First, We Had Placenta Eating. Now We Have Vagina Seeding. I Can’t.

Vagina seeding is a thing, y’all.

If you’re thinking, “What the hell is vagina seeding” then congratulations on being a normal human being. But since I’ve now become familiarized with the term, and I don’t want to know it all by myself, I’m going to tell you all about it.

Vagina seeding is a new trend in birthing for c-section moms. Apparently, women who deliver babies via c-section are missing out on having their babies come into direct contact with their vaginas, and that’s supposedly a really bad thing now, so VAGINA SEEDING to the rescue!

Right before a c-section, a piece of gauze is inserted into the mother’s vagina so that it can absorb a bunch of secretions. Once it’s saturated (I know, gross), it’s removed and put in a sterile container. Then, after the baby is delivered, someone RUBS THAT GAUZE ALL OVER THE BABY’S FACE, MOUTH, EYES and SKIN, in order to replicate what the baby would deal with by being born vaginally.

If you are positively horrified by this, congratulations on being a normal human being.

Some people say that rubbing a mother’s vaginal secretions all over a newborn’s face exposes the baby to the mom’s good bacteria, and this supposedly will help shield them from all kinds of illnesses and allergies, etc. They say this because some researchers have found that c-section babies more often experience these health problems, and therefore, by golly, the answer is to rub vagina juice all over them right when they’re born.

Naturally, there are normal human beings who find this practice ridiculous. Dr. Victor Gonzalez-Quintero says, “The fact that newborns may face better outcomes after vaginal delivery may not have anything to do with [exposure to vaginal bacteria] itself, there’s just not enough data. More importantly, it could put babies at risk. We could be exposing newborns to infections if a mother is asymptomatic or we’ve failed to identify infections like Group B streptococcus, herpes, chlamydia, or gonorrhea during standard prenatal testing.”

But I mean, why let pesky information like that get in the way of crazy hippie crap like vagina seeding? It’s going to be ALL THE RAGE now, you guys.

On the flip side, there’s another doctor who thinks this is the greatest thing ever: Dr. Eden Fromberg says, “Given that acquisition of the microbiome during a cesarean delivery has been shown to involve microbial transfer from the skin cells of the operating room personnel rather than from the mother’s vagina, and given that the baby’s immune system is oriented for a lifetime by this earliest exposure, there are tremendous potential benefits to using this vaginal seeding technique for cesarean-born babies.”

So there you have it. Vagina seeding.

And so concludes today’s new vocabulary lesson.