Virtual Slap Monday: Unicorns Probably Have Lotus Births Too

"That's how animals do it" has got to be the worst excuse ever for anything. I mean, some animals eat their own shit. Some animals eat their own young. Are we sure this is where we should be looking for inspiration?

According to one woman on XOJane, that answer is yes. Her belief in how chimpanzees do things, and how our bodies "just know" things, led her to have an unassisted lotus birth.

As someone who would have died at birth without medical intervention, I'm a little wary about home births as it is. However, I do believe there are good midwives out there who assist in home births and women whose bodies do handle birth well. And I totally get not wanting your child's birth to be dictated by a doctor's golf schedule or the nursing shifts at the hospital or the availability of birthing suites. So I'm not opposed to all home births, but I think you've got to have a screw loose if you refuse to have anyone there to help you. As this woman did.

What if something had gone wrong? What if she had fainted and hit her head on the tub? She and her baby were really lucky. But she went one better than "just" an unassisted birth, she did the whole lotus birth thing - which entails not cutting the cord or getting rid of the placenta for days. Because animals don't cut the cord. She mentions that many animals chew through the cord, but she didn't want to do that . . . .because she's a vegan.

So what animals do is to be emulated. . .except that they generally DO eat meat, so she's just gonna ignore that.

Her solution is to just leave the cord on for days. Days. As in, her newborn was the one who severed the cord six days later. She mentions in the article that stem cells and good stuff continues pumping through the cord for up to 5 minutes after birth; this is actually true. I'm sorry I didn't make my doctors wait longer to cut the cord. But there's a big fucking difference between 5 minutes and 6 days - 8635 minutes, to be precise. I mean, it's her body and all that. . . except that keeping the placenta around for that long can cause problems for the baby (including infections). And, you know, for someone obsessed with keeping things peaceful and stress-free, why would you want an extra smelly thing being dragged around with your baby?

What if your baby is sensitive to "musky" (as she calls it in the article, though reliable sources tell me it's much worse than that) smells? What if your newborn is super fidgety and gets tangled? I'm sorry, but peaceful is not having to worry about an extra thing when you've just given birth and are adjusting to parenthood.

After being horrified by the article, I made the mistake of Googling "Lotus Births".

Don't do it.

I discovered that in some cases, they actually burn the cord off in a sacred ceremony.

Courtesy of UnfoldingLotus.com. 

Nothing like an open flame next to your newborn to honor nature and animals and WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE? 

Honestly, I think if the average animal knew that she could give birth and not have to feel the pain, I think she'd ask for the painkillers. 

And there aren't rituals in nature. Rituals are actually one of the things that separated early humans from animals, goddammit. 

I don't care so much that people are choosing to do this, but that they're reasoning is so fucking awful and illogical. I'd feel better if one of them said, "This is how we think unicorns give birth, so we're going to do it too because we want our child's life to be filled with magic."