There was a SNL book many many years ago, and one of the rejected SNL sketches was for "Placenta Helper".

There are people who eat placenta! They consider it a wonderful way to eat meat without killing anything. There are recipies on the web; I saw one for placenta lasagna (eew).
I let my doctors put Lizzie's placenta in a biohazard container and dispose accordingly. But my cousin's wife did a lovely stamp thing with it to make placenta art.

Well, considering that there is a fair amount of evidence to support the idea that eating the placenta significantly lowers the chance/severity of postpartum depression, and I've been a pretty noticeable depressive all of my life, I will be eating the placenta.

It kind of freaks me out in my western-squickness, but honestly if it stands a significant chance of helping me to be not depressed I owe it to the kid, Noah, and everyone else around me.

Oh, wow. I didn't know that about the post-partum depression. It's a very natural source of nutrients for you. :) About eating placenta: I'm much less grossed out by the idea of eating my own/my own baby's placenta than eating somebody elses (and I guess my memory of the lasagna gross-out was that it was a family recipe?). Are you planning to dehydrate, powder & encapsulate it?
Congratulations on the kiddo. You must be about halfway to the finish line by now?

Yes on "dehydrate, powder and encapsulate." We're actually a bit farther along than that -- about 30 weeks now.

Wow. Well hmm. Actually since I had a home birth my placenta ended up in the freezer, and it's still sitting there moodily in the bottom corner daring anyone to do something with it. Maybe I should powder it and distribute it to all my medicated immediate female relatives... (that would be all of them...) I bet Jesse would put it on the bbq and we could have a big party, but that would SO squick me out.

Mine/Frogling's is still in the freezer too. But it is our intent to bury it under a new tree for her first birthday.

As for the eating, I've heard of cooking it into a stew/chili. OR just frying it up and eating it.

Obligatory anecdote, FWIW...

I think I was too busy cleaning and videotaping Cade to actually even notice the afterbirth.

But a bit later...let's see...we saw the placenta...and ignored it. They took it away at some point. It was bigger than I expected, though, so I guess you could get a lot of sandwiches out of one.

Lest anyone ask, I don't think I took a picture of it.

I'm not actually going to make it into sandwiches...

...though you know it'd be fun to have someone ask "whatcha eatin'?" and be able to reply "human flesh" in a demonic voice. Powdered just seems like "flesh lite" to me.

Just kidding, of course. I could imagine eating placenta in various forms (heck I've eaten chicken foot, and baby octopus sushi), but I'd prefer not to bother.

On a serious note, I will be very interested to hear if it has any medical impact.

Well, it's one of those things that is hard to figure out how much impact it really has. If I do it and have no postpartum depression there is a chance that I am just in that 20% of women who never get it. If I have only rather mild depression, maybe it's luck or a lifetime of learning coping mechanisms for managing depression.

In any case, unless you come read my whining Noah is unlikely to comment on it. He seems to find it safer to not comment publicly on my behavior in any way that could be construed as critical. I'm not saying this is *completely* necessary, but it might show remarkable wisdom on his part. ;)

Best wishes with that. Several of my family members have been on anti-depressants at various points, and are all now off them as far as I know. My dad was the worst with it--it did bad things to him and ultimately he found some combination of vitamins that did the job much better, without side effects.

Myself, I don't take anything for it, but I have had my own depression issues, though rarely bad enough to cause symptoms like extreme fatigue.

I'm unmedicated. I find that there are ways of getting through and coming out the other side without doing things to my body. I'm not real fond of physical intervention unless it is really necessary. It works for me. It took a lot of time and energy to get here though.

80% of women have PPD? Wow....I didn't know that. I'm feeling depressed just thinking about that!

Hard to say, but eating placenta is a tradition in a number of places. Maybe it started when meat was rare/expensive and they didn't want to throw any away? And discovering that it did good things would be merely a matter of stopping and seeing the results.

I draw the line at eating boogers. That's not ok no matter *how* it benefits you.

at the birth of my kidlets
i was fucking amazed
at how much extra crap
came outta their mom.

it's be enough for a good 5 or 6 meals, i bet.

i vote stew.

but, please, don't bother saving any for me.
i've been unable to eat liver
since the day my childs were borned.
or rare steaks, for that matter.