EATING YOUR Baby’s Placenta?

“And we’re done with the yogurt,” says Chandler Bing upon learning that in some cultures, women actually eat their placenta. No doubt the very idea conjures up images of a Hannibal Lector dinner party. In this day and age the placenta is usually nothing more than that charming little afterthought they never show you in the Lamaze video. Surely, it was only eaten by primitive people whose taste buds had been ritualistically removed in honor of the sun god Shazam. That’s what I thought until the day my friend Denise told me that she too had partaken of her baby’s placenta.

WHAT? Denise was a red-haired, freckle-faced, Irish-Catholic, all-American woman. I just couldn’t picture her with a knife and fork, carving off a chunk of afterbirth over a bottle of Chianti and some fava beans. As it turns out, the scenario wasn’t quite so unbelievably horrifying as I’d thought.

Denise’s doctor, an herbal healing specialist, had suggested the idea as a way of aiding lactation as well as preventing postpartum depression and hemorrhaging. It took some convincing, but Denise finally asked her OB/GYN to save her placenta after the delivery. Back at home, she cleaned the placenta in the sink then placed it in the oven on low heat for 48 hours, leaving the door open just a crack so the placenta would dry out-incidentally, this is the same process I use to make beef jerky. Once the placenta had completely dehydrated Denise ground it to a fine powder and poured it into gel-capsules. She was to take two capsules three times a day for a month. Afterwards, she still had a few dozen capsules left, which, when emptied into a little bit of vodka, made quite a therapeutic tincture effective in preventing the common cold.

This story stuck with me-okay, haunted my dreams-for several years. I drank quite a bit of vodka myself (placenta-free) trying to get the images out of my head. But when my wife and I found out we were pregnant I inexplicably found myself mentioning it as an option for her. She was appropriately repulsed but said she would remain open minded, so I decided to go online and research just how common the whole placenta consumption thing really was.

That’s right, most guys surf the internet for porn. I surf for placenta.

In many ancient cultures that still exist today, from the Ibos of Nigeria to the Quechas of Bolivia and even the Native American Navajos, the placenta has always possessed a certain spiritual aura. It is often liturgically buried and returned to the earth. In fact, for the Maori people of New Zealand, the word for “placenta” and “land” are one and the same. And yes, in several cultures it is considered proper and holy for women to actually eat the sacred afterbirth.

The practice didn’t start creeping its way into American consciousness until quite recently. It was commonplace in the 60’s and 70’s amongst so-called “earth mothers.” Certain hippie communities would often eat the placenta as a ceremonial family meal. In fact, these delightfully philistine people can be thanked for introducing the world to several placenta recipes. Now, mothers who don’t want to simply dry-swallow their placenta can tempt their palettes with such delectable entrees as Roast Placenta, Placenta Stew, Placenta Lasagna, Placenta (gulp) Pizza and the only recipe that calls for raw placenta, Placenta Cocktail. Eat your heart out Jeffery Dahmer.

In the end, my wife opted for the same comparatively conservative gel-cap approach as Denise. We were already taking heat from relatives concerning our all-natural homebirth. Throw a cooked placenta into the mix and we might have been cut out of a few wills. But you know what? It worked. She healed quickly, nursed like a pro and never had a moment’s depression following the birth. And to this day whenever she feels a cold, flu or cough coming on, she “pops a couple placenta” and knocks it out before the symptoms can ever take hold. Who cares if people think we’re crazy? We get our fun little revenge by pointing out the fact that they’ve most likely been moisturizing with placenta. “You know those fancy French lotions you like so much…?”

For now, consuming the placenta (be it in pizza or powder form) remains something that only a few particularly inspired and tough-stomached women will consider. But, as I said to Denise way back when, “More power to you… to each his own… and yes, we are definitely done with the yogurt.”