The Scrotal Sector

“Beatrice Swenson’s Home Placenta Kit”
by Walter Flaschka

Dear friend, I am Beatrice Swenson, and I thank you for purchasing my Home Placenta Kit. With your investment you are supporting a woman-owned small business based in Skowhegan, Maine.

Because of Google, we are all familiar with the wholesome and life-sustaining practice of eating your placenta after giving birth, a practice known to scientists as placentophagy. The placenta’s nutritional benefits are endless- it is high in progesterone and has oxytocin, so it can relieve post-partum depression. It contains prostaglandin, which shrinks your uterus and restores it as a fertility vessel. The Chinese have used placenta in their homeopathic medicine for thousands of years, with a resulting large and healthy population. And the West is finally taking note of the effects also. In a recent study, the entire practice of homeopathy was discovered to be as good and sometimes better than the placebo drug! And who can forget Hollywood royalty like Tom Cruise, who publicly announced that he would be eating Suri’s placenta and umbilical cord in front of his dear wife, Katie Holmes.

Your Home Placenta Kit contains copies of these findings, which you can share with friends and family. It also contains numerous recipes, from placenta lasagna and placenta stew to a placenta pizza that is perfect for game day. As you dig into your Home Placenta Kit, prepare yourself for the most cleansing organic eating experience conceivable- especially if you ate healthy throughout your pregnancy. The placenta is a concentrator for what you eat (no transfats, ladies!), and is nearly identical to your child in terms of flavor and texture.

You might be wondering, what is a placenta, and where can I get some? The placenta is an organ that begins development when the ball of cells that will become your Dear Child implants into the fertile endometrium of your womb. The umbilical cord connects to it, and it feeds your child a rich blood stew of hormones, vitamins and minerals. The placenta is expelled
when you give birth.

In culinary terms, it is about an inch thick, and is big enough around to overlap a dinner plate. To prepare it correctly, you will want a clean cutting board and a sharp knife. Cut off and set aside the umbilical cord, and pull off the silvery membranes on the baby-facing side of the organ. Then, flip it over so the rich, almost purple organ meat that attached to your womb is facing up.

Some people might not think it is as beautiful as we mothers do. As I was unwrapping my first placenta, my Dear Husband passed through the room and kidded,”That is the most repulsive thing I have ever seen.” For my part, I had to force myself to stop admiring it and start thinking like a tough mammal in the forest! (Mammals are known to consume their placentas, a survival instinct that puts them in touch with their mothering instincts.) I knew that every other placenta-eating experience would pale beside my first mouthful, so I simply dove in au natural: no salt, no heat, and certainly no spices!The blanket of meat that had cloaked little Lindsey in the womb was firm and soft, and reminded me of her infant’s skin. It’s like biting into fruit. The life-giving blood rushes into your mouth!

You may have to explain to your family about boundaries. I turned just in time to catch my Dear Husband watching in the hallway. His eyes were wide open with envy. I’d explained to him earlier that there wasn’t enough to share, so I just gave him a loving (if slightly sloppy!) smile, communicating with my eyes the level of motherhood I was experiencing. In the
following days he was very good, and would always watch over little Lindsey as I experimented with different dishes.

Ladies, by being careful and following the recipes in this Home Placenta Kit, you can stretch your placenta for nearly two weeks! However, you will notice that this Home Placenta Kit contains more supplies than you could possibly need for a single placenta: multiple storage bags and 80 count capsules that you can fill with umbilical cord tissue and swallow whole. This is because, if you’re like me, you’ll be craving another placenta before you’ve even finished the first! Thus, it doesn’t hurt to share your new hobby with your friends and co-workers, for the simple reason that they will be more receptive when you ask for their placenta later. Because of my Facebook status updates (“Ask me about your placenta”) and some company-wide emails, I am now known as the Placenta Lady.

Even so, I still had long spells without access to placenta. And my Dear Husband didn’t think it was time yet for us to get pregnant again, even though my uterus was recovered and my body was ready to birth another placenta.

In this case, I recommend that you do as I did, which is to station yourself in the lounge outside the delivery room of your neighborhood hospital, and chat up the waiting family of a woman who is delivering. It’s best to be non-technical, and merely explain that you’d like to eat the afterbirth when it’s delivered. Hospitals wait up to 30 minutes for it to detach before they go in to pull it out, so make your request right when the family receives the news, before the celebration gets too rowdy. Simply stand on a chair and announce in a clear voice, “I’m so pleased (or saddened, as the case may be) to hear of your happy news. I’d like to have the afterbirth, unless you’re planning to eat it yourself.” You may get some questioning looks or an awkward silence- this means they were going to let the placenta spoil!

You can also try to cultivate friendships with the hospital staffers, and get access to the basement levels. This is not a quick process and you might need family help. I was lucky when my Dear Husband took little Lindsey to stay with his parents, which left my evenings free to hunt through the hospital disposal bins. You cannot leave a placenta in the bin for too long, or it might go bad from lack of refrigeration! A decaying placenta can be slightly off-putting to eat!

Wherever you source your placentas, you are in for a life-changing experience. From the first bite, a mind that might be preoccupied and even slightly sad will sharpen to laser-like focus.  Being so close to the galactic pulsation of life clears your head, and your confusions and anxieties are put into context, and nothing seems impossible, and existence takes on a beautiful sheen. As I recently joked to my Dear Ex-Husband at an alimony meeting, it’s simply the closest you can get to eating your own child.

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