Whether you believe that stroking your lucky rabbit’s foot—or holding a funeral for your dead pet rabbit—makes a difference or not, research shows that it still benefits you to enact these rituals. Participating in a ritual can be an effective way to alleviate grief and anxiety. Logic would hold that the same goes for postpartum rituals, even those from other cultures that may seem bizarre to us. Countries that have postpartum traditions that serve to support mothers and reintegrate them into the community have lower rates of postpartum depression.
While women in the United States may ritualistically shop for new nursing tops, rituals are often considered to be in the domain of subcultures, a performative accessory to birth. It may be tempting to write off January Jones’ placenta consumption as a publicity stunt, but more and more women are finding that the benefits of postpartum rituals far outweigh the ick factor. Participation in a postpartum ritual can help boost your confidence as you enter the fourth trimester in addition to honoring the birth experience and connecting you to something larger.
Umbilical Cord Burning
The clamping of a newborn’s umbilical cord may be the closest thing that western women have to a traditional postpartum ritual. The partner often cuts the cord, which physically detaches the baby from her or his mother and symbolically welcomes him or her to this world. However, this often happens so quickly that it can be difficult to snap a commemorative photo. As we learn more about the health benefits of keeping the umbilical cord intact for the first moments of a newborn’s life, more women are choosing the slower-paced umbilical cord burning over quickly cutting the cord or the more intensive lotus birth. Coming from traditional Chinese medicine, the practice of cord burning is said to push the last of the blood through, which is said to be a tonic treatment for an exhausted newborn.
The cord burning process is simple enough that it can be done at the hospital, the birthing center, or at home. All you need is a pair of candles and something to shield your baby from the flame, such as a piece of cardboard covered in aluminum foil. Loved ones, or your doula and your partner, hold a flame to either side of the cord, which will cauterize the cord in five to ten minutes. The wax will melt into the bowl that holds the placenta, and as the cord thins, it can easily be twisted and broken off. This process is involved enough to allow the whole family to participate, and seems less controversial than staying inside for forty days after giving birth or ingesting one’s own placenta.
In the Philippines, women traditionally see the placenta as the twin souls of their babies and opt to bury the placenta close to their homes when they feel its time. This can be seen as a beautiful ritual that is actually contrary to what most mammals do: mammals are known to ingest their placenta. Though there is little evidence of a historical origin for this practice in the US, eating the placenta has been a tradition in the Czech Republic and Morocco and was adopted by “counter-cultural” women in the 1970s due to its supposed health benefits. The placenta can be eaten in many ways, including baking it into lasagna, freezing it and incorporating it into smoothies, or drying it and ingesting it in pill form. No clinical studies have confirmed the benefits or harm of this practice, though according to this article in The Atlantic, the “overwhelmingly white, American, middle-class, college-educated home-birthers” studied by anthropologists at UNLV found that ingesting their placenta produced positive effects.
Though these “positive effects” may not have a medical basis, eating your own placenta can serve to connect you with the larger community of mammals and symbolically mark the end of your pregnancy, increasing your sense of well-being as you start to mother. Placebo or not, research on rituals have found them beneficial in times of anxiety and grief, and birth can certainly be one of those times. Even if you don’t buy the health benefits of cord burning or eating your placenta, you have nothing to lose but ten minutes when you participate in a postpartum ritual.
Kristen Hurst is a work-at-home mother of three who enjoys writing. She received her bachelor’s degree in fashion marketing, and now writes for Seraphine Maternity. When she’s not trying to juggle the lives of Casey, Austin and Ben, she serves as a doula in her local community and maintains a regular yoga practice.
