I have had heard that if a woman eats a piece of her
placenta immediately after
birth it will prevent a
hemorrhage. I do not know any one who has tried this for this specific purpose, but it is certainly worth trying in a pinch.
Also, I have heard that Chinese women have their placentas professionally dried and powdered, then made into capsules that they take later on to ease menopausal symptoms.
The placenta is the only piece of meat that does not come from killing an animal, and is prized by some as a particularly delicious treat. A friend of mine says she ate hers like steak with mushrooms and onions and that it was kind of like filet mignon. It is certainly packed with vitamins. I was a little grossed out by this but she reminded me that I eat all kinds of dead animals, the cow slice I ate with relish at McDonald's for instance.
I kept my placentas in the freezer, and they are still there. We are waiting to move to our dream house in the country, which is coming up soon. Then we will bury them and plant a tree for each child. At the time, they are in “I can’t believe it’s not butter” tubs in the freezer, labeled, “I can’t believe it’s a placenta”. They are both very large and healthy, one side is shiny and slick, the other meaty and bumpy. The slick side has the umbilical cord and when it was fresh we rinsed it off, dabbed it with India ink and made a placenta print (also called a tree of life) that looks like a big beautiful tree, with twisty limbs and a thick trunk and a big umbrella of leaves.
Other friends took their three-month-old baby and her placenta with them when they moved from Ohio to Colorado. They intended to plant it and grow a tree for their daughter. On the third day it had thawed and despite being triple bagged it “smelled like a fishboat where the crew had died” and they sneaked it into a roadside dumpster along the way.
Another friend took her placenta to the river and had a small ceremony to say goodbye to a part of her life (pregnancy). She said a prayer and set the placenta in the water, where she was stunned to find that it floated. A small rowboat happened by with two men fishing. The placenta bumped into the boat, freaking out everyone involved. She ran away because she was afraid they would think she was floating a liver or something dead, and did not want to have to explain herself. Half way home she started laughing and said the laughing went on for an hour. When she told me we both lost it, tears rolling out, laughing so hard we could only bark and hee and haw. We both fell sideways, rolling in the grass, unable to take deep breaths and it was wonderful.