I'm a big fan of umbilical cords.
When your baby is inside the womb, the umbilical cord acts allows all those juicy nutrients and oxygen from the placenta to get to your baby, helping sustain and nourish her.
In other words, umbilical cords rock.
But when your baby has been delivered and the umbilical cord has been cut, they no longer serve a purpose.
Or, do they?
Ladies and gentlemen, hold onto your seats, because we need to tell you something: Umbilical cord art is a thing.
That's right.
Instead of just snipping off that umbilical cord and discarding it, peeps are now turning that piece of tissue into art.
And not just any old art; but dried umbilical cord art.
If this concept is something that tickles your fancy, Virginia Maddock from Australian-based company Natural Beginnings can help all your cord-based keepsake dreams come to life.
Maddock offers a range of services that cater for your placenta post-birth, from smoothies to encapsulation and even placental artwork.
But she doesn't neglect that dangly little cord in the process.
When someone orders a placenta encapsulation (a service she says is "really gaining in popularity"), Maddock offers complimentary dried cord keepsakes.
"I dry the cord into any number of shapes which the new mother chooses," she says.
This includes love hearts, spirals, a short word like 'love' (if the cord is long enough), or the first letter of the baby's name.
Your cord can also be made into a circle to form a dream catcher.
Maddock says women choose to have their baby's umbilical cord made into art for sentimental reasons.
"Women love that the element of connection between them and their baby, which helped sustain their life for nine months, becomes a memento that they can keep forever."
When Meg had her baby, she chose to have placenta artwork and a dream catcher made out of her baby's dried cord.
She wrote a testimony on Natural Beginnings website, saying that those artworks are "the most unique and treasured keepsakes we have!"
But if drying out your umbilical cord isn't really your thang, you could order a canvas printed with a photo of your baby's umbilical cord cells on it.
That's what Little Cord Art does.
They help turn all your wildest wishes about having a real-life canvas of your baby's umbilical cord, into actual art.
They do this by taking a tissue sample of your baby's umbilical cord.
While it's a little more complicated than this, the basic gist is that they 'fix' a tissue sample, slice it, stain and photograph it, then have that image printed on a canvas.
I'd never even heard of umbilical cord art, or cord art canvases, when I was pregnant with my babies.
But even if I had, I still wouldn't have been keen to jump on the whole dried cord art bandwagon.
To be honest, it's just not me.
You see, while I adore my children to bits and love my connection to them, I don't personally feel the need to keep every bit that once kept us connected.