Doctors Warn About Leaving Your Baby’s Placenta Attached – Sorry Lotus Birthers!
Yay! It’s time for another article where I talk about placenta, which I STILL haven’t gotten to eat yet. Sad face. A few months ago I wrote about this whole new (old) lotus birthing trend where women were leaving their baby’s placenta and umbilical cords attached and hauling their placenta around with their babies like it was a gooey little pet. But our friends at the Daily Mail talked to a doctor about all this and the doctor said BAD IDEA:
We are aware that a number of women are choosing umbilical non-severance, known as lotus birth, and this is something we would discourage,’ says consultant obstetrician Pat O’Brien, spokesman for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
‘If you wanted to pick an environment that encourages bacteria to grow you probably could not do better than to leave the placenta attached after birth.
‘Soon after the baby is born there is no longer any circulation in the placenta, so it’s dead tissue and full of blood, making it the perfect culture medium for bacteria.
‘Babies who go through the normal process of having the cord cut soon after the birth can sometimes develop infections in the little stump and, if not treated, these can lead to septicaemia which gets into the bloodstream, making the baby very ill. If the baby is not treated with antibiotics, usually in hospital, it can sometimes even be fatal.
‘If the placenta remains attached, that risk of infection is greater.’
I guess all you lotus birthers who wanted to be different by hauling around your placenta will have to come up with a new way of being your own snowflake unlike the rest of the boring old moms who let the hospital dispose of the placenta. And all of the websites selling placenta bowls will now have to come up with some other racket! Actually, I doubt this will affect anyone who is dead-set on a lotus birth because they believe it is beneficial to their baby, and the threat of infection will just be seen as overacting by the mainstream medical community.
(Image: Amazing drawing of “Chuckles The Placenta” by Mommyish reader ANNE CORDELIA )
