As a journalist, I've encountered all kinds of things that people don't want to talk about. Things people don't want to think about. Journalists, in general, are pretty hard to freak out. We've seen a lot, written about a lot, gotten details on things the public just doesn't want to know about.
So imagine my surprise when the word "placenta" stopped a group of journalists dead in their tracks. Placenta.
We've been looking at the area hospitals' policies on giving the placenta to the mother because of the hospitals had a recent change. Here's the story, which we ran over the weekend.
While explaining to this group about why a mother might want her placenta - i.e. placenta encapsulation - I realized I was the only mother in the group. I also realized that being a "mom blogger" and being on twitter might have skewed my perception about how much people can handle on the subject. It was a good lesson in "knowing your audience."
I did not do placenta encapsulation. It just wasn't something I was interested in but I understand why others might want to.
The unrest over the word placenta reminded me of my days nursing and pumping. Carrying the bag around and disappearing twice a day and trying to find a way to explain to people who asked what I was doing. It didn't bother me to tell people that I was a nursing mother but I know it made others uncomfortable. When asked, I would simply say that I was nursing. It would take them a minute to process and you could always see the recognition of what exactly that entailed come across their faces.
This is not an indictment of my coworkers, who are lovely people. I'm just really interested in why talk of placentas and nursing can freak adults out. Women's reproductive issues shouldn't be "embarrassing" for anyone.
Do you find certain groups of people in your life find all of this to be TMI?
Do you find certain groups of people in your life find all of this to be TMI?
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8 comments:
Vagina
Damnit, Erica! You stole mine!
No one has ever batted an eye when I said I was going to go pump. Although I have a feeling a lot of the time they're just nodding and thinking huh? and I don't see the reaction on their face when/if they figure it out.
Our department is super small (6 people), 4 are moms and one of them was pregnant at the same time as me. We may or may not have informed our (young) male coworker that people poop on the delivery table. It's not that I don't KNOW about boundaries, I just kind of ignore them. I'll probably get fired some day.
Re: pumping, I actually had to explain that the whole milk in the fridge thing was a 2 way street - I didn't want my baby's milk where 9 million people had access, and my coworkers didn't want DISGUSTING LADY MILK anywhere near their food. This got me a locked fridge in the pumping room. Sometimes oversharing leads to a win.
I kept the pumping as much on the down low as I possibly could. NONE of the women in my department have children and, well, pumping kind of creeps me out too.
Oh I did it, sure, but I could barely look myself in the eye.
Most people with whom I even broach the subject get freaked out, unless they're fellow recent birthers or fellow doulas/crunchy types. Even my own mom and MIL, and definitely my sisters, are kind of baffled and horrified as to why anyone has an interest in even looking at the thing.
I went from being that way with my first, to being ambivalent with my second, to wanting to take a good look with my third. I'm still not planning to encapsulate this one or bury it under a sacred tree or anything, but I definitely find them interesting now, and want to see if my baby's is healthy looking and all that.
i knew better than to even mention the placenta article on facebook. IT is something I would consider, but it's pricey, so I haven't decided for sure yet. But, man (and oh yes, it's usually the men), the reaction I got to something I posted about the Time breastfeeding cover sparked one guy to go off about women who breastfeed their older kids ... and his comments just ended up just pissing me off, so ... I can imagine what the placenta article would have done.
I teach, and so my fellow co-workers are mostly women who know exactly what I'm doing in that storage closet with my black bag. The male teacher on my floor has three young kids and also knew what was up. It was much less awkward than what many of the other posters had to say.
I do store my milk in a fridge in my classroom, which I also share with my students. No one has ever asked about it, which makes me think they have NO IDEA where it comes from, because if they knew they probably wouldn't want to use my fridge anymore. Even my explanation of a wet nurse when we read Romeo and Juliet freaks them out.
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