Ah, the umbilical stump, that gross-looking nugget that's attached to your new baby's belly button.
If you're anything like me, you probably looked like this every time you changed your kid's diaper and saw the stump.
And when the stump finally DID fall out, you probably tossed it in the trash (or flushed it down the toilet) and never looked back.
BUT! It turns out a fair amount of parents save their kid's umbilical stump for posterity.
This might strike you as a tad strange (as it did me), but it made more sense once I read some of the reasons parents gave for saving the stump in this BabyCenter thread:
— "My mother told me that it was traditional in her culture to keep the cord as a symbol of good luck."
— "That little black stump represents the connection that me and my daughter had for 9 months. It's a miracle and there is nothing wrong with wanting to preserve that memory."
— "I personally decided to keep my daughter's stump for the simple fact that my mother kept mine and my sister's...that little stump is what gave your child life!"
Fair enough. But what the heck do they do with it? Well, would you believe that turning an umbilical stump into jewerly is, like, a thing?
Don't want a necklace? How about an umbilical stump ring?
Or maybe you'd prefer to see your kiddo's umbilical stump turned into a European bead? Well, you can!
What do you think? Are you down with saving your baby's umbilical stump? And would you make jewelry out of it?
