Nifty all-natural wall art. If you like that sort of thing.
http://www.cookiemag.com/magazine/blogs/crabmommy/2008/08/wall-art-2-plac.html
gals, it's 100% organic, 100% original. What's not to love? *cough, hack*

eeeeww

and that is all.

Ummmm I'm not sure what to make of that.

Those have been around forever. I remember going to the local hippie fair with my friend and her mom when we were in third grade and discovering that placentas and menstrual blood were big art materials in the hippie art set.

I have to say I was kind of impressed to see the placenta after D was born - a neat, temporary organ. Might have been down with a placenta print had we not given birth at the hospital where my father works.

huh. i wouldn't have thought of painting it, but then, we were using it for other stuff. we do have a couple of rather beautiful photos of it (all washed off and laid out- looks a lot better then), though they're not up on the wall.

I, too, was amazed by my placenta and was glad that I got to see it, touch it, and see the amniotic sac. That was cool. The placenta print isn't as, uh, gross as I thought it would be, but yeah, not really my thing.

Crabmommy, change your picture for God's sake! I get the creeps every time I look at that!

I did the whole midwife, birth center, no drugs, crunchy granola birth with my kids but when they asked me if I wanted to see the placenta I was like uh, no thanks. I just had NO desire to look at it! I like my internal organs to stay internal and just didn't want to see it.

It was bad enough that the asshole doctor who ended up having to attend my first delivery because I needed pitocin commented to my midwife "Have you ever seen an umbilical cord this long? It just keeps coming out!" like I was a medical oddity who wasn't even in the room!

Okay. True confessions. Our kid will be three next month and we still have the placenta in the freezer. I gave birth at home and just...didn't really know what to do with it. It doesn't seem like medical waste should go in the curbside trash, and we didn't really have a tree I was so wowed by that I just had to bury the placenta under it.

The print is actually kinda pretty, but I don't eat meat and I hate preparing it because of the oogy gooey feeling of it. So ... I probably won't be defrosting the placenta for arts and crafts.

Then again, I never thought I'd be a tattooed astrologer living in L.A. either. So, *shrug*

yeah, ruth, i couldn't really deal with looking at it in the pan. it was only when someone else had washed it and photographed it that it didn't make me dizzy.

kathy, it might be a bit late for this, but i had my placenta ground into capsules- i took them for a couple of months after the little man was born. apparently they retain a lot of the hormone load, so are useful during times of big hormonal shift (post-birth, menopause) to help ease the transition. i felt the same way you do- i didn't want to just put it in the trash, and we don't really have a yard. i figured, it has a use, so why not use it? the capsules worked for me, because i can't really stomach putting it in a lasagna or something. anyway, a midwife could probably direct you to someone who can do it all up for you.

I am hard to squick out, but kommmishoner, you have succeeded! Not with the capsules, but the lasagna remark. Eeeww.

My husband backed into the tray holding the placenta, nearly causing it to land on my head. I would have lost my mind at that point, I think.

My doctor (caught both boys) asked me at the last appointment what I wanted to do with the placenta. 'Put it in with the other medical waste thank you.' The last couple of months I've been reading up on home births and I pretty much put a stop to that after the third time some lady ate slices of it fresh out of the womb.

Oh and can I add that those prints could in no way be archival (it would be the blood and ick from the placenta mixed in with the paint that would do it). They might be neat to have but the paper's going to start to disintegrate probably when Jr's going off to college.

sorry, mamawho, i wasn't trying to be gratuitously squicky. and i would have lost my mind if the placenta had landed on my head also. urgh.

Ok, the idea of eating my placenta is really squicking me out. I didn't even see mine with the whole emergency surgery NICU crisis. I'm not sad about that though.

I was not prepared to see my placenta... I had an issue with the birth of Older Son where it didn't separate and deliver on its own, so the doctor had to go in and get it. I didn't realize at the time how serious this was (I remember being irritated because I wanted to get on with holding my new baby, but had to wait). Anyhow, they put it on one of those metal trays on the stand and then left to go find someone else ... not really sure who.. and much ado was made about stretching it and prodding it and inspecting it. I guess making sure it was in one piece and nothing was left inside to hemorrhage, etc. Older Son's dad and I stood there in awe -- it was like a big, big liver from the butcher. Honestly, I had some vague idea, probably from some 3rd rate movie, that it would transparent and flimsy.

I had heard about the tree planting thing while I was pregnant, but we lived in military housing at the time and not likely to plant a tree in our yard. So, after gaping at it for awhile, we let it go to wherever random unclaimed body parts go. The incinerator? Not sure.

We did keep the umbilical cord stump. I intended to swim it out to the reef once I could go back into the water. I kept it in a dish on a shelf in my kitchen. But... no joke... a rat got to before I had the chance. Military housing can really, be, um... questionable.

So I'm guessing I shouldn't post my placenta lasagna recipe??

Martini, I've tasted your cooking. I might actually try *your* placenta lasagna, mostly because I assume it involves vodka.

Kathy~ Everything tastes better served with vodka!

I have seem these prints before they have been around for a long time.I think they are kinda cool. We kept both of the little boys placentas and planted them under trees. One of the trees is a peach tree up at my dads-He calls it the placenta tree. Ironically, one year it was the only peach tree of his master gardeners club trees to produce any peaches. My dad told the ladies about the placenta planted under it. They were not amused. Boy #3 has his planted under the October Glory Maple in our front yard-he was born in October.

Eating the placenta is not really a new thing either. People have been doing it forever. I have a few recipes if anyone is interested. After the birth of Boy#3 my midwife and my mother (a former home birth midwife) suggested I drink a shake with a little of my placenta mixed in. Apparently they believed that it would help me recuperate faster from the blood loss. I respectfully declined the offer.

When I attend births, I am always facinated with the placenta. There is allot of information that can be gained looking at the placenta. I always ask mothers if they want to see the placenta, I will usually glove up and show it to them if they want to see it. I even had the opportunity to see the placentas of twins-those were pretty cool.

Another trend I have heard about is something called a lotus birth...something about leaving the placenta and cord attached until it naturally falls off.I don't know too much about it. I am sure the information is easy to find via google.

Man, I thought I was bad for just taking pictures of my wife's. She still gets mad at me for that. Or at least when it shows up on the random function of the digital photo frame.
Anyway, I think this is way more disgusting than any of the other threads I've ever read.

ooh sasychica, i am off to google lotusbirth!

sasy - we learned about lotus births in my Bradley class. Apparently the cord falls off on its own relatively soon.

And put me on the team of not wanting to look at the placenta. It scares me.

Eating, planting, printing a placenta doesn't gross me out but the lotus birth idea is just down right icky.

Not to mention cumbersome. That thing had better detach quickly or no one's going anywhere for a while.

I remember the nurses remarking about what a "lovely" placenta I had. That is possibly one of the strangest things I have ever heard.

Wow. I'm not sure if I should cry, throw up, or run screaming from the room.

The thought of ingesting it does bad things to my tummy.

Yuck! I am in the "glad I didn't see it" camp. I discovered early on that the sight of blood makes me nauseous. I'm okay in emergencies but I throw up after. It put a serious dent in my medical school plans! I had no thought to look at the placenta. Didn't care. Most likely won't look at the second unless by accident. I COULD NOT choke it down if I new what it was. And would probably bring it back up if I found out later!

With #2, my doctor held my placenta in the air for everyone to examine, and pointed out a giant gross cyst on it. I'm sure I mentioned it, but my husband is deadly squeamish. He is so very squeamish that he turned a very vile shade of green and started backing away in horror when they asked him if he wanted to cut the cord(he said later that it looked like they were pulling my intestines out...I said, "Well, they kind of were pulling them out.") That being said, when the doctor started waving my placenta around, I thought that R was going to faint. I thought it was really cool and was glad I got to see it, cyst and all (the cyst was pretty nasty though).

During my C-section, I begged and begged him to videotape it. He had the dang thing in his hand, and I kept trying to at least get him to hold his arm up and point it in the direction of the doctors, but no dice. He said he was about to barf anyway, and that would send him right over the edge. He couldn't stomach the idea of my internal organs getting fresh air.

Ladies, you know I love you, right? So I say this with love. The thought of eating my placenta or ingesting it in any way makes me feel rather faint and barfy. NO, THANK YOU. Sure, they could have been doing it for hundreds of years, but we have lots of modern medicine that I'll be fine with taking, unnatural or not. *urp*

CJRW summed it up for me with Wow. I'm not sure if I should cry, throw up, or run screaming from the room.

The only part of birth I have any desire to touch/see is the baby.

I thought my placenta looked very nice. I asked my husband to take pictures of it, and then we took it home and planted it under a bush in the yard. I couldn't imagine one of my organs ending up in a biohazard bag after it had just nourished my son for 9 months.

now I feel left out, both times I was so out of it (even tho the second time I had no drugs) the midwife must have just tossed my placenta without me having a good look at it....ha ha...actually the last thing I would have wanted was to take the placenta home in an ice box or however you do it and then make a picture with it. But to each their own.

seeing my placenta was the only part of the birth experience that almost made me faint.

scary, scary alien looking thing. i have very low blood tolerance.

I thought the placenta was really cool. The midwife, doula and two friends who attended the Dragon's birth all just kinda gathered around taking pictures and oohing and aahing it. Oh yeah, and the baby.

But really. Even though it still annoys me that our body's elimination function could be designed a lot more efficiently (I'd LOVE to only have to pee, say, once a week -- think how much time it would save!), I do think it's incredible to just look at all that gunky, bloody stuff and kinda marvel at what it does.

Ah, it didn't occure to me at the time to take a picture of the placenta. I wish I had. I still think it's pretty cool and a remarkable organ. But eating it? Ugh. No thanks. That's kind of like drinking your own pee. I guess if you got desperate for food and must resort to extremes, well then, eat your heart out. But, there's a reason why your body expels it rather than resorbing it.

mamawho, that nurse comment is quite freaky. I mean, REALLY!