a new baby. Like, a fucktillion of shit. And now you want me to tote around my placenta too?
Say what?
This isn’t even considering the health risks for a baby that is still attached by a feeding cord which is joined to a bleeding mass that, at birth, becomes completely obsolete. So now you have a newborn, an infection risk and a sack of bloody tissue that I’m sure smells marginally like death. This gives a whole new meaning to the newborn baby smell. Awesome.
Now I’m wondering about the long term problems associated with lotus birth. What if your milk never comes in, and you need to *gasp* formula feed? What if your natural water birth has complications and you need to *anything but that* undergo a surgical birth? Will they still let you do your lotus thing and carry around your placenta in a plastic bag from Target? Will you be shunned by your organic, granola, hemp wearing circle-of-moms? Is this type of crazy commitment just setting the new mama up for a fall from grace? And what do they do when the cord falls off? My kid’s had a stump, we kept that in their baby book in a ziploc bag. What do they do with this chord? Please don’t tell me they make it into a necklace? I just can’t handle that amount of deep-seated revulsion.
When I had my first kid, collecting cord blood was the next big thing. Cord blood banks starting popping up all over the world. Supply met demand. If Lotus births actually become a popular trend, and not just the most disgusting thought I’ve ever envisioned in my 38 years of life, will companies start producing pack n’ plays with detachable placenta pockets? Is Graco going to invent a new stroller line with a placenta sidecar? I could just see the made for TV advertisements for sheet sets with added placenta mesh (for all those co-sleeping, lotus birthing mamas out there).
I’m just glad I’m finished having children. I cannot imagine the bullshit people are going to come up with after this.
Photo Credit:
Author: uzi978
Author URL: https://www.flickr.com/people/uzi978/
Im a labor nurse and let me tell you, the Lotus birth is apalling and the vagina juice swabbing for csections is so nasty I can’t believe what people must be thinking.