Trusted Information for Healthy Pregnancies
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Placenta Teddy Bear?
Nov 11th
After giving birth, many women choose to have the placenta tossed out by hospitals. Some women are choosing less conventional ideas...
British designer Alex Green is taking people's placentas and turning them into teddy bears.
"I was very interested in how it was discarded unceremoniously as medical waste, why it's discarded and how we could bring it back…" said Green, who thought placentas deserved a symbolic treatment whether they're saved or not. "It was really about provoking a debate about placentas and how we treat them."
Green said that the placenta must first be cured with salt to kill the bacteria and remove water. He then softens it with eggs and tannins. Once the placenta is prepared, he sews it into the shape of the bear and fills it with brown rice.
"It's more heavy than you'd imagine -- they're more the sort of thing that you'd stick on a mantel pieces," Green told ABC. "It feels soft, somewhere between leather and suede but it's much more flexible than leather -- it's bendy."
Green knows that his idea isn't for everyone. "Of course a lot of people feel it's grotesque," said Green. "But, quite a few women have expressed interest in making them."
Many readers expressed disgust at the the concept. "This is just weird, and a gimmick, and yet one more thing to sit on a shelf, take up space, and collect dust. And, of course, lots of bucks for the 'artist' who thought it up," said LS on the blog ParentDish.
Added reader Ann, "Why turn the placenta into a teddy bear. That's disgusting...I think it's better to save the placenta and spinal cord in case the baby needs it to cure a disease in the future. It's called cord blood banking and so much more valuable than what has to be the most awkward teddy bear in the world."
But many treat the placenta with respect. Some cultures bury placentas and plant fruit trees on top of them as a living monument for the birth of their children. Discovery Green offers a how-to guide. Others believe that eating the placenta can be healthy for women who have just given birth. In Chinese medicine , eating placentas are said to replenish lost blood and nutrients. Some even believe it can help with postpartum depression.
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Singing in Pregnancy May Be Harder Work
Nov 7th
Hormonal fluctuations make it harder for women to sing during pregnancy, a new study finds.
Many professional singers have difficulty singing while pregnant, but it hasn't been known whether this was because of hormones or other causes, such as decreased lung capacity as the baby grows.
In this study, researchers followed a professionally trained singer through 12 weeks of pregnancy and for 12 weeks after she gave birth. Once a week, the singer was recorded reading and singing into a device able to measure the pressure exerted to make each sound. This data was then matched with measurements of the singer's hormone levels.
The researchers found that increased levels of hormones during pregnancy correlated with changes to the singer's vocal folds. These temporary changes forced the singer to use more pressure from her lungs to sing the same notes as when she wasn't pregnant.
"It seems that it's harder work during pregnancy to sing," study author Filipa La of Aveiro University in Portugal, said in a news release from the American Institute of Physics. But she added that this is a single case study, and larger studies need to be done before doctors could give reliable advice to professional singers.
The study was presented recently at the meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, in San Antonio, Texas.
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