by I remember sitting in the hospital room, dressed in a gown over my big belly, and my grippy socks brushing the glossy floor as I swung my legs in brush-like strokes from the bed. The doctors were walking through what to expect tomorrow. My OB will be in in the morning, a familiar face that eased my anxieties.
“And then after you give birth to the placenta—“
The what? Well, of course I know what the placenta is. But I have to…birth it?
Instead of asking them, I masked my idiocy with a google search when they left the room.
The results lit up my eyes, dilated my pupils, and had me engaged.
The second birth.
The plate-sized wound the placenta leaves behind.
The placenta: The organ a woman makes from scratch.
More about placental abruption, the steps to taking it home with you, and the possible benefits of crushing it up, putting it into capsules, and consuming it.
How little I knew about what had been naturally occurring in my body for the past 9 months. Not only once, but twice with twins.
Two placentas. Two Chords. Two…plate-sized wounds?
Delivery went seamless, as a scheduled cesarean might. The recovery was horrid. I was hardly able to move. I had never felt so physically useless and incapable in my life. What use was growing these children for 38 long weeks if it meant I was unable to pick them up once I delivered them Earthside?
I remember the night nurse asking me to try and take a walk nearly 24 hours post op and I could only manage to stand for a few seconds before my vision flooded with bursts of fragmented constellations and I was left with two options: Sit back down or pass out.
I had never been physically incapable of doing anything in my life. I would never take for granted the use of my abdominal muscles or the ability to walk—ever. again.
The sound of my children and the warmth of them against me made up for it…though those hours were dark, and foggy— and a bit delirious.
I remember thinking about the placenta. My placentas. The birth of them to follow my children and hollow me out. The sight of the bloody mass of them sitting amongst the surgical tools as they rolled me out, freshly stitched up. I remember them so clearly. Had I reached for them? They seemed to be humming. Or perhaps that was the fluorescent hospital light flickering and the thickness of the meds.
My placentas had fed my children. They had nourished them and converted my energy to theirs. They were the first combined connection between the three of us—an intricate design that we crafted together.
I sat there wishing I had done the necessary things to take them home with me. The paperwork, the cooler, the legality of it all.
For what? I wasn’t even sure.
I wasn’t sure I’d even want to consume them for the supposed nutritional benefit. I might have just given them a proper burial.
It seemed silly, but it seemed more appropriate than the hospital taking them. For it to be a strange thing of permission to be granted for something that my children and I grew, harbored, fostered, created.
It felt much like what it left me with.
A rawness. An open wound.
Much like being a woman and bleeding.
Secretive. Strange. A cloak of slight shame in the request for a deeper understanding of one’s body.
I thought of them in a hazardous waste bin. Or even more conspiratorial—being used in some other agenda.
Why would I have to lay formal claim to what by divine right, is mine? Once a part of me, a thing outside of myself is now no longer.
I suddenly imagined a spanish conquistador, stepping onto untainted soil with his weathered boot and slamming a rusty metal pipe into the earth’s crust. He’d take a step back, smiling devilishly at the wind blowing his country’s flag.
But this land doesn’t belong to you.
Yet, it is now mine.
But there are people who already call this home.
Yet, it is now mine.
But you carry disease and violence, and mother nature will fight you—
Yet, it is now mine.
But that’s an organ that I grew and want it back.
Yet, it is now mine.
There’s no real reason I’d want my placenta back. I’m really not that bummed about it. I didn’t fret for long. In my drug-induced post op delirium, I may have envisioned ghosts of greedy colonizers and their strange conquests and somehow map them to my body—but it passed through my bloodstream quick enough.
Ever so often, however—I think of them, again.
I think of how it must feel to be able to have experiences without sacrifice. To be able to bring something into this world without something else being taken away. To have full control. Full power. No question or clauses, treading lightly or take-backs.
What would it have felt like to look at everyone in that operating room and say, “It was my body that just gave birth. You are a witness and I will tell you what to do with me now.”
The logistics aren’t there. I’m no pathologist. I’m far from a conquistador. I’m just a woman, and all of our power is lined with lacerations of what it cost to gain it.
It’s silent permissions and confused regulations. It’s wondering and coaxing and a lot of convincing that you’re just silly.
In truth, this was never about my placentas.
The plate sized wounds have healed, but there’s a bigger emptiness that remains.