Or hospitals in general, if you can help it. I realize they perform a vital service, and I really am thankful for doctors and hospitals. But sometimes I think they've completely lost touch with reality.
Check out this article about an Ontario woman who gave birth. In her First Nation (Native American) culture, burying the placenta is an important ritual. But the hospital wouldn't let her take her placenta home. In the end, she finally received it, but only after it had been sterilized and passed through the hands of a funeral home!
This woman's complaint has a chance of making some change in the Canadian hospital policies, because of her Native status. But Native Americans, and Canadians, are not the only ones who want to bury or otherwise use the placenta. Why does the hospital think it has the right to keep the placenta? Apparently because we gave them that right. But if they don't want to drive even more parents to the friendlier options of midwives and home birth, pehaps they should rethink the issue.
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