The placenta

[YouWerePrettyIWasLonely]

My niece is training to be a midwife and she was talking about the placenta last night. I never realised what a magnificent organ it is and that women's bodies make it from scratch. This amazing system of sustainability.

Women are just amazing.

@motherrunner

I remember looking at both my children after they were born and thinking ‘you were just in me looking like that and we created you with microscopic DNA!’. They’re now 9 and 6 and every so often I will look at them and think ‘I made you’.

Mine are in their mid 30s and I still think and tell them 'I made you!'

This thread is wonderful and I have just read it from the beginning. I am still in awe of what the female body can do. Sometimes, when DS1 comes for a cuddle, I look at his ear and marvel at the structure and tell him that I made him. I talk about how it felt when he kicked or hiccuped inside me.

He then says, “Awe Mum!” And tells me off for being so sentimental. He is 31!

Maybe I’m just a daft old woman, but I feel so fortunate that I had the opportunity to have children.

The female body is amazing. I wasn't able to have children but I'm still astonished.

It's so frustrating when I hear that transwomen are expecting one day to have womb transplants. The people who suggest it don't realise how complex the female body us, and how it's entirely designed to create human beings.

*is

Since becoming pregnant I've learnt more about it. I didn't know before that it could attach in different places. It is really interesting.

This is what really gets me when we talk about maternity leave in terms of it being some jolly or just about baby bonding and support. For the first few weeks and months mothers need maternity leave. Their bodies have grown a human, it’s planceta and birthed. To do that has taken vitamins, minerals and calories from the mother. Bones have weakened and pulled apart. Ligaments stretched. There is an open bleeding wound in the womb that need to heal. In some cases additional wounds vaginally or in the abdomen form c-sections. It ain’t a walk in the park or a passive thing that the mother simply “carries” a baby around for 9 months like an internal baby buggy. The body needs that maternity leave to recover. The mother needs it to support the toll on her body from breast feeding or even those sleepless night,.
I wish mums would stop playing down this physical side such as expecting to carry costs of low pay on maternity whilst their husbands don’t step up their contribution, as if the mother has chosen to have this jolly holiday with the baby
Society plays down the physical demands massively like the terms “we are pregnant” or “carrying” a baby. We are growing a human form our own bodies. Alone.
End of rant.

@FannyCann

I was off my face on drugs by the time I gave birth to my twins, so unfortunately forgot to look at their placentas. IIRC, each placenta weighed basically the same as each baby, so my giant pregnant belly was 50% baby and 50% placenta

You've forgotten the amniotic fluid. And also of course the uterus is greatly enlarged.

I had a c-section. My son was born, then they found an ovarian cycst the size of half his body- weighed 4lbs when removed. Amazing what can be stuffed into females abdomens and uterus🤣🤣🤣

I agree - utterly amazing to think what we are capable of. I've been with my toddler granddaughter this morning while my daughter was at work and the fact that I grew the egg she developed from while I was growing her mum blows my mind.

I can't find a reference to back this up, and frustratingly I can't recall where I first heard it, but I am sure that I once knew that thousands of 'things' have to be working properly with a woman's body before she can conceive - my memory says @5000. So a proper systemic matter - not just a carrier!

@motherrunner

I remember looking at both my children after they were born and thinking ‘you were just in me looking like that and we created you with microscopic DNA!’. They’re now 9 and 6 and every so often I will look at them and think ‘I made you’.

yes, my adult DD got a tattoo and when I demurred (mildly) she said well it's my arm, I get to decide and I said Ok it's yours, but I made it so I get to have an opinion

@MissBarbary
Why? It's nothing to do with being "clever". It's not some great personal achievement.

Nope, not really clever, just extraordinary. I carried and birthed twins, and actually it was a great personal achievement (not to diminish all the singleton mothers and pregnancies!)

I'm daily grateful that my pregnancy was successful and my children borne to term, without complications and healthy. I'm just thankful and amazed that my body did its job and we have healthy children.

@FannyCann

When I worked as a sonographer doing obstetric scans I confess I habitually shamed smokers. Easy to spot as the placenta will be hyper-echoic - sparkly speckles like wet granite in bright sunshine, I was never wrong. I would ask "do you smoke?" Then give a lecture explaining that the bright speckles were calcification, reducing the blood supply to the fetus hence the likelihood of babies of smokers being small for gestational age and a list of other complications right up to higher cot death rate.

Yeah. Mean. I'm not aware of anyone who gave up smoking on my account.

I do remember a mother who was a publican. Yes she smoked, but in the days when smoking in pubs was legal her pub was thick with smoke, she couldn't escape it. The baby was born six weeks early and died of cot death just before its due date. Of course I felt desperately sad for her, she was in a very difficult situation and couldn't really help herself. She had been spared the lecture I promise. For her.

how professional of you

[quote FannyCann]*Apparently there have been cases where a fertilised ovum has not been caught by the wiggly bits at the end of a fallopian tube and has fallen into the abdominal vault and gestated. The ovum can attach and a nascent placenta can develop outside of the uterus.

Of course, this is wildly fatal situation for a pregnant female to be in. I think the case wa resolved by surgery, but I bet women have died in the past from this.*

@Packingsoapandwater

Abdominal pregnancy is a rare and very dangerous complication. Basically the fertilised egg is happy to implant anywhere where there is a good blood supply if it hasn't made its way down the Fallopian tube as it should. Here are a couple of case reports that may interest you.

Interestingly, in the second case, which wasn't diagnosed until elective LSCS the placenta was left attached to the bowel, which I think is the recommended management as it would be so dangerous to try to detach it. I suppose it just reabsorbs into the body but I don't understand how it doesn't end up being a nasty collection of pus/fluid.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5889830/

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3158531/[/quote]
Holy moley.

I'm fascinated by pregnancy because I had a very high risk, medicalised experience and a good relationship with my obstetrician, who would tell me just how little obstetrics actually knew about the process.

One thing that has always struck me is how my hearing and sense of smell never reverted back to their pre-pregnancy state. I can smell a dog doing a poo in a park if I'm in the vicinity, and I can hear every movement of my three year old in bed, even though she's in a different room, but I can no longer hear some lower male vocal tones.

It's bizarre. And intriguing.

@Packingsoapandwater I could do with that skill of not hearing male voices when I and other women are being talked over by the men in our zoom meetings.

@Packingsoapandwater how weird! That might explain something in our house - we have a 16yo cat who has developed an unfortunate habit of pooing on the doormat inside our front door. She does it 3 or 4 times a week at varying times of the day or night. If DH and I are sitting in the living room I will often say to him "Can you smell that?" and go out to the hallway to find the cat has done her thing. He is adamant that he cannot smell a thing and I've always assumed he just has a crap sense of smell (pardon the pun!) but perhaps it is more that I have super-senses!

I also get that thing quite often where you are in the shower and suddenly think you can hear a child crying, only to switch the shower off and "silence".

One thing that has always struck me is how my hearing and sense of smell never reverted back to their pre-pregnancy state. I can smell a dog doing a poo in a park if I'm in the vicinity, and I can hear every movement of my three year old in bed, even though she's in a different room, but I can no longer hear some lower male vocal tones.

My reflexes became like a superpower - don't know if that was pregnancy or just extra adrenaline from the stress of becoming a parent. I can still catch a can falling out of a cupboard, pretty much without fail.

I asked to see the placenta after the birth of my second.
The dr very proudly showed me, huge and fascinating.

Yes to the sense of smell, I could smell the bin lorry in the street before hearing them (in summer with the windows open).

how professional of you

I agree. As someone who had 3rd degree calcifications of the placenta in my 4th pregnancy, despite never having smoked a cigarette in my life, I found that post very unpleasant. I assume @FannyCann you did not work as a sonographer for long, or you would have come across other women like me.

My placenta wouldn't come out & it cost me the first day of DS1's life due to the resulting surgery & loss of half my blood volume I missed his first bath If they try to remove a retained placenta manually, the dr literally puts their hole arm in like a vet in a cow, right through the cervix & pulls it out in bits I let them try this first as I thought it'd be quicker but unsurprisingly it was excruciating painful!

I find it amazing how breast milk changes depending on the needs of the baby.

Apologies if anyone has already mentioned this: I recently found out that if a mother has a boy, male DNA lingers in her system and can be detected in blood tests years later. As I’ve got a DS I found this amazing! Article here: www.google.co.uk/amp/s/aeon.co/amp/essays/microchimerism-how-pregnancy-changes-the-mothers-very-dna

That I conceived, gestated, birthed and fed two brand new humans blew my mind. It took me years to lose the daily in awe feelings. I meant to look at my placenta but a newborn girl with violet eyes was imprinting my face on her brain and I couldn't tear myself away.

I saw my placenta, as I had to take it home (on the bus, in a little yellow bucket marked "biohazard") then chop a bit off it and post it to a university for research, as I had a pregnancy medical condition. I put the rest under my mum's front garden roses.

@HauntedDishcloth I too had a retained placenta and they tried to remove it manually 3 times and it wasn’t until I said I felt I needed a wee and they discovered the bed pan was full of blood that I was taken to surgery. DD was born a month early so she had already been shocked off to an incubator.

When I had DS (super fast delivery!) I birthed on the floor and our first photo of us is with me holding him propped up against a birthing ball. DH inadvertently photographed my placenta in the background so I can at least say to DS ‘that’s what grew you!’