This gem, Why Birth Centers Are Bullsh!t, is making the rounds among the homebirth crowd. Who is Doula Anonymous? I don’t know, but the person who appears to have been the first to publicize the post, and has publicized it across multiple platforms, was Katie DiBenedetto, a doula and placenta encapsulator who received her “training” from the Placenta Liberation Front (no, I’m not making that up).
Contacted on Twitter, DiBenedetto denies that the blog is hers. Regardless of whether or not it is, her willingness to promote it indicates a startling lack of insight into her own “profession.” Imagine if a blogger gave placenta encapsulation the same treatment, Doula Anonymous gives birth centers.
It might be something like this:
Now, of-fucking-course, not ALL placenta encapsulators are bullshit. There might be one or two placenta encapsulators who are bringing healthcare and safety in birth to communities of women who have never known such a luxury (although I highly doubt it).
This post is not about THOSE placenta encapsulators.
This post is not to judge mothers who choose to encapsulate their placentas simply for the fucking bragging rights. If you encapsulated your placenta simply because you are stupid and gullible and are triggered by this post: check your shit at the door and calm the hell down. This isn’t about you.
This post is a rant about the for-profit placenta encapsulators that act as a “middle ground” for upper middle class white people who are “too scared” to eat raw placenta and don’t want to admit it.
And all too often it is the woman who desires to eat her placenta raw, the father who ignorantly says no, and placenta encapsulation acts as a compromise.
In terms of safety, equipment, medicine, etc. there is absofuckinglutely no difference between being a gullible fool who eats her placenta raw and a gullible fool who eats her placenta encapsulated. The raw placenta is the same fucking shit that your encapsulator would freeze dry. There is no advantage to encapsulation. Yet placenta encapsulators tout it like there is. How is it that you could NEVER eat raw placenta, which has ZERO fucking health benefits, yet encapsulated placenta, which also has ZERO funcking health benefits is fine? Tell me, what is the fucking difference? Is it psychological? The fact that you are PAYING someone to encapsulate? Is it more socially acceptable to eat encapsulated placenta? (probably because the general public thinks encapsulated placenta is somehow different and safer than raw).
Obviously placenta encapsulation is a fucking businesses. It just fucking is. Placenta encapsulators cost a load of money and they are in it for profit. They saw an audience (upper middle class white women who watched the Business of Being Born) and quickly concocted a brilliant business plan. They package up their doula care, placenta art, placenta encapsulation and placenta guide books, wrap it up with a little sacred pregnancy bow and sell the shit out of it. You can’t blame doulas, really. Providing doula care is no fucking cake walk. You’re not going to get rich attending home births. A placenta encapsulation business on the other hand…
Obviously – you choose whether and how you want to eat your placenta. This is fucking America, right? Just make sure that you are doing it for the right reasons and not because you’re fucking kidding yourself that it is anything other than a scam to enrich placenta encapsulators.
