What the Fork??

I heard something mildly disturbing this week that I thought I would share so all of you can a.) Tell me to get a freaking life, or b.) Share in my aghastness (not really a word, but it seems appropriate).

My sister has a good friend who is pregnant. Very pregnant. As a matter of fact, I think she is past her due date at this point. She seems like a nice girl, though I can’t say that I know her very well.

A couple of days ago, in casual conversation while hanging out at my sister’s house, my sister tells me that her friend intends on eating her placenta after she has the baby.

What the FUCK?!?

I am not one who often uses the F word (How’d I do, by the way? Did it sound authentically badass? Too forced?), but I am pretty sure that was a direct quote. I mean…what??

Okay, I am a modern woman of the world—I've lived in TWO different states and I've been to Canada AND the Bahamas—but this is totally new to me. I’ve heard of burying your placenta. I’ve heard of banking your placenta. But eating your placenta?

I don’t get it. Someone please explain to me why we spend the first seven years of our children’s lives teaching them not to eat their boogers only to have them grow up to eat their placenta. Whaaa?

I understand that other mammals eat the placenta of their young after giving birth. As a matter of fact, I looked it up on Wikipedia and learned that almost all mammals eat their placenta, with the exception of seals, whales, dolphins, camels (huh?), and humans. But we're not animals, right? I mean, there has to be something besides opposable thumbs that separates us from common heifers. I am taking a stand and declaring that something should be the ingestion of our placentas.

Supposedly, the proponents of this practice believe that ingesting the placenta helps prevent post-partum depression. Give me a me little pink pill any day! Medicate my ass, but please, don’t feed me placenta.

Like most things in life, I am pretty sure I am making a bigger deal out of this than it really is. More than likely, all of you woman out there reading this right now ate your own placenta—perhaps with some fava beans and a nice chianti—and right now you are giggling unabashedly at my backwoods hickishness.

Be that as it may, I am still floored by my sister's revelation. Frankly, I find the whole idea of eating one’s placenta kind of (to coin a term from my booger-eating childhood) grody to the max.

Am I wrong? Is the fact that I did not eat my placenta going to come up in my impending and inevitable long series of future therapy sessions? Are the camels and I just prudish hillbillies?

Probably.

But still…