Doula-icious

I may or may not have mentioned this before, but our youngest daughter, KayJay, is not only the mother of SweetCheeks, but she also is a doula.

"What the sam hill is a doula?" I hear you ask.

Officially, a doula is a person trained to provide advice, information, emotional support, and physical comfort to a mother before, during, and just after childbirth. It's really a good thing! Someone on the WorldWideWackfest named Susan Gilbert says, "Research shows that childbirth does go more smoothly with a doula: labor is 25 percent shorter, the need for epidural pain relief is 60 percent less and the Caesarean section rate is reduced by half." Officially, I highly recommend KayJay's calm, confident services.

Unofficially, a doula is part cheerleader, part bodyguard, part masseuse, part advocate, and judging by what I witnessed recently...part witchdoctor.

It was Grampa Dewey and SweetCheeks night, and we were watching several episodes of Beat Bugs in the basement while KayJay was at her second birth of the week. But before she left, she put the placenta from the first birth of the week in her oven to dehydrate.

You heard me right.

She sliced that thing up, laid the pieces on a cookie sheet...A COOKIE SHEET...and put it all in the oven so they would dry out so they could be pulverized so they could be put in little pill capsules so they could be ingested by the mother like organic, self-produced vitamins.

Okay, this is really a picture of mushrooms, but you get the idea

She may have shaken a rattle made from a dried gourd over the pieces before putting them in the oven. I've got no proof of that, but I'm pretty sure the ceremony involved chicken feathers and a semi-complex series of dance steps.

KayJay tells me that placenta pill-making isn't a normal part of the services she offers, and I can certainly see why...have I mentioned the smell that almost knocked me back down the basement stairs when we were done with the evening's entertainment?

I haven't?

Well, never mind. I don't even want to GO there.