Little-Known Complications of the Home Birth

I spoke with one of my granola-snorting friends the other day and was immediately subjected to a salvo of intense baby-birthing commentary. Apparently she's into "home-births." From what I gather - you roll around in one of these things:



kicking, hollering, grunting and snort-breathing until either:

A. The baby blows out of your body into the tepid water you've been wallowing in for 18 hours.
or
B. "Something" goes horribly wrong.

H O L Y C R A P.

I've done some weird things in my house, but that pretty much has me beat. I can honestly say I've never carried on, witnessed, or otherwise performed, an invasive medical procedure in The Duderanch At 6710. I'm not necessarily saying I wouldn't - I'm just saying I've never had occasion to.

Everything worked out alright for the first three kids, but I guess they got a bit lax on the 4th home-birth, because when it came time for cleanup; the placenta was nowhere to be found.

Thats right folks: there is a rogue placenta loose in the State of Georgia. I wouldn't even hazard a guess as to its final resting place, but I really hope they have a maid, she looks like Nell Carter, and she eventually finds it. I'd give my favorite toe to be there when she does.

Naturally, I explored the topic a bit. My friend had nothing to offer by way of explanation, so I blamed the dog (always a safe bet). She said "We don't have a dog, but if we did; I'm sure a dog dragging a placenta across the front yard would alert the neighbors."

Maybe I'm not a good neighbor, but you can bet every dime you've got if I see a dog run out of my neighbor's house dragging a human placenta: that's one neighbor I'm going to stay the hell away from.

No dog scapegoat available, my mind danced nimbly across various other possibilities and lighted on "crazy grandmother wants to make placenta tea." Plausible, I guess. The only problem is: I happen to know the grandmother personally and she's just not that crazy. She also doesn't carry a purse to hide things in; which I think is probably a requirement if you're going to spirit away used placentas on a regular basis.

I was left with only one possible conclusion: there was no placenta to start with. Obviously, that would mean the child numbers among The Undead and may or may not be the Antichrist.

My friend strenuously objected to that possibility and claims to have actually seen said placenta during the birthing process. I suspect what she thought was placenta was actually the red gateway to hell, but I guess it's still a mystery.

So, yeah. Thats all pretty great, but the VERY best part about the whole thing is: I know who it is and which house it happened in - and you don't.

Better keep your shoes on when you go a' visitin'.