AS I packed my hospital bag ahead of the birth of my second baby in 2013, there was something I was determined to fit in there alongside those newborn sleepsuits and sugary snacks to get me through labour.
A 3-litre plastic container I’d used for my lasagne leftovers a couple of weeks earlier.
I needed it for my placenta, which I was planning to eat – after giving birth to it.
Yes, I know you probably think it’s “gross.” I’m all too aware of the looks whenever I mention it. People think I’m bonkers… and start backing away from me slowly.
In fact, my husband Will, 37, was among the most vocal detractors. When I first told him what I wanted to do with my placenta – turn some of it into a smoothie, and the rest into capsules – he looked perturbed.
“Have you completely lost the plot?” he spluttered. “That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard.”
He was even less impressed when I told him it would cost £160 to get the placenta properly “prepared,” and a separate placenta-specialist midwife would be collecting it from him in the hospital after I’d given birth.
I found the midwife who would turn my placenta into capsules through the IPEN Placenta Network, which was recommended to me by my midwives. Having my mind so focused on what would happen to the placenta (it needs to be placed in a sterile container and iced or refrigerated immediately after birth) definitely took my mind off of the more significant, extremely exhausting and painful event: labour. So already a potential bonus then?
To make the capsules, the placenta is initially steamed with lemon, ginger and green chilli, using traditional Chinese medicine techniques, then dehydrated. An average-sized placenta yields 100-some capsules, which can last for several months after your baby is born.
I also ordered a “raw placenta smoothie” (an extra £30), a remarkably ordinary-sounding berry, banana and juice smoothie, with just one extra ingredient: a sliver of placenta.
The idea of ingesting an organ, let alone one you’ve given birth to, doesn’t sound appealing, but I had my reasons. Exhausted and moody, I’d struggled with breastfeeding my first baby, born two-and-a-half-years earlier when I was 28. I had painful episodes of mastitis where I’d wake up shaking and feverish, in the worst pain I’d ever experienced. I bled heavily for weeks after the birth.
While none of this is uncommon after childbirth, advocates of placentophagy (ingesting the placenta) believe that consuming the placenta in some form can help replenish nutrients lost during childbirth and ease some of these symptoms.
Anecdotal benefits of ingesting the placenta may include fewer mood swings, lower rates of postpartum depression and better milk production, as well as higher energy levels and quicker postpartum healing. Some suggest that placentophagy can also help new mothers bond with their babies.
It won’t come as a huge surprise that the biggest fans of placentophagy are celebrities. Earlier this year, Millie Mackintosh opened up about feeling “much more emotionally stable and energetic” after trying placenta capsules with her second daughter, Aurelia.
Coleen Rooney, Katherine Ryan, Danielle Lloyd and the Kardashians have reportedly all done it too. Placenta Plus, which Rochelle Humes used for her second and third babies, offers clients placenta gummies in addition to pills.
I did quite a lot of research before committing to this, both in terms of reading up about the benefits and downsides of placentophagy and speaking with various midwives about the process and any contraindications.
At the time, there were few reports about the potential risks, which do exist and typically involve bacteria or viruses surviving the placenta preparation. This can make breastfed babies unwell.
After giving birth that second time, as I nuzzled and nursed my newborn in the hospital bed, my husband was tasked with getting the “very important plastic pot” and its contents to the midwife, who arrived at the hospital to collect it.
Even in the haze of hormones and exhaustion, I remember telling him to “guard the placenta with your life,” which must be one of the more unusual requests new mums make of their birth partners.
We’d packed an additional, smaller plastic pot in the overnight bag. This contained a small sliver of placenta for the smoothie and was “cooling” on the windowsill next to my hospital bed.
In the chaos of childbirth, obsessing over our delicious baby and making sure all was OK with the baby and me, we completely forgot about the container and its contents when we left the hospital several hours later.
Well, I forgot. My husband may have been trying to ditch it (I’ve never asked).
I still shudder to think how the next person to use the room after us reacted upon seeing an abandoned piece of organ in a clear plastic container, positioned so it overlooked the River Thames.
My second baby weighed 4.7 kilos – nearly 2 lbs bigger than her older sister – and was a longer, tougher delivery than my first. It was the middle of a snowy, freezing January, which wasn’t doing me any favours in terms of my moods, either.
So I was excited when my gorgeous purple frosted glass bottle of capsules arrived. My large baby meant I had over 200 to keep me going.
I was also sent my baby’s umbilical cord, dehydrated and shaped into a heart. I haven’t had it framed – yet – but I also can’t bear to get rid of it.
It didn’t take long for me to become hooked on the capsules, which I took a few times a day. They didn’t taste like much of anything, but they did help me feel full of milk and energy. I healed quicker than after my firstborn, and I found breastfeeding less of a faff. I felt fabulous.
I was such a believer in the placenta pills that I decided to do it all over again with my next child, who was born in 2015. I even got a snip of placenta made into a homoeopathic remedy for my baby, designed to be used when teething or “at times of emotional flux.”
The only thing that stopped me from doing it a final time for my fourth baby, who came in 2017, was a scan that showed she was in a sideways transverse position which meant I would need a C-section.
You typically order the placenta pills a month or two in advance, but I was too distracted and stressed with extra scans and appointments to get myself organised.
While I didn’t need a C-section in the end – the baby changed position at 38 weeks – my fourth had quite a few feeding and colic issues to begin with, the result of a tongue tie which we got fixed when she was a month old.
I know the pills wouldn’t have solved that particular issue, but I still wished I’d had them. They’d become part of my postnatal routine, a security blanket that made me feel good.
I’ll never know if they really are magic pills or just a placebo that worked for me. You know what? I’m not sure it matters either way.
