‘That’s put me off my dinner’.
‘Exactly what I needed to remind me to stay single and childless for a few more years’. ‘Vile’.
These are hardly the kind of comments you usually expect to find under a social media post announcing the arrival of a new baby. But that’s just some of the backlash received by DJ and record producer Calvin Harris under an Instagram post declaring that his wife, TV presenter Vick Hope, had given birth to a baby boy at the end of July.
Why the controversy, you ask?
Well, alongside pictures of himself holding his newborn son and Hope in a birthing pool, Harris chose to include pictures of the full placenta with the umbilical cord shaped into a heart.
And it’s that that has divided fans, it seems, with replies under the post ranging from disgust (‘really didn’t need to see that bro’) to genuine confusion (‘what’s that piece of meat for?’), to outright anger that there was no warning provided before the sight of an organ vital to all human life.
What is the placenta?
The placenta is an organ that grows in the womb during pregnancy. It is key for providing nutrients and oxygen to the baby through the umbilical cord, it removes waste, protects the baby and produces hormones to boost growth. It is referred to as the baby’s ‘lifeline’.
After giving birth, the mother also delivers the placenta, which has served its purpose.
It’s not just the reaction of Harris’ followers, though.
The BBC has reported that Instagram has applied an age restriction to the post, rather bafflingly placing the sight of a placenta on par with explicit violent or sexual content potentially damaging to children.
Of course, the reaction hasn’t all been negative.
Some have praised Harris for breaking taboos around birth and thanked him for showing what is so often hidden. But for the most part, the response seems to lie somewhere between disgust and confusion.
Most alarming of all is the number of people who seem to have never seen a placenta before and have no idea what its function is.
As a woman and a mother, I can’t help but feel both dismayed and disappointed at the public response to these pictures.
For me, it smacks of wider societal taboos about women’s bodies, childbirth, and pregnancy that persist even today.
Admittedly, a bloated purplish organ is not exactly pleasant to look at but as someone who has given birth twice I can unfortunately confirm that pretty much nothing about childbirth is particularly pleasant – no matter how beautiful and life-affirming the end result might be.
And while we all celebrate the tiny bundle of joy that arrives at the end, so little is ever spoken about what it takes for that baby to leave its mother’s body in the first place.
Unlike the sanitised version we see on our screens, it is messy and bloody and women’s bodies are quite literally pushed to the brink of breaking in order to bring babies into the world. And both mentally and physically, we are never the same again.
Outrage at the sight of a placenta is about more than the placenta itself. It signals a lack of societal regard to care about the true realities of childbirth. This blanket of silence that exists around pregnancy and birth actively damages women.
Like many women, I went into giving birth practically clueless about what I was about to experience and once it was over, I was left traumatised in the aftermath.
I had vaguely heard of the placenta (mostly in the context of the slightly eccentric people who choose to eat or encapsulate theirs) but I hadn’t really been prepared for what it would look like – much less that I’d have to give birth to it just minutes after birthing a baby.
The reality was sobering to say the least – and I distinctly remember thinking ‘why doesn’t anyone speak about this?’
And I’m not alone.
A third of UK mums felt unprepared for childbirth with 78% reporting that they were shocked by the impact it had on their bodies.
In 2021, a Real Birth Announcements campaign by the parenting company Frida attempted to shatter the culture of silence around childbirth by placing unpalatable truths about maternal health in public places to signal how normal realities of pregnancy are still seen as shameful.
That’s partly why Harris choosing to share a picture of the placenta is such a powerful decision.
Anything to do with pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period is still viewed as actively indecent in a society that considers itself progressive.
Breastfeeding is either hypersexualised or shamed, postpartum bodies are deemed unsightly and disgusting, and experience has taught me the hard way that nobody is interested in the bleeding, leaking, aching reality of what recovering from birth looks like.
More widely, pregnant, menstruating, and menopausal women are still expected to behave in the workplace as though they aren’t going through major bodily processes that impact them on both a physical and psychological level because mentioning anything about our biology is uncomfortable at best and obscene at worst.
Over 90% of UK women’s health organisations say they’ve had posts such as breastfeeding tips or birth videos flagged as ‘pornographic’.
I can’t say I’m surprised. When women are only seen as sexual objects, anything to do with our bodies – even the placenta, an organ that every human needs to be able to develop in the womb – is sidelined as being unsuitable for public consumption.
What Harris has done in posting pictures of his new baby’s placenta might not have been conventional – and we might not be able to see a new trend of placentas front and centre of birth announcements – but it has got people speaking about something that all too often goes unspoken.
And in my book, that can only be a good thing.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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