I'm a sick, strange woman.

Pregnancy and babyhood: What the books don't talk about

Though I have very few female friends, there are two ladies around my age I meet with once a week.  Of the three of us, I have a 19-month-old, one has a 10-month-old, and the other is 21 weeks pregnant with her first.

And let me tell you what...It gives me such a self-esteem boost to have a pregnant friend ask me questions about pregnancy and childbirth.  It makes me feel great about myself as a mother.  This woman knows my son pretty well, has kept him in the nursery before, and I guess she thinks I'm doing a decent job if she's interested in my opinions.  As a (relatively) new mom, it really validates me.

Of course, I can't say the other woman with a child and I don't take a bit of perverse delight in informing our pregnant friend about some of the less pleasant things associated with having a little one (the stuff even the most "honest" baby books only glaze over).  Stuff I wish someone had told me.  Things like:

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Childbirth is beautiful. Afterbirth is not.

8PP just reached its 100th post, and I haven't enjoyed writing anything disgusting or controversial in a while, so I figured I'd celebrate with a topic that is both...

The current trend of utilizing your baby's placenta.

I understand that the placenta is a miraculous organ that nourishes and sustains your little angel all throughout your pregnancy.  That doesn't change the fact that placenta is absolutely disgusting.  It's a bloody mass of meat and vessels that was once one of your internal organs.

One of the few things I remember from the drugged haze of my son's birth is being horrified by the placenta.  There is no scary movie monster or alien more disgusting than placenta.  And this is coming from a woman who made a cartoon monster out of her dermoid tumor.

So, needless to say, I'm really creeped out by all the ways childbearing women are saving and putting their placentas to use.

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