Feel like something is missing from your life? Perhaps your parents should have preserved your umbilical cord in a block of clear acrylic resin. It could have been used as a paperweight or a personal seal. As a matter of fact, you could be admiring it right now. No leftover parts from early childhood go wasted in South Korea, according to a recent Reuters story. Keeping babies’ umbilical cords for posterity and making calligraphy brushes from their babies’ hair have both been long traditions in that country. Quite interestingly, the Reuters story failed to mention possible uses for baby teeth, the babyhood leftovers to which we do pay the most attention. In the Confucian society of South Korea, where family values are highly prized, other proud parents think nothing about paying 80,000 or 100,000 won ($76 or $96) to have umbilical cords gold-plated. Presumably the fancier gold-plated cords make great conversation pieces when entertaining guests and other topics appear to be winding down. The preservation of umbilical cords is a difficult concept for many of us to grasp in our throwaway culture. We’re not all that emotionally attached to no-longer-needed body parts. When we bake holiday turkeys, for example, it’s easy to discard the less desirable necks, gizzards and other vital organs with little or no remorse. We share a common mantra — if you’re not going to use it, lose it. Personally, saving and classifying umbilical cords would have only complicated the jumble of baby books, photo albums and elementary school drawings we attempted to organize and save for our daughters. The baby books were prime examples of projects gone wrong. Although our first daughter had a nearly complete baby book with first steps, first teeth and first perfect days of toilet training carefully recorded, the books for the other three girls were relatively dismal. Their books contained hastily scribbled notes, amounting to little more than, "Came home from hospital ... first tooth ... first college interview." The quality of the baby books declined as our lives became busier with the addition of each child. Photo albums for each of the girls also varied in quality, depending upon their birth order. While the first daughter had countless photos with clever captions written beneath them in her album, the other girls had shoeboxes overflowing with loose photos and good intentions. There simply wasn’t enough time to do everything. Immediately after the birth of our first daughter in Duluth, I met a mother who saved umbilical cords. In fact, it was one of the first things she told me. Shortly after I was wheeled from the delivery room to what would be my regular hospital room for five days, I got to know her rather well. Within a few minutes she had me cranking up her bed, adjusting her tangled bedding and opening the room window "just a crack." As she rambled on non-stop about the importance of preserving umbilical cords, I assumed her recent delivery must have been much more difficult than mine. I was still hobbling around the room, making my less fortunate roommate comfortable, when a nurse glared at me from the doorway. "What are you doing out of bed?" she demanded. As it turned out, my roommate had her baby 10 days earlier. Because she had become delusional with postpartum stress, she would be transferred shortly to the fourth floor, the psychiatric unit. I suddenly understood her preoccupation with umbilical cords. She, of all people, would have appreciated the Reuters story from South Korea.