Blogging Baby tells the tale of the withheld placenta:

From the Sun Journal/Associated Press:  Kalehua Krug and his wife, Kihapai, of Hawaii, recently gave birth to their third child.  As they had done  with their first two children, they asked the doctor if they could be given their daughter’s placenta: according to traditional Hawaiian custom, the placenta is consider a part of the child, and the Krugs planned on planting the placenta with a tree, and therefore watching the trees growth to help understand “psychological and spiritual changes” in their daughter.

Unfortunately, the law had changed:  under new Hawaiian state law, the placenta can no longer be released to the parents, but instead must be treated as medical waste and destroyed.  The reason?  Supposedly there’s no guarantee what people will actually do with the placenta, as “recipes for dishes containing human placenta are posted on the Internet.”

Nonetheless, the dispute has prompted the Hawaiian state legislature to pass a bill allowing the parents to take the placenta home.  The bill is now before Governor Linda Lingle, who is reviewing it.  If approved, it would be the first such law in the United States.

The placenta has been frozen and stored at the hospital since the Krug’s daughter’s birth.

“That’s what they don’t understand,” said Kalehua.  “This is a part of my child in essence being held captive - kidnapped.”

My first reaction is one of “ewe” and then I reason that at least with this family, it comes from an ethnic tradition and it’s not as if she’s going to make stew out of it. I suppose she does have the right to bury her placenta with a tree, on her property, much like the family gerbil who inevitably meets his maker before his time in every family rash enough to give into a childs “I want a pet gerbil” demand.

Cliffhanger:  Are the placenta stew cookin’ peeps gonna ruin this tradition for the Hawaiian people?? I guess we’ll have to stay tuned and find out. One would think that placenta stew cookin’ peeps homebirth (for the most part anyway) and have their placentas ready to marinate as soon as their linens are stripped. (Or, do they sleep in their birthing fluid? Probably. It’s probably thought of as “magical, inspiring, spirit of life” fluid in which they must bask themselves in along with their loved ones.)

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