My Husband Thought I Was C.razy When I Ate My Own Placenta
The act of eating the placenta after you give birth, called placentophagy, isn’t just something animals do. Human moms do it, too, including tribal women and glamorous celebrities. You may be wondering whether you should as well. You could dry it and put it in p.ills. You could stir-fry it with onions. You could even eat it raw in the delivery room.
I needed it for my placenta, which I was planning to eat – after giving birth to it.
My husband was even less impressed when I told him it would cost £160 to get the placenta properly “prepared,” and a separate placenta -specialist midwife would be collecting it from him in the hospital after I’d given birth.
To make the capsules, the placenta is initially steamed with lemon, ginger and green chilli, using traditional Chinese medicine techniques, then dehydrated. An average-sized placenta yields 100-some capsules which can last for several months after your baby is born. You can put they away to use during one month.
I also mix a “raw placenta smoothie” with a remarkably ordinary-sounding berry, banana and juice smoothie, with just one extra ingredient: a sliver of placenta.
The idea of ingesting an organ, let alone one you’ve given birth to, doesn’t sound appealing, but I had my reasons. People who support eating the placenta say that it can raise your energy and breast milk quantity. Those claims have not been fully tested. So there is no proof that eating your placenta actually does these things. But some experts say we should continue to study it. The placenta does have protein and fats. But those nutrients can be found in a healthy diet.
While none of this is uncommon after childbirth, advocates of placentophagy believe that consuming the placenta in some form can help replenish nutrients lost during childbirth.
Anecdotal benefits of ingesting the placenta may include fewer mood swings, and better milk production, as well as higher energy levels and quicker pospartum
hea-ling. Some suggest that placentophagy can also help new mothers bond with their babies.
I did quite a lot of scientist before committing to this, both in terms of reading up about the benefits and downsides of placen.tophagy and speaking with various midwies about the process and any contraindications 
My second baby weighed 4.7 kilos – nearly 2 lbs bigger than her older sister – and was a longer, tougher delivery than my first. It was the middle of a snowy, freezing January, which wasn’t doing me any favours in terms of my moods, either. So I was excited when my gorgeous purple frosted glass bottle of capsules arrived. My large baby me
