Thank goodness for geniuses like Carla Hartley of “trust birth” fame. She intuited that putting one of those cute knit hats on a baby to prevent heat loss after birth actually can harm the baby’s health for the rest of its life AND precipitate maternal postpartum hemorrhage.
The sheeple of the homebirth movement (get it? knitting? sheeple?) having been falling all over themselves to embrace this new form of “defiance.”
The nitwits (knitwits?) at Modern Alternative Pregnancy have this to say (Take it Off: Why You Should Drop Your Newborn’s Hat):
Mothers and babies are wired by nature to recognize each other’s smell. Your baby can recognize you on scent alone, and you can recognize your newborn on scent alone. These smells cause the two of you to bond strongly, right away…
The smell of your new baby’s head isn’t just important for bonding, it’s important for your safety and baby’s well-being. The olfactory system expects certain cues right after your baby is born – these cues are supplied by the smell of your baby’s head as you snuggle with him or her after birth (it’s an even stronger cue than breastfeeding).
This trigger to your olfactory system (and limbic system) cues a massive rush of oxytocin, the “mothering hormone.” Oxytocin causes your uterus to contract, which shears the placenta from the wall of the uterus and forces an instant constriction of the blood vessels that were running to the placenta. This means a safe, effective third stage of labor for you (Odent, 2013).
There’s really no limit to the gullibility of these fools, is there?
But wait! I have found a solution for the terrible problem of hatting! The solution is vaginal knitting.
Yes, you heard that right. Vaginal knitting as practiced by this self-styled “craftivist.”
According to the Mirror (Artist shoves ball of wool up her VAGINA to knit with it for a month):
Casey Jenkins from Melbourne, Australia, wanted to do something unusual with her knitting to make women’s private parts appear less “shocking or scary”…
She pulls the thread straight out of her vagina and knits streams of yarn in front of an audience.
This is how you can create the perfect hat for your naturally born baby. Shove a ball of yarn up your vagina immediately after birth (there should be plenty of room, enough for the economy size) and knit a hat imbued with those birth smells that are so important.
It might be a little uncomfortable, but then again, it might be arousing. According to Casey, who continues vaginal knitting during her period:
For starters, when I’m menstruating it makes knitting a hell of a lot harder because the wool is wet so you have to kind of yank at it.
“It’s sort of slightly uncomfortable sometimes, arousing sometimes.
Birth orgasms are so 2013. I predict that vaginal knitting orgasms are the wave of the future.
So there you have it, my solution to the outrageous hospital plot of hatting newborns, designed to destroy bonding and promote postpartum hemorrhage.
Vaginal knitting of newborn hats allows babies to keep their birthy smells and wear them, too.
My urethra is cringing thinking about shoving something so dry and so rough into my vagina and then keeping it there before pulling it out slowly. I can just imagine the horrible vaginal irritation followed by the profound UTI that such actions would cause.
For the sake of this woman’s vaginal health, I hope this is a parody.
In other news, if you can’t smell your baby through one hat, then I’m not sure your olfactory glands are working correctly…
Ick no thx.
I don’t know where you have to be in your life to one day wake up, and proclaim that you feel that shoveling a skein of yarn up your hooha, and knitting items from it while a live audience watches.
Just when you think you’ve heard and seen everything.
shoving…not shoveling. At least I hope. That would add a whole different dimension to an already disturbing phenomenon.
I think we’ve overlooked a secondary, but important issue here – THERE ARE PEOPLE WATCHING THIS CRAZY PERSON. She *has* an audience. How is that??
The babe in this pic could not possibly have been born ”naturally” – where is all the blood smearing? And why isn’t it suckling?
I’m I the only one thinking of possible friction burn? Yarn is rough, vagina is sensitive owww.
Am I the only one whose new baby smelled consistently of spoiled milk and sweat?
I wouldn’t be surprised to find that a) different babies smelled differently at birth; and b) different noses perceive smells differently.
For instance, I LOVE the smell of peanut butter. My husband gags when I open a jar and says it smells like poop. Go figure.
Personally, I thought I would be grossed out by the newborn thing, but instead I found that I adored the smell of vernix. I remember insisting when I was pregnant that someone better wash the baby BEFORE they put him on me. But what happened given that I had a PPH is that the blood got wiped off, baby got plunked on my chest, and I had some bizarre primal response to those birthy baby smells that made me insist that he not be given a bath right away. Instead, I rubbed the vernix into his skin like lotion.
Intellectually, I know it sounds gross. Really gross, actually. And yet, it’s what happened.
I thought mine smelled like raw egg yolk for the first few days, but no one else seemed to notice.
Am I the only one who could identify her baby by methods other than smell? Like – by appearance?
OT
Meanwhile, in Argentina, a mechanic has invented an inflatable plastic bag device that might be a safer alternative to ventouse or forceps.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25137800
Wouldn’t it get all moldy?
Please, this can’t be real.
“And as if that wasn’t enough, she hasn’t even let her period stop her, and carries on right the way through.
She says: “The performance wouldn’t be the performance if I were going to cut out my menstrual cycle from it.
“For starters, when I’m menstruating it makes knitting a hell of a lot harder because the wool is wet so you have to kind of yank at it.”
This has to be satire. It just has to be. Surely there aren’t people who want to dress their newborns in clothing soaked with lochia and menstrual blood. Just… no…
SO, the ONLY place a baby has the “new baby smell” is out of his or her head??? And EVERYONE knows that smells can’t pass through fabric. Also, us humans can only bond with baby by smell??? The whole no hatting thing is ridiculous.
Now on to the topic on hand. I have a friend who knits blankets and stuff for her great nieces. Maybe the moms should **** GASP!!!! I can’t even type it with out being totally scarred for life***** (I’m not completing my sentence. You know what I’m going to say.
So I told my friend about it last night, and now she is emotionally scarred for life.
Ha! I saw the hat picture and my first thought was “Only if it has been vaginally knitted”!
WHERE and HOW do you find this stuff?
I’m going to guess that her family members are hoping they won’t get a scarf from her for Christmas.
I don’t even understand why it’s being called vaginal knitting, I was initially wondering how a vagina could knit when I saw the text before the image loaded. I’ve never heard anyone refer to it as axillary knitting if they tuck the wool under their arm. Sorry for sounding like an adolescent, but that’s just stupid.
Yeah I was disappointed too. I was expecting some amazing feat, instead she’s just using her vagina to hold the wool. It’s not vaginal knitting, it’s using her vagina as a wool bag.
Yes!!! Precisely this!!
“using her vagina as a wool bag”
snort…bwahahaha!!
So where does she store the knitting needles?
I was thinking that too – that this woman had some sort of incredible kegel powers that could actually produce a knitted item from her vagina. I’m so not impressed.
The vaginal knitting makes me shudder. I’m so allergic to any wool that I get large hives wearing it against my skin. Can’t imagine what would happen to my vagina….
I would recommend synthetic yarn.
I am confused…is the vaginal knitting a parody? I’m serious….it’s too outrageous to be anything other than a joke, but so is the rest of what I’m reading here!
FWIW, we didn’t put a hat on our baby right away–I think because everyone was far to concerned with the massive PPH I had. So much for my baby’s head smells preventing bleeding. Though I must say, I DID like that newborn, unwashed baby smell. I thought I would be grossed out, but I loved it.
Nope, a real person, in the ‘real world’, actually did this. I had to check myself. Of course, I obtained my hard facts from my trusty internet.
I was digging around online too. I am still convinced that this has to be a parody article. It just has to be.
I don’t gross out easily. Yoni cupcakes? I just giggle. Post-birth mom covered with blood, baby still attached to placenta? Whatever. I even understand the obsession with the smell of vernix. I thought I would be grossed out by it, but I unexpectedly loved it.
But this. THIS. This makes my want to vomit and scratch my crotch all at the same time.
I still can’t bring myself to click on the video. She can’t have that wool up there. She just can’t. Especially not through her period. Barf.
I think my computer was trying to protect me from years and years of therapy. The video wouldn’t play. Oh darn. I guess I will save the emotional scarring for another day.
And seriously, why? WHY? How desperate for attention can one woman possibly
be?
I don’t want to hear anybody ever tell me wool is too itchy, ever again. If this lady can stuff 100 grams of it up her ya-ya in the name of Art, you can freaking well wear socks I knit out of it on your feet.
ugh. I could have gone without seeing that 🙁
OT: Came across this today http://www.salon.com/2013/12/02/forced_into_a_c_section_the_latest_violation_of_pregnant_womens_rights/
Makes the case between a woman who was mentally ill (I think the original case is more about how we treat mental illness than pregnancy) to compare to forced c-sections or homebirths gone wrong. I’m curious to Dr. Amy’s take on the ethics of this. To me, a woman should have control of her body no matter the outcome until the baby is born… if she choses a homebirth and the child dies she shouldn’t be legally at risk. But I do think her care provider should be, if there was one. Thoughts?
If a care provider lies, then yes.
If a care provider is honest and basically says ze is an emotional support person who can do minor things, but can’t help in most emergencies, and doesn’t prevent the mom or other people from calling an ambulance if things go wrong, then I wouldn’t hold a care provider legally responsible for a bad outcome either.
Oh, God! Knitting with menstrual-soaked wool? That’s almost as disgusting as “lotus” birth and placenta eating. If you all three, is it a home-birth hat trick? (Or perhaps a knit-hat trick : )
If I may add to the world’s grossest venn diagram you have going here – Maybe someone could start a movement to have the placenta placed on the baby’s head. I’d call it, wait for it, lotus hat.
Laughing so hard here at the idea of a lotus hat! I’m just picturing a homebirth/woo company designing baby hats that look like placentas for the poor mothers who had to deliver by C-section and couldn’t have the lotus experience for their baby. These poor, poor children…
Shoot, I’m just going to shave it all off, and all my husband’s chest hair and leg hair and spin it into a natural material and THEN I’m going to knit a little beanie for my next child who will be SO much better off than my other two who had to wear those AWFUL breastfeeding inhibiting hats- oh well, they were Cesarian babies anyhow, any chance I had for bonding with them was destroyed at that moment anyway.
No no no, your husband’s manly smells will interfere with bonding! Don’t cancel out the birthy smells!!
Just a friendly tip, but you’ll want to mix that heavily with sheep’s wool or else it’ll be a huge pain in the ass to spin. The staple (hair length) would be super short, and human hair isn’t very grabby when you get down to brass tacks… 😀
You know, this really doesn’t seem all that different than, say, shooting a ping pong ball out of your vagina in a sex club. I don’t care how many 50 cent words you attach to it, if you’re shoving a ball of wool up your hoo-ha and knitting from it in front of a live audience, you’re not making your vagina “less shocking or scary,” you’re using it to get attention. In fact in many ways I have more respect for someone who works in a sex club and does similar things, because she might at least be doing it to earn money for college.
I was talking with one of my friends about the vaginal knitting the other day, and he informed me that he’d seen a show that involved darts being shot out of a vagina at enough force and accuracy to pop balloons that had been pointed out by audience members. To me, that takes a lot more talent and is more of an artform than vaginal knitting due to the time it would have taken to perfect it.
Yeah, I was confused by the idea of “less shocking or scary.” It seems that all of these birthing/vaginal performance art things are really done to make birth and/or vaginas more shocking and scary, not less.
Besides, what’s shocking or scary about a vagina in the first place?
I am definitely more scared of a vagina that is potentially holding a menstrual soaked ball of yarn.
O/T I read something recently where a lady stated that she believed her
child’s faster-than-average development to be due to the child’s
homebirth and lotus birth. What do you think to this, do homebirth and lotus birth really have any developmental benefits?
How would that work?
Was her “faster-than average development” claim verified by a 3rd party or she just thought her kid was better then other kids?
Kid’s probably trying to develop quick so he can move out and get the hell away from his bat-shit-crazy, crunchy, hippy mom.
Yeah, and to run away from that nasty lump of rotting meat his mom insists on keeping bundled next to him.
“My lotus birth baby was crawling at 2 days old! It was amazing! He lost the placenta though, ’cause it was dragging behind him and the cat pounced on it. I didn’t want to cause any developmental delays though, so I taped it back on, and within a week, he was pulling it off and running down the street to toss it in the woods. I could hardly keep his magical developmental-advancer-placenta near him after that!”
Well, since all crunchy moms think that their children are “developmentally advanced” or smarter or healthier than all other children because of the choices she made, I would say that it is all a fantasy.
I think all moms think that their children are better. Crunchy moms attribute it to the organic baby food, yuppie moms attribute it to the educational toys, some might say it’s good genes, etc.
I remember reading a post awhile back where a lady was lording it over her friend behind her friend’s back because her kid was developmentally ahead of her friend’s kid, even though both were somewhere on the normal curve, and her kid was unvaxed while her friend’s kid was vaxed, so clearly that was the cause. Well, at that particular age, my daughter was at about the midpoint of the normal curve and hadn’t gotten a couple of vaccines, and my friend’s fully vaxed kid was further advanced than her, so what does that tell you? (answer: nothing.)
Now, objectively, my daughter IS advanced verbally. She’s very talkative for her age. But I don’t think this is really due to anything I did. We talk to her a lot, sure, but not more so than some other parents whose kid isn’t this verbal yet. *shrug*.
Just a personal observation, but my early talkers turned into chatterboxes as they grew up, while my later talkers prefer to read or play quiet games. I think it’s a personality thing rather than developmental. As long as it’s within a reasonable development window.
My “slow talker” would only talk TO ME at home. He was speaking at 18 months but no one believed me because he refused to speak to anyone else. He would whisper to me. He was shy. He wouldn’t talk anywhere else. He’s a very sensitive child who is intently bonded to me.
Now he will not be quiet. LOL. But I agree that, unless the child is significantly delayed on receptive language skills (not able to follow instructions, pick out toys when cued, etc) that declarative language can be a very slow moving thing and based on a lot more than just the ability to speak. My son has a huge vocabulary and uses two and three syllable words. He also refused to talk in public for the longest time. That’s who he is. He will talk, on his terms, and in his own time. And his Infant Development worker said she sees that all the time.
My little brother refused to read until one day, my Dad walked in and caught him reading a Tom Clancy novel. He said, “But we thought you couldn’t read.” And my brother shrugged and said he didn’t want them bugging him. Ha. He’s a lawyer now. He was 5 and proceeded to read the sentence out loud to my dad who obviously was gobsmacked. Another brother told speech therapy he didn’t need to talk because I would do all the talking for him, so what was the purpose? Ha. Clever monkey children in my family. My son is no different.
Anyway, all of us were early in terms of receptive language and literacy, but some of us did not talk or perform for others until later. That lawyer brother of mine didn’t speak a word until 4 but was reading at a University level by grade school. I spoke at 1 and was reading at a University level by grade school. I am by far the most chatty and expressive: I write poetry, short stories, non-fiction, music, and was the go-to at work for report writing because I can turn out an incident report in two minutes. It’s all just personality. I am told I talk too much and it is true, I probably do! I also love writing and have had a very hard time accepting that people just do not read and write as fast as I do and find it irritating that I am long-winded and like to write, think, and share.
I just invented penis macrame.
Zomorph, you just won the internet.
I’d ask for picture proof, but I really don’t want to see.
Years ago I invented penis puppetry.
Doesn’t wool have natural antibacterial properties? We all know what happens when you kill too much vaginal bacteria… As if wool wasn’t itchy enough on its own. *shudder*
I just … I … I have no words.
I mean… do hats really block smell *that* well, anyway?
OT, but what is up with the sudden influx of trolls on blog posts from months, even years ago? I guess they think no one will notice and they can claim victory?
They read very slowly??
Oh wonderful something else to count.
No. Just …. No!
Your baby can recognize you on scent alone, and you can recognize your newborn on scent alone. These smells cause the two of you to bond strongly, right away…
As a foster parent, I am so confused now. Is there any advice I can give to the medical team as they induce the little boy we are getting by the end of this week? I mean, if I didn’t bond, would that mean that I wouldn’t grieve when they leave again in a year or so?
Yup. You can’t love a baby unless you huff its vernix-encrusted head when it’s fresh out of the oven.
Thanks Dr Amy – I was just thinking that I really should get moving on that hat and glove set I was knitting for a christmas present. For my mother. Looks like I’m back to online shopping this year.
Dr. Amy, you’ve failed to answer several very important questions here:
1) what if you can’t find GMO-free cruelty-free yarn?
2) let’s say your waters have ruptured. Is it okay to have your knitting midwife do your vaginal knitting for you, from the mother’s vagina, thereby infusing the hat with amniotic fluid? This seems like a good use of the midwife’s time, but will it interfere with bonding if the hat is knitted by someone else?
3) is there a handy guide or set of questions to ask your midwife/doula to see whether they’ve been appropriately trained in Vaginal Knitting Support (VKS)?
4) Where can we find a pattern for vaginally knitting a hat that looks like a breast?
5) Is crochet permissible?
I suppose I should say, “crotchet.”
You’re crewel.
I know you are joking but there has been a great deal of drama over cruelty free vegan yarn on Ravelry. Some people maintain that if the sheep are from a small local flock that is treated well that wool is still ok to use but others are purists and think that any animal derived yarn at all is the one and only way to go. Which if you are going to go gmo cruelty free leaves you with acrylic yarn which is made out of evil oil so basically if you are too scrupulous you won’t be able to knit or crochet at all.
This is why I stay out of discussions on Ravelry and only use it for patterns and trading discontinued colorways.
I am a Rubbernecker, I find it amusing to watch drama now and then. It makes me feel better about my boring life.
Well, that’s part of why I’m here. But I’m really losing my patience for Social Justice Warriorism in people of my generation, to the point that it’s lost me friends.
And if you actually ask any of these people to do anything USEFUL in the name of social justice causes (like show up to vote, get to city hall, go door to door to canvass on an issue and gather supporters) they don’t show up. I hate them for that, I really do. I LIVE social activism. I’ve put my neck on the block for it. It’s not just something you do to feel good about yourself. It actually can really make your life hard. It’s made my life hard and made me plenty of enemies over the years. And it takes a huge toll.
Bamboo? Cotton? Hemp? Flax?
I’m sure there are vegetable fibre options.
I’m not a very good knitter, but I’d much rather not knit with synthetic fibres.The thing I’m making at the moment is made of Alpaca, the previous project of merino and silk. I am obviously a horrible person.
Cotton is one of the most evil crops on the planet, if you get right down to it. Evil to the soil, evil to the workers.
I’ve never seen flax turned into anything but linen, and that’s a wonderful thing to wear, but it’s really stiff, and I can’t imagine it knits well.
Alpaca wool, now, alpacas are just awesome.
Linen and hemp can be really hard on your hands until the fibers soften, but you don’t want to beat up the yarn before it’s knitted into whatever, otherwise it’ll look worn unpleasantly fast. They do make lovely summer-weight garments though, and I keep being tempted…
Bamboo, cotton, hemp and flax could all be GMOed up plus the process of turning them into fiber fit for knitting is not very environmentally friendly.
Ever hand-process fiber? I’ve done it with raw sheep fleece, just enough to admit how hard it was. Also, beet juice makes awesome yellow dye. (I had an interesting housemate at one point.)
Me, no I am not a spinner. Maybe some day when my kids are not sucking up all my time I can get into that. I would love to have fiber animals if we ever get a place where there is enough land to keep animals.
Half the work is before you even GET the spindle. First you have to wash the wool, and by the way sheep are kind of gross. It takes up like the whole bathtub, and hours of time. Your hands are really really soft from all the lanolin afterwards, though, unlike washing dishes. Then the wool is kind of flat, so you have to “card” it. Back in the day, this was a chore typically assigned to the youngest children, as it took time but no strength and little skill. Then it’s all soft and fluffy like the fleece you’d find in a knitting store. THEN you can spin it.
I’m so glad we have fiber factories. Most women spent a huge portion of their waking hours just doing fiber work, day in and day out, and almost nothing else in the wintertime.
I’m picturing a whole new kind of sheep to shawl competition…
We had a Pyrenean Mountain Dog and my mum had some of her hair (because that dog SHED!) turned into wool.
You couldn’t make a whole garment out of it, but it made nice fluffy white accents (I had a jumper with a snowman on it made from that wool).
That would TOTALLY be cruelty free- dogs like being groomed.
I feel that a visual is needed here for item (4), in case anyone here hasn’t seen one.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/151333748/crochet-unisex-newborn-babies-beanie
Love it!
Vaginal knitting sounds like something that belongs on *specialist* websites (ahem).
Just think of all the money one could save on tampons. And when the blood on the wool dries you won’t need to starch the item you’ve knitted. However, I’d advise not using green yarn — the color clashes with red.
Thanks for the laugh. I got a cortisone shot today because of a joint inflammation in my hand, and I needed that.
Hey… I am due for a cortisone shot in my hand next week. Is it very painful? Will I be able to drive right after? I have it back to back with another appointment and then I have to get my son from daycare. I have this thing that affects my ligaments and it picked my hand. Are you getting relief from the cortisone? I know, totally, OT, but I’m in a brace and at the point where I may as well not have that hand, and eating painkillers like mad so I can use it. Gah.
Yes, it hurts, but it passes. If you’re getting the shot in your left hand and you’re driving an automatic shift car, you can drive. Managing a stick shift with a numb hand is difficult. It will take a couple of days for the cortisone to fully absorb and for you to get the full effect, but it can help a lot.
I think she should also do nasal knitting for a few days, maybe try oral knitting, but not on the same day as nasal knitting, ’cause then she’ll suffocate. Aural knitting could be cool too, but not a lot of space in there for yarn. Ooh! Ooh! I got one! Mummy knitting! She wraps the yarn around her body (arms out of course), like a mummy and unwinds it as she goes, creating a sweater, and reducing the shock and fear factors of mummies and death.
Gastrointestinal knitting? I’ll leave the methods to your imagination.
This is satire, right? I’m just being to aspie to get it, aren’t I? Please tell me that this is satire.
Ewwww. Thanks for helping out with the post-Thanksgiving diet efforts.
Let’s hope Ms Jenkins isn’t a fan of fair isle or colourwork. (Knitting joke…both require using many colours, thus many balls of wool are on the go at the same time. Enormous potential for tanglage).
She is making her own self striping yarn.
OH GOD
Oh. My. God. This woman is just asking for a UTI. “Sort of slightly uncomfortable?” Ya think?
Especially if you use this:
http://www.joann.com/caron-natura-one-pound-yarn/prd23205.html