There are many ways to enjoy your afterbirth, according to Belfast doula Hazel Mayger
A HOT, sweet cup of tea is the drink that most new mothers look forward to after the long ordeal of childbirth. Swigging down a smoothie made from their own liquidised placenta may not have quite the same appeal. There’s something primitive, even animalistic about it. But some childbirth experts believe it’s the best thing you can do to boost your postpartum health.
Celebrities are catching on: actor January Jones ate her placenta (albeit in the rather more palatable pill form), and the Arsenal soccer player Robin van Persie recently used placenta remedies to aid recovery from an ankle injury. Now Belfast doula, Hazel Mayger, has become one of the first people in Ireland to offer expectant mothers the opportunity to consume their own placentas.
Mayger, a nutritionist, turns the raw material of the afterbirth into capsules, tinctures or the aforementioned smoothie. She also provides a special “placenta print” of the organ, as a most unusual reminder of the birth.
“When people find out what I do, I’m met with curiosity and sometimes disgust,” says Mayger, “mostly, it has to be said, from men. People are often shocked to think of women eating their own placentas, but many cultures have been practising this for centuries, and other mammals have been benefiting from the healing power of the placenta by eating it raw after birth since the dawn of time.
“It’s important that women are informed about the health benefits of eating the placenta – after that, they have a choice about whether they want to do it or not.”
Mayger says some enterprising women even cut a piece of their own placentas off and pop it in their mouth straight after the birth. Others have been known to fry it like a steak, with peppers and onions.
For the smoothie option, Mayger chooses the “freshest, nicest” part of the placenta, places it in a blender with organic fruit (raspberries are good apparently, for masking the colour) and whizzes it up, to be served to the new mum as soon as possible after the birth. “It’s lovely, all you can taste is fruit,” she says firmly.
Although Mayger can also steam, dehydrate, then grind the placenta into a powder form to be encapsulated, as practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine do, she believes that raw, fresh and immediate is best: “it makes more sense: fewer nutrients are destroyed”.
Anyone who has ever seen a placenta – their own or someone else’s – will know that it is an extraordinary looking organ: large, circular, with an intricate network of blood vessels. The only human organ that is designed to be temporary, it operates as the interface between the physiological systems of the mother and the baby, acting as kidney, lungs and digestive system for the infant while it is in the womb.
The placenta protects the growing foetus from infection, providing immunity through the transfer of maternal antibodies. Cunningly, it even secretes hormones that effectively shield it from potential rejection by the mother’s own immune system. All quite remarkable – but what does eating it really do for the mother?
Mayger claims that placentophagia – the act of consuming your own afterbirth – is beneficial in a whole host of ways.
“The placenta supplies incredibly rich, meaty iron, amino acids and essential fats which specialists believe is the perfect replenishment following childbirth. Stem cells and growth factors in the placenta play a key role in healing the wound left inside the uterus after birth by the separation of the placenta from the uterine wall. A mother will typically bleed for three to six weeks after birth.
“We have found, however, that mothers who consume their placenta after birth, particularly . . . raw placenta in a smoothie, bleed significantly less, often stopping after only three days.”
Other important nutrients in strong supply in the placenta include vitamin B6, which aids in the making of antibodies, vitamin E, for healing damaged skin cells, and oxytocin, “the love hormone”, important for establishing bonding and breastfeeding. According to Mayger, “women who have consumed their own placenta testify that it has given them energy, improved their mood, reduced the likeliness of post-natal depression and improved their milk supply”.
When it comes to the view of mainstream science, the jury is still out about the merits of eating your own placenta. Mark Kristal, professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Buffalo in the United States, has studied placentophagia for more than 40 years.
In March, he co-authored a paper in the journal Ecology of Food and Nutrition, which noted that placenta ingestion in non-human mammals increased mother-infant interaction and facilitated the onset of caretaking behaviour. While there are many similar anecdotal claims for human afterbirth consumption, none has been empirically proved. As far as Kristal is concerned, the really interesting thing is why we, as mammals, don’t have the same biological urge to eat our placentas that other animals do.
Medically proven or not, it’s clear that growing numbers of women believe in the healing powers of the placenta. Some far-sighted new mothers even save a few of the capsules for the menopause, like an elixir of youthful vitality, packed with magical properties, to take them on to the next stage in life.
