A Word on Consuming Placentas
Placenta - a beautiful organ that is created and grows with the baby and is expelled after baby is birthed.
One question I always get from clients is, “should I do placenta encapsulation?”
Placentophagy – meaning “to eat placenta” – has gained popularity in the recent years. As your midwife I am not to give you the answer you may want to hear; I am to give the factual answer. It would be so much easier to tell my clients, “Sure, it’s one of the birth things to do and the capsules come in cute little bottles with sometimes cute little pink pills.” It is easy to just say anything to keep clients satisfied especially if it’s something considered “safe”, but I choose to provide facts and allow you to make your own informed decision. So here are the facts…
**Disclaimer: this article is not to condemn anyone who has already experience placenta encapsulation, I do not want to make anyone feel guilty or bad, this article is made with love and to provide facts.
The placenta is an organ which works as a filter between mom and baby, that removes harmful substances and waste from the mother’s blood to the baby. The filter removes heavy metals and carbon dioxide. (Our own body’s work so hard to filter carbon dioxide and toxins out the blood). The placenta is formed around/by 12 weeks. It belongs to the baby. So, when consuming the placenta, it means one would be consuming their baby’s organ.
Most sources say that the practice of consuming the placenta is a new concept. It was not practiced in the west until the 1970s. Most doctors and researchers are very suspicious of the practice saying that there is no research which proves any benefits from it.
Here are some reasons why people consumed their placenta from a 1979 volume of the Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, William Ober's article "Notes on Placentophagy"
-The possibility that certain ancient cultures that practiced human sacrifice may also have practiced human placentophagy, including Egyptians, Tasians, Badarians, Amrateans, Gerzeans, Semainians.
-In Brazil, a cannibalistic tribe had the practice of consuming the afterbirth.
-In Jamaica, bits of placental membranes were put into an infant's tea to prevent convulsions caused by ghosts.
-Traditional Gullah medicine dictates that when a baby is born with a caul, with amniotic membranes over the face at birth, the placenta is made into a tea and then consumed by the child to "prevent them from seeing spirits that would otherwise haunt them.”
There has never been any research that placenta encapsulation works. There is no Scientific research on the benefits. As a Birth worker, I have heard many women say they felt great after taking the placenta. As a believer, we have to live by faith in God – the God who created us and placed us in the exact time in history and location that He intended for us. We must have faith that God has provided every tool we need to prevent postpartum depression, and aid healing after the delivery of the baby.
We are safer not partaking in consuming what our body has expelled out. During one’s entire pregnancy and birth we see how mighty God is. How perfect God is from the very beginning of conception on through birth. I firmly believe God made the placenta for a reason and allows us to release our placenta and let it go intentionally.
In the list of curses for disobedience in Deuteronomy chapter 28, we read the following:
"Moreover all these curses shall come upon you and pursue and overtake you, until you are destroyed, because you did not obey the voice of the LORD your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which He commanded you. And they shall be upon you for a sign and a wonder, and on your descendants forever. Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joy and gladness of heart, for the abundance of everything, therefore ... The tender and delicate woman among you, who would not venture to set the sole of her foot on the ground because of her delicateness and sensitivity, will refuse to the husband of her bosom, and to her son and her daughter, her placenta which comes out from between her feet and her children whom she bears; for she will eat them secretly for lack of everything in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you at all your gates." (Deuteronomy 28:45-57, NKJV) So while scripture does not specifically forbid eating one's placenta, it is mentioned in the context of being cursed rather than blessed.
There are so many herbs, books, and natural healthy supplements to help prevent postpartum hemorrhaging and depression.
Of course, there is so much we can discuss on this topic, but I hope that this answers any questions regarding consuming the placenta yourself.
Love always, Your Midwife Faren.