Placenta Placenta

Your baby is born. There are a million things to think about, and what happens to the placenta isn’t even on the list. Usually the placenta gets thrown away.

But did you know that you can save your baby’s umbilical cord and “bank” it? The placenta is full of stem cells which could save someone’s life later, or further stem cell research and save millions of lives!

No kidding. You could quite literally help cure cancer.

The National Marrow Donor Program has a FAQ on donating cord cells to make the process easy for you, and if your hospital doesn’t have an existing program, companies like Cryobanks International will take the placenta and make sure it helps save lives.

Or you could just bank the blood for your own personal future use. There is a big company which does this now, the Cord Blood Registry, as well as an entire network of cord blood banks called Alphacord.

Actually, there are so many companies in this effort that Google has an entire category of them in its directory.

There are also people who eat the placenta. In some societies, the afterbirth is routinely eaten by the mother to help replenish protein and iron lost during childbirth.

Here is a recipe for roast placenta, and Mothering Magazine printed an entire list of recipes in their September 1983 issue (Vol. 28, pg 76).

This morning I heard a long session on a morning radio show (Sarah and No Name actually) where they ranted for about an hour about how gross it was, and when someone called in to discuss it, they ridiculed him off the air. No mention of donating the placenta. Hooray for free press!

So, here’s my contribution: if you’re going to write me email about how gross it is to eat the placenta, you can go to f-ing hell. Come see me and I will say it to your xenophobic face, loser.

No one’s forcing you to eat placenta. To you meat-eaters out there (yes I do eat meat), do you slaughter your own meat? I personally doubt that most people could. The inside of any animal is pretty gross too. If you like, I will butcher an animal with you and we will eat it raw while I film it, and I will make you look like a fool on the next network reality show as you cry and throw up all over your Keds. In the background, all my friends will laugh at your lameness. And afterwards, your friends will too.

Bank your baby’s placenta and save lives. Sarah and No Name are morons.