Birth is sacred. It is an emotional experience unlike any other.
Breastfeeding is sacred. It is a bonding experience that goes beyond snuggling.
Placentas are amazing powerhouses that maintain a tiny little ecosystem mothers carry around inside them for 10 months. Let's forget they exist. Please, whatever you do, do not feel empowered in your birth or like this "thing" matters one bit. Let's just not talk about it.
Actually, on second thought, I want to see pictures of them. I want to hear stories of placenta encapsulation. I want to know if you had a print made with your placenta after your child was born. Lotus birth is going a little too far for me, but if you did it - more power to you.
Where am I going with all this? I guess you could say I'm jumping up on my mother freakin' soapbox - the very same one my mother would probably like me to come down off from during a majority of our conversations. I'm heated.
Thanks to this article posted and tweeted by Parents - which was practically my Mommy Bible in the early days of parenthood - I want to punch some things.
Let me bring you up to speed in case you didn't click the link and you live inside your computer like me and have very little interaction with the outside world. Jason Biggs and his wife Jenny Mollen just had a baby *aww* and they took to social media to share this experience. I'm not at all aware of what's going on with Hollywood or the people in it, but famous or not, it's pretty stellar these two let the world in to welcome their little man to the community.
They are part of the solution when it comes to normalizing birth, at least that's my thought. The only thing that would make this more awesome is if Jenny tweeted pics of herself breastfeeding. But I'm sure that would be taking it too far for Parents. Lord knows the author of the story about Mollen's placenta pic wants to have a sixth thing added to the magazine's list of five things moms should not post online because apparently placentas are icky. It's "TMI" for a magazine that is all about parenting from conception to middle school.
I just find that really, really sad.
Maybe I missed the memo, but I thought a magazine read mostly by moms and written almost entirely by women/mothers would be a little more supportive of things like normalizing birth, sharing the experience of pregnancy, commiserating over the trials and tribulations of the postpartum weeks/months/years.
Don't get me wrong, I realize this is just one person's opinion of one photo shared on the Internet. But to call it "TMI" is like throwing a blanket over the head of every breastfeeding mother who is totally comfortable with feeding her child as God and nature intended.
A photo of a placenta? Not TMI. At least not to this girl.
This organ, this veiny blood-filled piece of tissue is what makes it possible for a fetus to grow, thrive and survive in the womb. When there's an issue with your placenta it's a pretty big emergency and not usually something doctors pull a "wait and see" with, so celebrate it. Take pictures of it, look at it, go bury it in your backyard with a sapling to memorialize the pregnancy and birth you just experienced and say a prayer for your family, your fertility and the little life that is now in your care.
Seriously, I don't see what the big deal is. Then again, if people actually did share photos of their placentas, it wouldn't have been such a shock when Jenny Mollen did it.
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