Tag Archive for 'placenta'

News and Culture Five

News Round-Up September 15: The New Easy-Bake Oven, Placenta Talk and the Return of Ghostbusters

What we’re reading today:

 

1. Kids who play at the park sans parents get more exercise.

2. Easy-Bake Oven, the iconic kids toy that lets you cook food by the heat of a light bulb, went for an extreme makeover. (No more light bulbs) Jezebel’s right: it looks like it’s from The Jetsons.

3. It’s been far too long since we’ve had some good placenta talk up in here. One mom tells you why you should eat it.

4. Programming for kids. It’s a thing.

5. Ghostbusters is coming back to theatres for Halloween. I know. I know. So excited.

Photo by Hartford Family, via Flickr

Queer as Moms

Let It Defrost in the Fridge: What To Do With That Frozen Placenta

Meri Perra blogs about the challenges she and her partner face in trying to raise their girls with feminist values


Motivated by a Toronto Star article featuring my former prenatal class teacher, Rean Cross, I decided it was high time to do something about the two-year old placenta at the back of our freezer. Ideally, before it became old enough to get a driver’s license and leave on its own.

After writing about my aged placenta last week,  it turns out I am not the only one with human organ meat in the kitchen. This post may motivate the clean out of the back corners of freezers in a lot of homes. I first meet Cross when she was teaching a totally comfortable and super-informative queer positive prenatal class in Toronto. (Since then, Cross has handed the class over to someone else.) She is a practicing doula, childbirth educator and a self-described placenta lady.

Queer as Moms

The Organ At the Back Of the Freezer: What Do You Do With a Two-Year Old Placenta?

Meri Perra blogs about the challenges she and her partner face in trying to raise their girls with feminist values

When you give birth at home, disposing of the placenta, just like the rest of the clean up, is your responsibility. You can’t say to the midwives, “No, no thank you. You take it.” We’ve tried.

That’s how we learned that in Toronto, placentas go in the green bin. Easy-peasy: your midwife simply wraps that placenta up in many plastic bags, and gives it to you. A slightly gross bundle of blood along with your bundle of joy.

After our first child, my partner discreetly tossed the disguised organ in the bin on pick up day. We didn’t think twice. Operation get rid of birth waste completed.

When our dear Lileith came almost two years ago, it wasn’t quite that simple. Toronto city workers were on strike. There was no green bin pick up.

Blog

Would You Buy This Doll For Your Kid?

We came across these dolls thanks to a Twitter tip from reader Amanda. MamAmor dolls are handcrafted in Canada and meant to depict the natural activities that are part of motherhood, including breastfeeding and giving birth. That red fabric circle you see up there? That’s supposed to be a placenta. The metal snap where the baby’s mouth should be attaches to the mother doll’s metal snap nipple. And the baby doll can be stuffed inside the mother doll and be birthed via an opening in the crotch area. (You can also order custom dolls and accessories, like diaper bags and slings).

What do you guys think? We admit when we first laid eyes on the site, the office was filled with grossed-out squeals of horror. But on closer reflection, we’re starting to feel like MamAmor dolls really are the educational tools they’re intended to be. The questions is: would you buy one?