• Eating your placenta

    Date: 2010.07.09 | Category: Post-partum | Tags: ,,,

    Many mammals eat their placentas, and with good reason. Eating your placenta helps your uterus shrink to its pre-pregnancy size. It contains oxytocin, also known as the “love hormone”, which reduces stress and makes you feel great. What’s more, placentophagy (the technical term for eating your placenta) can play a key role in preventing and stopping post-partum hemorrhage.

    I don’t know why more people don’t eat their placenta. It’s served your baby for nine months, and now that your baby doesn’t need it any more, your placenta can serve you, too. I first started researching placentophagy as a means of preventing hemhorrhage, but for me, by far the most wonderful thing about eating my son’s placenta is that I was on a birth high for months. Truly, I felt euphoric for a long time, and I have no doubt that my placenta-eating adventure deserves credit for that.

    If you are thinking of eating your placenta when your baby is born, you might feel ever so slightly grossed out. I’m vegetarian, so the thought of eating meat, even of the variety was produced by my very own body, made me feel a bit queazy. Here are some ways to prepare a placenta for consumption, some of which are great for the more weak-stomached of us.

    1) You can put bits of your placenta into a milk or yoghurt smoothie, with red fruits like raspberries, strawberries, and cranberries. If you want, you can even add sugar. I never tried a placenta smoothie, but those who did swear that there is not a trace of anything that tastes like meat. Obviously, you’ll need a blender for this to work.

    2) You can cut it up into little pieces, wash out the excess blood, and swallow it like a pill with a bit of water or juice. This is what I did. Eating your placenta raw probably gives you the most nutrients. You can also freeze the pieces you don’t want to use in the first few days after giving birth, though I think placenta does lose nutrients after freezing.

    3) Many women opt to have their placentas encapsulated, or encapsulate their own. This is done by dehydrating the meat of the placenta, and then putting it into medicinal capsules. There are a variety of capsules around, some of which are even vegan. You can order them online, if you were wondering.

    4) I have heard about families preparing placenta as part of a meal. Your own creativity is the limit here. Placenta meals I have read about before include soups and stir-fries. While this might make your placenta more palatable, and enjoyable especially for meat eaters, some of the nutrients are lost when you cook or stir-fry.