06 Sep

Mothering Memorialized

Posted by: Lizzie

You know, I kind of regret not having more (nice) belly shots during my pregnancies.  I never got my belly cast in plaster or had a magical blessing way ceremony where my stretch marks were painted with henna.  I didn’t make a placenta print.  In fact, I have a couple really horrible photos of me pregnant with Timothy from a few weeks before delivery and of me about six hours before delivery.  While I am writing this post, I’m considering posting them, but I don’t want to frighten you or make you wish you could UNSEE them.

Did I want any of these things?  Maybe.  I guess I just didn’t have enough hippie mom friends to invite over.  And it’s not like I could ask some random women from church.  “Hey do you want to come paint my stomach?  It could be fun!”  Honestly, I don’t know what happens in a blessing way ceremony.  I’ve heard OF them, but haven’t done any research otherwise.

Belly casting was something I considered in my early pregnancy but didn’t give another thought to until after the birth.  Obviously, it was too late by then.  I really don’t have anywhere where I could have hung a gigantic plaster replica of my belly, anyway.  I’m not saying “gigantic” to exaggerate.  I was HUGE.  Hey, I’m 5’3″ and my uterus was literally falling through the tear in my abdominal wall.

We weren’t really sure what we wanted to do with the placenta.  Since we had a home birth with Timothy, it was a little detail that we needed to take care of.  Obviously we couldn’t just toss it in the trash.  We have raccoons that come onto our front porch every night when Jamie doesn’t actually take the trash out TO the trash can.  I certainly didn’t want them to eat my body part.  I thought about getting it encapsulated and even had instructions to do so.  The burden of that fell to Jamie, though, and I think he just didn’t want to have to do it.  I’m terrible about taking my regular vitamins anyway, so remembering to take pills full of my ground-up placenta could easily have gone by the wayside.

In the end, we buried the placenta and planted a ginkgo tree on top.  It was most normal and practical thing to do at the time.  Jamie was uncomfortable with making a piece of art from my bloody placenta, so placenta prints were out.  I did get to look at it, though, and my midwife showed me where I had a slight previa that had gone completely undiagnosed.  See there!  Even with the ultrasounds, I had a complication that no one knew about.

So did you do anything special to memorialize your pregnancy and birth?  Did you do anything super crunchy like eat your placenta or make art work out of it?

You know you want to see these awful photos of me.  So, here you go.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

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8 Responses to “Mothering Memorialized”

  1. Selina Says:
    September 6th, 2009 at 9:57 pm

    Hey Lizzie!

    First off, I love all your boys and they’re growing up so fast and look so handsome! I’ve read some of your other blog posts and I must say that I really want to be a hippie mom and do all those “crazy” things. =) We found out recently that we’ll be moving to Germany, which I’m quite excited about because of their approach to maternity and childbirth.

    I really just wanted to say hi since I’ve been lurking around. ^_^

    -Selina

  2. Lizzie Says:
    September 6th, 2009 at 10:27 pm

    Selina, that’s great!!

    There’s another really sweet lady & fellow soprano who reads my blog named Diane. She lives in Germany right now and is expecting her first. I’m so jealous of the view on maternity over there!

    Here’s to being crazy. :)

  3. Gena Morris Says:
    September 7th, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    great pics. I have considered home birth but keep going back to the fact I love and trust my dr. I did a belly cast with my last one and I took LOTS of belly pics. I loved taking pics of my growing belly. None of the placenta stuff though. LOL

  4. Amie Says:
    September 7th, 2009 at 3:35 pm

    Yeah, I never got to do all this weird cool stuff until I hung out with Emily. I tried to get them to let me bring home the placenta when Isaac was born from the hospital but they weren’t really digging it. We did do the prints and encapsulated with Journeys, actually to be totally honest Erik and Emily did most of it for me……..it is nice to have hippy dippy friends around. We will have to catch up when I get back to Columbia! It isn’t THAT far of a drive out to your place. :)

  5. Diane Says:
    September 7th, 2009 at 5:05 pm

    I’ve taken a few bad pictures of the Belly, clothed, but now that it’s getting huge, I think I should take some nude pictures. Luckily, I have no stretch-marks, so I don’t think it would be too unattractive. Just blindingly white. But then, my belly is white, white, white even un-pregnant.

    Selina, where will you be in Germany? I live in Hanover. Don’t hesitate to contact me, if you need to for any reason! I’m quite happy with the care and approach to pregnancy and childbirth here. Let’s just hope everything goes well! :-)

  6. Emily Says:
    September 8th, 2009 at 2:06 am

    Well, you know I’m weird w/ the birth stuff, and I guess Amie told you about the other stuff. It was fun! With James, we just had our placenta in the freezer until we moved (he was almost 3). I wanted to plant it, but we knew we’d never live anywhere a long time and I didn’t want to ask a parent if we could bury it w/ a plant in their yards (dogs and weirdness and whatnot). So w/ Lily I had read on mothering about all the fun stuff you can do w/ the placenta. I had some PP issues w/ James but nothing I would’ve been medicated for but still hard. So I was eager to do something about it naturally if I could. Making placenta pills and prints was totally new to my seasoned midwife! So Erik and I did that. Cleaing the placenta is the grossest part at first but then it’s pretty cool! I was so impressed w/ Erik getting into it all!

    So the funnest thing was that w/ James’, when we moved we were staying w/ Erik’s parents for a month. The placenta defrosted in the car and we didn’t want to secretly stash it in their freezer. We did prints one day when we were alone, and then we chopped it up and tossed the pieces into their pond!! hee hee!! It was our covert operation that they don’t know about. If they ever eat the fish out of there, they have descended from fish who benefited (or not? I have no idea what raw meat does to fish) from our placenta! :) We didn’t want to just throw it away….

    Then moving to Vegas, it is the NORM for homebirthers to make placenta pills! Mostly b/c this lady from http://www.placentabenefits.info is here and has done a lot of advocacy for moms who want their placentas from hospitals but can’t get them. And made a certification program for making the pills.

    I felt soooo weird after Lily and doing all that fun stuff and never shared it w/ anyone. But here, talking to HB friends, they all did the same! So funny. And I LOVE that Erik loves the prints and framed them and hung them in our bedroom. That was a fun surprise!

    And doing the henna this time was just super. Erik did it for me, and the only downside is that even though we did it when I was 41+ weeks, it was gone before Ryan was born…… Amie’s lasted for EVER!

    I do wish I had more pics and video of my belly. LOVE your big belly shots–awesome!!

    I wrote a novel. So glad you got a great homebirth!! And a special tree too. :) I don’t think at ALL that everyone needs to memorialize their placenta or whatever, but it’s fun to be aware of options, and esp. if you have people around to help you who don’t think you’re nuts for doing it!

    emily

  7. Lizzie Says:
    September 8th, 2009 at 11:02 am

    I love it when you write me novels. :)

    And your story about feeding the placenta to the fish—HILARIOUS!

  8. Lizzie Says:
    September 8th, 2009 at 11:03 am

    @Amie–when are you coming to Columbia???

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