Pass the Placenta

Here’s a post from Chow with a little video about hiring a service to dry out and grind your placenta to make pills. It’s a long-standing practice of Chinese medicine which sounds gross, but probably does new moms good.

 The video is a little lame.  I prefer Joel Stein’s article from Time that the video was a supplement to. It’s his wife’s placenta getting cooked in the video. He’s skeptical.

I’m maybe sort of a hippy, but I’d pass on the placenta pills. We don’t got a spare $275 for a placenta chef, and I’m not about to do it myself. I doubt we’d even bring the thing home to plant a tree over…I know it’s full of 9 months of nutrients, but I figure we’ll have other things on our minds.

People do all kinds of things with placentas. “Making prints of the placenta, using either the blood that covers it or ink and paint, are not uncommon,” I read on the Hip Chick Pregnancy Guide page. Not uncommon? Check back with me in 5 months to see if, postpartum, I have the urge to make conceptual art with our baby’s placenta. Maybe we can sell the baby’s placenta! I like that idea. Get this kid working before she’s even a few hours old.