Placentophagy....are you kidding me??

I've written several posts here on placentophagy, or eating one's placenta, and I'm always amazed at the various resulting comments. OK, I know that there are people out there who strongly believe in the placenta's hormonal restorative qualities and all that, but come on....would you really want to eat a part of your body?

I was just reading an article on a moms' website about a new mom who ate her placenta because "it didn't seem right to merely throw it away."

I just don't get this placentophagy thing at all. So some assert that eating your placenta can help stave off postpartum depression. Personally, I think that resorting to eating a placenta would make me depressed. Yeah, I get that if you've experienced PPD before, you'd do just about anything to avoid having to endure it again. However, there are plenty of options out there other than eating a chunk of human body tissue. Options such as counseling, anti-depressants, support group therapy, yoga, exercise, acupuncture, and many more. No matter that Tom Cruise aparently prefers his placenta medium-rare, I would never even remotely begin to consider such an option.

What the ----? Does anyone out there get placentophagy?? I sure don't!

It's been many, many moons ago since I first posted on placentophagy, and oddly enough, I'm still getting comments on that original post.  And I'm still completely bewildered.  I simply just don't get how a person can eat a body part.  And I know there are those out there who firmly believe that the placenta has hormonal nourishing properties, and that the hormones produced by the placenta during gestation are actually still "living" after the birth (yeah, right), and that they will magically stave off Postpartum Depression, ... but I gotta tell ya that it just doesn't make sense scientifically, and represents, quite honestly, that "magic pill" that so many women are searching for when it comes to PPD.  I'm sorry, but there's no magic pill cure.  And certainly not in your placenta.

So I just got a comment on my placentophagy post from a husband in the UK who actually has a video showing him cooking up and eating his wife's placenta.  And he actually looks and sounds like a normal guy.  Go figure.  You've got to check it out at the above link.  But don't expect to be hungry for a long while afterwards....

Eating your placenta (placentophagy) cures postpartum depression??!?

Okay, I'm trying to type this post with a straight face. I know this topic has been out there for a long while ... I think I first heard about it a few years ago and repressed the memory of it. It's come back above ground recently through the media and still totally freaks me out. I find it amazing that a woman sued a hospital to get her placenta so she could eat it. And I just visited a discussion thread on mothering.com to see what other moms are saying about the suggestion that eating your placenta cures you of PPD. I'm still freaked out....

So there are women who actually roast their placentas in the oven shortly after they've given birth. They wait till it's dried out, carefully strip away the membranes (are you feeling sick yet?), chop it up into bite-size pieces, pound them into powder and pour the powder into empty capsules to "swallow without being able to taste it." There are other placenta recipes, such as dropping it into a blender with your favorite smoothie mix (don't forget to add extra strawberries to disguise the red color of the blood), or even mixing it with vegetable juice till it tastes like a bloody mary (no pun intended!).

I even came across a site that shows a woman holding her placenta and describing it as looking like a "boneless beef round steak." She does offer other options in lieu of the Silence of the Lambs routine, such as making a "placenta print as a keepsake," or to "use it to fertilize your garden."

I don't know, this is all just a bit too crunchy for me. I can't imagine a "cure" for PPD looking like this. The assertion is that the placenta is filled with hormones that helped sustain the pregnancy, and if the mother ingests it, she will replace the hormones she has lost and avoid suffering from PPD. One question I haven't yet seen addressed is: once a placenta is dried out, would the hormones even still be chemically active/viable?

But nevermind that -- is this the kind of PPD "cure" that women have hoped for? Are we really so desperate to accept something so unbelievably icky??