Placenta Teddy Bear??

[Rastamon]

From ABCnews.

Placenta Teddy Bears, Meals Stir Debate, Revulsion

Inventive Uses for the Afterbirth Include Placenta Pills, Objects, Trees



After the baby is born and the cooing in the delivery room begins, parents may do a variety of things with the placenta -- maybe take a picture, poke it a bit, or just divert their eyes and let the nurse take it away.

Whatever parents do, it probably wouldn't match London-based designer Alex Green's idea of turning the baby's placenta into a teddy bear.

"It just looks like a brown leather teddy bear and you get closer and say, hmm what strange leather is that," said Green.

Green claims he was motivated to make the bears to shake up how people think of placenta.

"I was very interested in how it was discarded unceremoniously as medical waste, why it's discarded and how we could bring it back…" said Green, who thought placentas deserved a symbolic treatment whether they're saved or not. "It was really about provoking a debate about placentas and how we treat them."

Indeed placentas get more respect outside of the United Kingdom or United States. The placenta is still eaten in some Chinese medicinal practices for strength, and buried in other religious and cultural traditions. Green said he was inspired after reading that ancient Egyptians revered the pharaoh's placenta so much they put it on a pole like a flag for public display.

What Does a Placenta Teddy Bear Feel Like?

Green started making his placenta teddy bears in January 2008, experimenting with an animal's placenta first to perfect the technique. The placenta must first be cured with salt to kill bacteria and remove water. Green then softens the dried organ with a mixture of eggs and tannins.

Once he cuts and sews the bears, Green fills them with brown rice. Most end up to be 5 inches tall.

"It's more heavy than you'd imagine -- they're more the sort of thing that you'd stick on a mantel pieces," said Green. "It feels soft, somewhere between leather and suede but it's much more flexible than leather -- it's bendy."

Time will tell if the placenta teddy bear will ever turn from statement to tradition. After an exhibition this October parent blogs have picked up on Green's teddy bears and largely dubbed them gross.

"Of course a lot of people feel it's grotesque," said Green. "But, quite a few women have expressed interest in making them."

What Some Women Do With the Placenta

Even if placenta teddy bears don't catch on, midwives around the U.S. said Green might have put his finger on a new trend of repurposing the placenta.

From Missouri to San Francisco midwifes and hospitals are now helping women do a variety of old and new traditions with the placenta.

Midwifes say women are especially inclined to do something meaningful in the case of a home birth.

"It's more like 'we have this placenta what are we going to do with it?'" said Tina Williams, a childbirth educator in Springfield, Mo.

More often than not, Williams said women in her area bury the placenta and plant a tree.

"Then there's the symbolism with the tree growing," she said. "I've seen pictures of the kid at 3 or 4 years old standing by the tree, and that's their placenta tree."

In hospital births, midwives say the decision to release the placenta depends on the hospital's policy or sometimes the doctor's decision.

On the West coast, some nurses and midwifes say each year a handful of women actually ask to take the placenta home to eat it.

"Even just the last six months or so it's increased," said Maggie Pollak, a nurse at the University of California San Francisco Birthing Center. "There's now something new where they freeze dry it and put it into pills -- it's something that's supposed to help them with post partum depression."

One of those placentas easily could have been delivered to Laura Perez, a bay-area woman who processes placentas for mothers who want to ingest them over time as homeopathic medicine.

Placenta Cut, Dried and Swallowed

"I was really surprised, I thought there would be more home birth folks into it but it actually turns out half and half: half have been hospital birth moms, half have not," Perez said of her 2-year-old side business, in which she processes two to seven placentas a month.

For $250 Perez with perform the laborious process of "encapsulating" a placenta. First Perez will wash it, then steam it, then cut it into smaller pieces and dehydrate it enough until it can be pulverized and put into capsules. Perez, who is studying to be a midwife, offers payment plans or trade deals for women who can't pay.

Why Eat the Placenta?

Perez said the reasons why a woman would want to eat a placenta vary from wanting to "restore hormone balance" after pregnancy [which is not scientifically proven to work], to gaining strength to restoring a woman's qi that is lost during childbirth, according to Chinese medicine.

However, Perez hasn't helped someone who wanted to turn the placenta into a keepsake.

As for Green, he has no big plans to make a placenta teddy bear business. However, he said he's noticed the criticism of his bears.

"They're quite soft, you can give them a hug," said Green. "Maybe I should make it cuter."

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot....

I believe this is an example of real life squick.

[Tabi]

Well...my grandmother ate both her daughter's placentas before...got back on her feet after each time...

[Rastamon]

Originally Posted by Tabi

Well...my grandmother ate both her daughter's placentas before...got back on her feet after each time...

I've heard of people eating placenta, even of placenta-eating parties where the family and friends eat pieces.

Did she preserve pieces of the placenta as keepsakes? Or keep them as little teddy bears?

That's what squicked me.

[Tabi]

Originally Posted by Rastamon

I've heard of people eating placenta, even of placenta-eating parties where the family and friends eat pieces.

Did she preserve pieces of the placenta as keepsakes? Or keep them as little teddy bears?

That's what squicked me.

She ate them all in a matter of days. She was really weak at the time, or so I was told. I think she uses them as a component for a salve, claims it works on everything from bruises to broken bones. So far the best thing I've seen is that it works well on cuts, burns, and all kinds of aches. Very good for amateur massaging.

Thankfully, no one asks me where I got the stuff from.

[Lord Loco]

*shudders*

I'm normally okay with gross stuff, but trying to make something gross cute strikes me as just wrong. I liked the idea of a placenta tree, though. I wish I had one.

homeopathic medicine

I'm not the only one who feels that calling homeopathic solutions for medicine is a slander against real medicine, right?

[Jebe]

One of those placentas easily could have been delivered to Laura Perez, a bay-area woman who processes placentas for mothers who want to ingest them over time as homeopathic medicine.

Wait... That doesn't make an ounce of sense.

Homeopathic theory is, whether you give it credence or not, that you use something that produces like symptoms in a healthy person, dilute it down to a quantity that is non-toxic, and this in theory causes a more effective bodily response. In practice some of their success over their blood letting, mercury pushing, and petrol legitimizing brethren is they did no harm and respected cleanliness ala the Naturopathic paradigm. Not to mention there paradigm naturally encourages a greater focus on the actual patient and what they're going through. Whether there is more there is legitimately up for debate, as there are studies indicating there is something to it.

However eating a placenta doesn't fall within the homeopathic paradigm, no matter how I cut it. Obscure Dietician/Nutritionist/whatever you want to call them I can see, but Homeopathy? What symptoms would it induce that you'd try the Homeopath's trick with?

I'm not the only one who feels that calling homeopathic solutions for medicine is a slander against real medicine, right?

Historically, the "real medicine" as you put it did more harm then good until recent decades, and Rutgers developing Streptomycin wasn't exactly the AMA's doing. Streptomycin's excessively toxic predecessor Streptothricin and the isolation method from soil samples being the origin of the term antibiotic, from antibiosis.

It was the Homeopaths getting on the case of the Surgeons that finally got the bastards to actually wash their hands, and increase life expectancy dramatically. Currently the WHO among others recognizes an over use of drugs due to the "conventional" paradigm. Not to mention the ever stronger drugs issue.

As with anything there's the corrupt, but don't be so quick to dismiss things without checking the research and history. Things are a little more complicated then they may at first appear. The theory may or may not be bunk, but that school of medicine contributed a lot of good things over its history, while "conventional" medicine has closets full of skeletons through modern day. The "conventional" paradigm has a lot of issues of its own it still needs to work out. The patient is not some kind of annoying afterthought to the condition.

[Tuisto]

Oh G-d...

This is...

and women are EATING their.... oh G-d...
I thought only dogs did that...



**barf**

[Wolfius]

I think it's kinda cute.

[Teevock]

It must be given a FACE!!

[OrkKaptin]

Agh. *shudder*

Man that's freaky.

[Twisted Mentat]

*shrug* for the most part.

The only WTF? parts for me are the homeopathic 'medicine' *sniggers* and the eating it. And the eating it has some plausibility though I wouldn't be surprised it didn't actually do anything beyond a placebo effect.

Oh and if you haven't seen it That Mitchell and Webb Look: Homeopathic A&E is awesome and pretty much gets everything that's wrong in the whole concept homeopathy.

[LoofahBoy]

Well I know what I'm bringing to work for lunch tomorrow.

[Zorlon]

250$ a pop for making powdered placenta pills? I wonder what the regulations involved are like, and how labour intensive the process is.

[Weyoun the Dancing Borg]

Originally Posted by Tuisto

Oh G-d...

This is...

and women are EATING their.... oh G-d...
I thought only dogs did that...



**barf**

No, lots of cultures around the world do it.

[A. Bettik]

I'm gonna start painting pictures with my Semen and calling it "art."

[Weyoun the Dancing Borg]

Originally Posted by A. Bettik

I'm gonna start painting pictures with my Semen and calling it "art."

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&s...&aq=f&oq=&aqi=

Fear not, there's only 2 million results.

[Cpl_Facehugger]

Originally Posted by Zorlon

and how labour intensive the process is.

It takes 9 months minimum to grow the raw materials, with the process of harvesting being very painful.

[Clerik]

*vomits*

[Sean21]

Well, if they're going to do that, then they might as well expand their areas of business. Maybe make one into a fleshlight that the child can later use. Or is that crossing over into Oedipus Territory?

[CommanderRazor]

Originally Posted by Sean21

Well, if they're going to do that, then they might as well expand their areas of business. Maybe make one into a fleshlight that the child can later use. Or is that crossing over into Oedipus Territory?

LMAO, you win the thread, good sir.

[Rastamon]

Originally Posted by Sean21

Well, if they're going to do that, then they might as well expand their areas of business. Maybe make one into a fleshlight that the child can later use. Or is that crossing over into Oedipus Territory?

lol...trying to get the Squick Award, Sean?

[Wolfius]

Originally Posted by Sean21

Well, if they're going to do that, then they might as well expand their areas of business. Maybe make one into a fleshlight that the child can later use. Or is that crossing over into Oedipus Territory?

Wait, would that count as masturbation or incest?

[GunneySarge]

Man oh man this stuff is sick.

The whole teddy bear thing has me thinking of some creepy ass horror movie. It......It looks like it will come alive......

[Ladiesman]

Ok....this eating of the placenta thing is quite possibly the most disgusting thing I have ever heard. If I ever somehow ended up at one of those "parties" and was offered a piece of placenta i'm pretty sure i'd be Excorcist style projectile vomiting and then run away in horror.

Seriously, that is VERY disturbing to me.

People are so fucking weird. The placenta is a horrible bodily fluid sack that is expelled from the body. It's not a fucking teddy bear and it's not fucking LUNCH.

I'm sorry. I'm just....very...VERY...grossed out, and that's very hard to do to me.

[LoofahBoy]

Originally Posted by Sean21

Well, if they're going to do that, then they might as well expand their areas of business. Maybe make one into a fleshlight that the child can later use. Or is that crossing over into Oedipus Territory?

WHAT IN GOD'S NAME IS WRONG WITH YOU?