ladies, apparently Matthew McConaughey believes he will bury his child's placenta....

[ticklbee]

I have never, ever heard of this. You guys aren't serious when you talk about eating it are you? I just can't fathom that! :tongue_smilie:

[kristavws]

Weren't you afraid a coyote, dog, or some wild animal would dig it up and eat it??

 

Krista

[susie in tx]

 

Susie, how does their front garden look? :D

 

I'll drive by tomorrow and let ya know. ;) I'm sure that their front garden look amazing, though, considering the wonderful fertilizer it's been given.:)

[susie in tx]

I thawed mine on the counter first :lol:

 

See. That requires prior planning and forethought. We're lucky we got the tree purchased and brought home.:blink:

[lwilliams1922]

I was talking to my mom on the phone and I asked her if she had saved our (her?) placentas and told her about this thread. She was so disgusted at the thought that she got right off the phone.

 

I called her back to tell her about placenta smoothies and she hung up on me.

 

It's a good day when I can gross out my mother.

 

RC

 

 

It freaked out my mom AFTER i convinced her what she was looking at in the freezer was not LIVER.

[Nicole M]

See. That requires prior planning and forethought. We're lucky we got the tree purchased and brought home.:blink:

 

Planning and forethought. Exactly my problem. We've planted a lot since that kid was born. In fact, I could finish off that hundred species challenge (ask Amy Loves Bud) just looking at the 15 feet outside my front door. But getting the placenta thawed first, uh uh uh. I cannot imagine that thing on my counter, and I can't imagine putting a frozen blob under the delicate roots of any beloved plant.

 

Also, see, I have this totally irrational... not fear, but thing, about saying goodbye to my reproductive years. Not that I want another child, but burying the placenta would mean that I would have to admit that the daughter isn't happening. Weird and pathetic, I know.

 

Though if we moved, I feel the placenta would have to stay here on this property. I totally dig that. (Get it? "Dig.")

 

And of course, there's the shock factor. Grossing out my mother. Now it's almost a challenge. Twelve years and counting! How long can she keep it?

 

BTW, do I understand I have the oldest placenta then?

[nmoira]

 

I have never, ever heard of this. You guys aren't serious when you talk about eating it are you? I just can't fathom that! :tongue_smilie:

Yes. I didn't, and I wouldn't, but it's done.

[tribemama]

I have three and adding one more in October! 7 years! I was laughing so hard when I started reading this thread. I am so glad I am not the only one out there with a placenta in her freezer!

Our hope was when we actually bought our first home we would bury them under a row of trees. I don't think you have to defrost before you bury. I have heard that the placenta's actually fry the roots of the trees with the amount of iron in them?? Anyone with this experience.

Tribemama

[Mama Lynx]

Planning and forethought. Exactly my problem. We've planted a lot since that kid was born. In fact, I could finish off that hundred species challenge (ask Amy Loves Bud) just looking at the 15 feet outside my front door. But getting the placenta thawed first, uh uh uh. I cannot imagine that thing on my counter, and I can't imagine putting a frozen blob under the delicate roots of any beloved plant.

 

 

It certainly had a very ... interesting ... odor :lol:

[Doran]

Peek's got a placenta (or had one) that someone almost mistook for frozen strawberries. JennifersLost had friend who wanted to have a ceremony to commemorate the passing of her uterus. What on earth is keeping us from just having our blooming, planting, digging, burying, mourning, howling, smoked & sliced & sprinkled with lemon juice if you want celebrations? (Although I gotta admit, the latter concept of placental consumption really does kind of wig me out. Powdered, maybe. But, don't you dare toss that thing in my skillet!)

 

We've had ceremonial buryings for our two cats, for a Great Horned Owl which we found dead in the road, for a special chicken or two, probably even a rock or a walnut somewhere along the line. So far, we have not been the sort inclined toward burying our own body parts. Well, come to think of it, except for my two placentae and a tooth or two, we manage to still be in possession of all of our body parts! But, still, if we had lost them, I think we'd just stick those suckers in the earth and let Mother Nature take it from there. I figure the place baby came home is the place the placenta should stay. Dig the hole. Light some candles. Wave some branches. Say a prayer. Done.

 

Go now and bury. ;)

[Meljoy]

Kathleen, I ask myself that question every single day. Okay, no I don't. I ask it once a year when my mother comes to visit and she reaches for the refrigerator door apprehensively and asks, whispering, "It's not still in there, is it?" And then she shudders.

 

I had a home birth and in my post birth haze, the midwives were oohing and ahing over the placenta "beautiful!" (and I'm thinkin' what about the kid?) and I succumbed to a kind of peer pressure and agreed to bury the thing under a tree. The freezer is just the holding area. But you know, after you have a baby, you have a baby, and dealing with a placenta is simply not a high priority. Hence. It sits. And the longer it sits, the more frightened I am to deal with it.

:lol: :w00t::smilielol5::smilielol5::smilielol5:

 

Edited to add -I was not sure what it was either.......

[Saille]

LOL...my dd's is still in my best friend's chest freezer, two states away. We couldn't figure out how to move with it, and we didn't want to bury it and then move away forever. We keep forgetting to pick it up when we visit.

 

The eating it thing is supposed to help with ppd. I've been a vegetarian for over half my life, but my ppd was bad enough with my first that I told myself I was entertaining the possibility the second time around...and then didn't. Fortunately that was the easiest pregnancy, birth and post-partum of the three.

[Amy in Orlando]

LOL...my dd's is still in my best friend's chest freezer, two states away. We couldn't figure out how to move with it, and we didn't want to bury it and then move away forever. We keep forgetting to pick it up when we visit. .

 

Maybe your friend can just hang onto it until your daughter gets married. Talk about a unique wedding gift!

[Amy in NH]

:lol::lol::lol: so the midwife disposed of it.

 

You can imagine how nice her garden must look!

 

:lol::lol::lol:

[Saille]

Maybe your friend can just hang onto it until your daughter gets married. Talk about a unique wedding gift!

 

Or an anniversary present...which year is flesh?

[1bassoon]

Well, ladies -

 

All I can say is that I'm going to bookmark this thread. It has taken away any desire I had for a late-night munchie break. I think I'll just have to read it every night from now on. . . . . .

 

:tongue_smilie:

[dirty ethel rackham]

Mine is '00. I want to bury it under a tree, but we are fortunate to have so many trees that I won't be planting any soon. I had thought I would plant it in dh's butterfly garden, but he got to it too quickly - plus I was afraid to thaw it and afraid that Wiley, our friendly neighborhood coyote, would dig it up. Maybe I'll tell hubby it's time to do something with it:)!

[Nicole M]

Maybe I'll tell hubby it's time to do something with it:)!

 

Oh, now why would you want to do that?!

 

Your garden got me to thinking - it's almost as bad as Sophie's Choice - which plant? Which tree? Wouldn't all the other living things in the garden be thinkin', hey, now, folks, where's my placenta?

So many barriers to burying.... This could be a whole field unto itself in the world of psychiatry.

[Nicole M]

Maybe your friend can just hang onto it until your daughter gets married. Talk about a unique wedding gift!

 

Oh, dear. Now I'll have to go a step further and confess that we have a print of my son's placenta in our attic. You drop the bloody thing on a piece of paper and it makes a "beautiful tree of life!" image. No kidding. I imagine that upon my death my daughters in law will come across the print and mutter, what the Sam Hill IS this thing?

 

 

 

 

 

And then they'll remember that special, frozen wedding gift....

[Amy in Orlando]

 

http://www.twilightheadquarters.com/placenta.html If you are squeamish do not hit this link. Placenta recipes. It's a whole new world.

[coffeefreak]

When I came home with my first daughter (1999), my poor husband had already put her placenta in the freezer (pressure from the midwives the night of her birth). He really thought I would want it! We moved into our house a year later with it and it sat in the freezer until my second daughter was born (3 years later, 2002). When we saw the placenta WAITING in the room for me (honestly, they delivered my placenta to the hospital room before ME!), we told them we didn't need another one, we already had one in the freezer. They looked at us like we had grown two heads and insisted that we needed this one too! I tried to get them to take it, but they wouldn't. I asked if I brought back the one I had left with 3 years ago if they would dispose of it, and they said something about hospital codes. So, we had two placentas in the freezer until 2005, when we finally took mercy on my parents and the rest of our family (not to mention our freezer space) and buried them in the back yard under some trees that have since died and never really took anyway so, so much for that myth!

 

Since we live in the desert, we had to bury them DEEP so the Coyotes wouldn't get them. I kept having nightmares that a Coyote would find them, dig them up and eat them. Then, he would come to my door and ask for the child that tasted the best! :eek: I was equally afraid to just throw them away. I was worried about ending up on the evening news.

 

So, do hospitals not dispose of Placentas anymore? Is this a conspiracy? Should we make tee shirts that say "I was part of the Placenta conspiracy. Stop the madness!!"?:willy_nilly::willy_nilly::willy_nilly:

[coffeefreak]

In case of post partum depression. Ingestion of placenta can cure it.

 

 

UM, if they had told me at the time this was the answer to my PPD, I would have asked to be committed. No offense to anyone, but YUCK!!!!:ack2:

[DB in NJ]

Sorry, I don't mean to offend anyone, but....

 

bury it? freeze it? EAT it???

 

I find it all really gross. It's a temporary body organ that is FULL of blood vessels. Honestly, I'm all for keepsakes, but this is just disgusting. I for one don't want a vein bag sitting in my freezer or buried in my yard. And I certainly don't want it in my frying pan or even dried and put in capsule form.

 

:ack2:

[laylamcb]

Or an anniversary present...which year is flesh?

 

:smilielol5::smilielol5::smilielol5:

[dragons in the flower bed]

Weren't you afraid a coyote, dog, or some wild animal would dig it up and eat it??

 

A little bit, but the wild animals up at the cabin don't usually get that close to the house. Also, female hormones drive wild animals batty, so they stay even further away after a birth (or during menses). Anyway, if they did, it would still become part of the local cycle of life, right? Just more . . . quickly. Maybe I'd feel differently if we had buried them in an urban neighborhood with tame dogs running about, but the animals up there were wild, local, and not going to ever be moved by humans. The placenta couldn't help but become part of the local ecosystem whether it was nourishing soil directly or via an animal.

[coffeefreak]

Also, female hormones drive wild animals batty, so they stay even further away after a birth (or during menses). Anyway, if they did, it would still become part of the local cycle of life, right? .

 

So, since it took me 6 years to bury the placentas, were the female hormones gone? Or were they preserved since they were frozen? And does that mean that the Coyotes wouldn't have dug them up (they come close to our back fence line all the time) because they would have smelled the hormones and said, "UGH! Another crazy hormonal lady just buried her placenta." Maybe I did the wrong thing, maybe I should have put it on our back wall to keep animals away, I think the homeowner's association would have objected to that:rofl:

 

I'm really laughing at myself because I really WAS paranoid about burying it. Had I known that the Coyotes didn't want it either, I would have disposed of it long before I did! Thanks for the insight!

[dragons in the flower bed]

Or an anniversary present...which year is flesh?

 

ROTFLOL!

[camibami]

I'm taking a lunch time WTM board break, and I am cracking up! Good thing I'm not squeamish!

 

MY oldest had the most lovely placenta- the room was full of residents and staff anyway (I had a breech delivery and those are sort of rare these days so I got to be the freak show) and they all passed it around. Truth be told, I was more interested in the placenta than the baby! My youngest had your regualr ol placenta and it disappeared to God knows where pretty quick.

 

No idea what they did with mine- don't really want to know. Don't want them back, don't want to eat them, have no attachment to them. I do understand the sentiment, I guess- I asked for my appendix (they don't let you keep it, by the way) and also the big veins they removed from my legs, just to have. But a placenta seems much too big to keep!

[Rich with Kids]

I'm going to hurl...

[Ravin]

I wanted to bury DD's, but DH tossed it out because our roommates (BIL and especially his ex girlfriend) were squicked by it. I wanted to wait until we had our own place.

 

It would still be in the freezer, she's almost 5. One of the many reasons I don't miss BIL's ex around here!

[RoughCollie]

Are you a cannibal if you eat a placenta (even if it is your own)?

 

These questions are coming to mind, now that I've finished grossing out my mother. I think she will disown me if I bring this subject up again! :D This morning I asked her if she'd had a smoothie today, and she practically bit my head off. Now that would be cannibalism!

 

I also looked up pictures of placentas and they are not all that attractive.

 

RC

[lighthouseacademy]

:smilielol5::lol:

This thread has given me much to laugh about. Thank you.

 

I actually know someone who ate some of her placenta to stop pp hemorrhage.

[Nicole M]

Are you a cannibal if you eat a placenta (even if it is your own)?

 

These questions are coming to mind, now that I've finished grossing out my mother. I think she will disown me if I bring this subject up again! :D This morning I asked her if she'd had a smoothie today, and she practically bit my head off. Now that would be cannibalism!

 

I also looked up pictures of placentas and they are not all that attractive.

 

RC

 

Oh, dear me.

 

How did you keep a straight face when you asked her about the smoothie?

 

In the freak-out-mother category, you are a master. You are my hero.

[jamnkats]

But mine are older. March '02 and Dec '04. (hanging my head in shame.)

 

In 2004, when we sold the house and hit the road, i disposed of 3. One from 1996, one from 1999 and the last from 2001. If the eldest hadn't been born in a hospital, I would have had one from 1994. Sigh.

[Lovedtodeath]

 

This is seriously grossing me out. :ack2: I really don't need to read any more of this thread, but you know I'm not going to be able to help myself.:D

:iagree::lol:

[Veritaserum]

As far as tradition goes, I read about it right around the time dh & I married in a book called...hmmm...I can't remember the title. But it's a YA Hispanic-American Lit novel about a boy & his grmother & their culture, etc. One of the vivid details was the tradition of burying the placenta.

 

Bless Me, Ultima

 

Our last four were born at home but I just had my midwife chuck the placentas.

 

If it were needed, I supposed I could have tolerated dried and encapsulated since there are all kinds of funky things in regular pharmaceuticals. There's no way I could have stomached a placenta smoothie or lasagna. ;)