Placenta Fertilizer
One of the questions I asked my midwife as I neared my due date was “What do we do with the placenta?” Her suggestions: cook it up for a nutrient-rich post partum snack that chases away after birth depression; then plant the rest of it to fertilize the earth.
I had some placenta immediately after I gave birth. One of the midwives sauteed it with onions and garlic. It tasted pretty good all spiced up, but I must admit there was a huge piece that stayed wrapped up in my freezer for a few months. My mother once mistook it for beef and started to thaw it for supper. I knew I had to do something with my placenta, and soon!
So when one of my avocado pits sprouted while soaking in the kitchen window, I knew I had the perfect match. My husband and baby watched as I potted the placenta and avocado sprout. I wonder how old my child will be when it’s time to transplant the avocado tree into the ground. When the time comes, I will tell her of that tiny home she inhabited for the first nine months of her life, and how it continued to nurture our home through the avocado tree growing in our sunny backyard.
Comments:
"I think you are a real freek for eating your placenta. What a sicko!"
- Chris
"i’m sorry to hear your response to this chris…you
need to read ‘after the baby’s birth’ by robin lim…eating
placenta absolutely replenishes a womans large drop in hormones after
giving birth…i too ate my placentas, after three, of my four childrens
births…historically women having been doing it since the beginning
along with all the rest of the mammals on this planet. it’s not
disgusting, you cook it just like you would a piece of steak and frankly
it looks like a piece of chuck beef. nothing weird or ’sicko’
about it…unfortunately women have been so removed from their own
bodies with hospital births and bottle feeding that something as simple
as replenishing your bodies badly needed hormones comes off as unnatural…"
- kimberle
"I’ve heard that in some hospitals the doctors actually ask you if you want to keep the placenta, but I have never heard of anyone actually eating it. I do not have any kids but I do want to have a family someday so I called my very Mexican mom who confirmed this. She said exactly what Kimberly explained, but in Spanish :-) . I don’t know if I’ll be practincing this myself, but I think its awesome to learn stuff like this. There’s even a website that will show you how to cook your placenta…"
- Karla