Is Eating Her Own Placenta a Good Idea?

Originally Posted: Should your wife eat her placenta? Or give birth underwater?
By: Vincent C. Sales
Philippine Daily Inquirer
April 25, 2012

Time to panic. Our second baby is due in one month, and we haven’t even settled on a name yet. Having been through this all before, I thought it would be easier the second time around, but that’s just not the case.

My wife and I know better now. We know more. We’re faced with a ton of options that we weren’t aware of before. Some of these options are more of the usual, some are cutting edge science and some are just plain bizarre.

We’re talking “Survivor”’s bug-eating levels of bizarre. We’re talking everything from giving birth underwater, to freezing your baby’s cord blood for future gene therapy, to cooking your placenta and chowing down on it later. Yes, these are the options we’re faced with in modern childbirth. Just relax and enjoy the show. Oh, and feel free to panic at any time.

Water birth?

Speaking of panicking, that was what I was doing when our first baby was being delivered. I was a deer caught in the headlights, mesmerized until the nurses screamed at me to start taking photos. My wife, meanwhile, turned out to be some kind of Olympic champion of childbirth. She was fully dilated in minutes before the doctor even arrived at the operating room, pushed my baby boy out in five epic pushes, and later had the audacity to complain that she didn’t need the epidural. I brag about her every chance I get.

It’s no wonder then that this time around, our OB recommends that we do a water birth, or as I see it, she wants to raise the difficulty for my Olympic champion.

The benefits are clear: It’s cheaper. There are other benefits such as less trauma for the baby, pain relief for the mother that immersion in water gives, and the lowered need for an episiotomy (look it up!), but I didn’t hear anything else after the doctor said that it’s cheaper.

So we went on the tour of the St. Luke’s Global City water birth facilities, where the nurses proudly showed us the humongous bathtub and gorgeous suite, and whispered to us that Maricel Laxa had given birth there. And hey, if it’s good enough for Maricel Laxa…

…It may not be good enough for the wife, who voiced discomfort about giving birth naked in a giant bathtub, far from pain-killing drugs and baby-monitoring machines. Critics of water birth also point out the increased risk of infection as you get water all the way up your wazoo, though the numbers show no significant difference.

Save the cord blood? Or save money?

Another difficult decision that we’ll have to make soon is whether to save the baby’s cord blood or save that money for the kid’s future instead.

Cord blood contains stem cells, and if you paid attention during science class, then you know that stem cells can differentiate into any cell that the human body requires. Say, if you develop leukemia, then your body needs new bone marrow. The stem cells from cord blood can be made to create this new bone marrow. Have a burn? Squirt some stem cells on it to make new skin. It’s literally the future of medicine.

Science class over. Here’s the wager: Saving your baby’s cord blood can provide a cure/treatment for 80 diseases, such as some forms of leukemia, lymphoma and cerebral palsy. This branch of medical science also promises even more cures for things like heart disease and diabetes in the not-too-distant future. On the other hand, the chances of your child getting one of the diseases that cord blood can treat today are incredibly slim to non-existent. On the other other hand, having a cure for one those diseases would be priceless.

The price of this wager? A wallet-gutting P40,000 plus VAT upon signing up, and another P8,000 plus VAT for every year thereafter until your child is 18, at which point you can choose to transfer costs to him or her. Hmmm…

Your placenta: Throw away, bury, or EAT?

After the successful birth of our first son, a nurse popped in to ask us what we wanted to do with the placenta. She had the thing in a see-through plastic bag, and it looked like two very bloody kilos of lean beef, or a liver, or something in between. The last response in my head was, “I’d like to cook it and feed it to my wife.”

Move aside, “Bizarre Food.” More and more people are saying that eating your placenta after childbirth is a good idea. Or could it just be the latest fad?

The practice of eating your placenta landed on our radar as my wife was researching ways to avoid post-partum depression. The numbers vary, but it’s estimated that 80 percent of women experience some form of post-partum depression, and my wife was one of them.

It’s believed that eating your placenta can reduce post-partum depression and do a whole bunch of other good stuff, like help mothers’ uterus return to normal size and even stimulate milk production.

If you’re interested in chowing down on your afterbirth after birth, you should know that as of now, there are no medical institutions that support this practice in the Philippines. Depending on the hospital, however, it is mostly not difficult to come home with your placenta since the practice of burying your placenta in your backyard with a tree is commonplace.

Preparing the placenta for ingestion remains a strictly DIY process. You steam it, dry it, grind it and then place it in capsules that you ingest like medicine. (So there go my dreams of seeing my wife wolf down a chunk of raw meat like Daenerys in “Game of Thrones.”)

Jenny Ong, from the blog Chronicles of a Nursing Mom, had her placenta encapsulated in the States. “With my first born, I cried every day from day three until about she was one month,” she said. “With E (my second child), I only cried once the entire time.

“I managed to take care of both kids without losing my sanity,” Jenny went on to say, something that we’re hoping for with our second baby. “I also would like to think that it affected my milk supply.”

The older I get, the more I realize that unlike the Rolling Stones song, time is not on my side. In less than a month, my wife and I will have to decide on a number of things that may affect the rest of our lives in very significant ways. I don’t know what we’ll decide on right now. I only know that the choices we make will be with our family’s best interests in mind. That’s all the world asks of us. And in the end, whatever happens, everything will be fine. No need to panic.

You Are What You Post On Facebook

Originally Posted:
ByTarra Quismundo
Philippine Daily Inquirer
July 21, 2012

What you do on Facebook could give you away.

A new study led by a Filipino journalism doctoral student found how Facebook habits could measure personality types and predict inclinations—a positive development for targeted advertising and political campaigns.

Released recently by the Missouri School of Journalism, the study conducted by PhD students Edson Tandoc Jr., former Inquirer reporter and scholar, and Heather Shoenberger found patterns on how certain personality types used social media.

“Observing one’s Facebook habits can offer clues to that user’s personality. For example, Facebook uses targeted advertising. This becomes effective if the right ad is targeted at the right person,” Tandoc said via e-mail.

Highest Penetration Rate

Tandoc said the study should be of particular relevance to the Philippines, known as the “social networking capital of the world.” Citing an online study last year, he noted that 94 percent of Filipino Internet users have Facebook accounts—the highest penetration rate in the world for the popular social media network site.

The study, presented at the International Communication Association Conference in Phoenix, Arizona, in May, used a personality scale called the Mini-Motivation Activation Measure to see links between personalities and Facebook habits.

“Using this scale, we were able to find a trend in the patterns of how people with certain personality types use social media. I believe this could really help advertisers and certain types of media groups target potential customers with particular ads on social media sites,” Shoenberger said in a statement on the journalism school’s website.

For instance, the researchers said people who were more outgoing and more adventurous tended to post more frequently, including status updates and photos and interacted more with friends online.

“If by frequency of one’s posts a user can be classified as adventurous, then ads about adventure-related products or services such as bungee jumping or kayaking, as well as ads designed for adventurous people, will be appealing to that user,” Tandoc said.

‘Reserved’ Users

More “reserved” users scan through their News Feed, which contains posts of their friends, but uses Facebook more cautiously.

The researchers found that these users actually log on more to Facebook, a pattern that can be “counterintuitive but this is actually consistent with the idea that this personality type uses Facebook as a safer way to maintain social relationships than face-to-face interaction,” Tandoc noted.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer

Night Crawlers in California

These strange beings that appear at night in San Jose, Yosemite in California. They’ve been caught at least two times by security cameras.

The images are fantastic! It’s even more interesting that there’s a legend behind these beings. A legend that’s over 100 years old, what can we say. Beings that seem to have no arms, no body, they have a head and legs.

What a case! Amazing images! No one has been able to discredit them. It’s a current and real case.

British X-Files: Half Man, Half Dog

There are a few sightings around the UK of this urban monster now. It seems to resemble a half man, half dog creature.

Does anyone know what they are?

Giant Foot Print 200 Million Yrs Old - South Africa

Michael Tellinger shows off what could be one of the best pieces of evidence that there were giants on Earth a long, long time ago. Geologists have marvelled at this giant foot print in rough granite, about 4 feet long. Some still say that it is a natural erosion pattern.

Personally I find that suggestion highy improbable for various reasons that I will not go into here. Prof. Pieter Wagener from UPE, suggests that “there is a higher probability of little green men arriving from space and licking it out with their tongues, than being created by natural erosion”.

It is located in South Africa, near the town of Mpaluzi, close to the Swaziland border. It is estimated to be between 200 million and 3 Billion years old because of our current understanding of the formation of granites in Earth’s history. This dating immediately causes great debate and argument – so I urge you to keep your mind open and focused on the evidence.

This amazing footprint in granite was discovered in 1912 by a hunter called Stoffel Coetzee, while hunting in the remote area. At the time this was a deeply remote part of South Africa known as the Eastern Transvaal, teeming with wild life, including antelope and lions. It remains in the same condition as it was when first discovered and the possibility that this was a carved hoax is extremely low because of its remote location. Even today, it is difficult to find.

The real mystery is how this amazing phenomenon occured – I have no idea – but here it is and we cannot wish it away.

YES – It is granite – it is a well recognised geological part of South Africa and recorded on all geological maps – that is why this footprint is such an incredible mystery. It can be desribed as a “phenocrystic” granite, OR coarse porphyritic granite, that underwent several different stages of cooling. The result being an interesting mixture of large and small granules. This is why granite companies are keen to mine this area for granite because it will look really “pretty” when polished. In the official Geology Of South Africa, this outcrop is called Mpuluzi Batholith (Granite) and the official dating of this rock produced dates of around 3,1 billion years.

A real mystery that needs close scientific examination.

Pyramid of Glass Found in Bermuda Triangle

These strange underwater pyramid structures at a depth of two thousand meters were identified with the help of a sonar according to oceanographer Dr. Verlag Meyer. Studies of other structures like Yonaguni in modern day Japan have allowed scientists to determine that the two giant pyramids, apparently made of something like a thick glass, are really impressive – each of them is larger than the pyramid of Cheops in Egypt.

Recently American and French scientists as well as other countries that are conducting surveys in areas of the seabed of the Bermuda Triangle, claim to have found a pyramid standing upright on the seabed that has never been discovered. The length of the base of this pyramid reached 300 meters, 200 meters height, and distance from base to the tip of the pyramid is about 100 meters above the sea floor. Preliminary results show this structure to be made of glass or a glass-like (crystal?) material, as it is entirely smooth and partially translucent.

When talking about size, this newly re-discovered pyramid is larger in scale than the pyramids of ancient Egypt. On top of the pyramid there are two very large holes, sea water at high speed move through the second hole, and therefore the raging waves roll by forming a giant vortex that makes the waters around this cause a massive surge waves and mist on the sea surface. This new discovery makes scientists wonder if this is having an affect on passing boats and planes and could be the reason for all the mystery surrounding the area.

The Strange Sounds Phenomenon

Strange sounds have been heard all over the planet emanating from the sky and/or the ground. There are different types of sounds being heard, and there is much dispute over the source and validity of the sounds.

This is a chronological compilation of some of the most recent.