Placenta Pâté

Week 35

The placenta is an extraordinary thing. 

Seriously.  

It's the only organ in our body that is 'transient', meaning it grows and dies for a short period of time. It acts as the baby’s lungs, kidneys, liver, digestive and immune systems while also producing hormones that send messages advocating the baby's needs to the mother's body to maintain a healthy, happy pregnancy. It's also the only organ that's genetically two people- it contains both fetal and maternal cells, which I liken to having half of someone else's kidney growing inside of your own.

I can barely wrap my head around how this is even possible. The simple fact that my body doesn't reject this weighty thing (it's technically 50% foreign genetic material) is crazy enough. Somehow the placenta also 'knows' to protect the baby from damaging substances like alcohol, tobacco, drugs and toxins. The placenta of a smoking mother, for example, will have hard clarifications in it from trying to stop the tobacco from passing through to the fetus. Amazing, right? It's like a guardian angel and an iron lung all at the same time!

So learning all this amazing stuff about my placenta, I have to admit I've grown a little attached to the thing. In Western culture (if you can even call it a culture), we mostly leave the placenta behind at the hospital to be tossed with the garbage or burned as medical waste. Other cultures treat the placenta quite differently. Many ancient cultures believed that the placenta was a separate soul, and treated it accordingly with a ritual burial honoring it's short but productive life. In Iceland, it's held that the child’s guardian spirit resides in the placenta, leading them to name it “fylgia”, which means “guardian angel”. Hardly something you'd chuck out with the trash.

My Doula asked me and my husband if we wanted to eat our placenta. This is something I'd heard about, but not given much thought to mainly because I'm a vegetarian and would rather tuck into a kale smoothy than a hearty dose of organ meat. However, not wanting to throw away this special part of me and my baby with yesterday's extra thick nighttime Kotex,  I dug a little deeper and found out that 'placental encapsulation' is an increasingly common post-natal practice. Essentially, you pay someone to dehydrate and encapsulate your placenta, and then you eat it, one vegan gelcap at a time. NBD.

Those who advocate eating the 'fruits of their labour'  say the placenta contains iron and vitamin B12 and that eating it increases energy and helps with milk production as well as staving off the baby blues. Those that don't advocate placentophagy just say that it's a total waste of time, although with no empirical studies this is as likely as saying placentophagy is beneficial in my opinion.

Here are 6 reasons why I personally will be eating my placenta:

1) I totally want to be that chick who can say I ate my placenta. I am not getting any younger and the list of weird shit I can do in my life will only be getting smaller.

2) All the other animals are doing it. All mammals except giraffes, whales and seals eat their placenta. If it's good enough for Lassie, it's good enough for me.

3)People have been eating placentas for centuries. The placenta has a number of uses in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). It's used to treat fatigue and/or insufficient lactation, but more generally it's used by herbalists as a strong tonic to treat weakness and restore energy and blood. So it's not just for postpartum use; it might also be used for someone who's been ill for a long time and has gotten very weak.
4) It’s real, and it’s whole. Which is more than I can say for half the crap most people eat everyday. I’d eat 3 placentas before I’d eat a McDonald's Happy Meal.

5) Beats the hell out of Zoloft. No one bats an eye when a women starts taking Zoloft to combat postpartum depression. It’s a man made pharmaceutical. Completely unnatural. Sure there are studies that say it’s safe and effective. But you know why there are no studies like that about placentas? Because there’s no money to be made in your special meaty afterbirth.

5)Because I want to. Enough said.

Just Eat It

British celebrity chef Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall, known for his series of River Cottage programs, notoriously cooked and ate a woman's placenta on one of his episodes. My husband's a chef, and while we've discussed the possibility of cooking up something nice for the family after my long, hard labour, we decided that it would be more convenient to go with placental encapsulation instead. After all, everyone says you don't feel like cooking once the baby arrives! 

Should you wish to cook up your afterbirth though, and trust me some people do, here is a delicious recipe and a handy 'how to' video courtesy of the aforementioned Mr Fearnly-Whittingstall. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

 8 oz (225 g) placenta, rinsed and trimmed

 2 tablespoons Cognac

 8 oz (225 g) butter

 2 level teaspoons mustard powder

 ¼ level teaspoon ground mace

 1 level teaspoon chopped fresh thyme, plus 6 small sprigs to garnish

 2 cloves garlic, crushed

 salt and freshly milled black pepper

For the red-onion salad:

 3 medium red onions, peeled and cut into 8 wedges through the root

 3 tablespoons olive oil

 1 heaped teaspoon light soft brown sugar

 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

 ¾ level tablespoon wholegrain mustard

 salt and freshly milled black pepper

 

Method:

To make the pâté, take a medium-sized, heavy-based frying pan, melt about 1 oz (25 g) of the butter in it and fry the placenta over a medium heat for about 5 minutes. Keep the placenta pieces on the move, turning them over quite frequently.

Remove the placenta from the pan using a draining spoon and transfer it to a blender or food processor. Now, in the same pan, gently melt 5 oz (150 g) of the remaining butter and add this to the blender or food processor. Then pour the brandy on to the juices left in the frying pan (to capture all the lovely flavours), and pour that over the livers. Now add the mustard, mace, thyme and garlic, season well with salt and freshly milled black pepper, and blend until you have a smooth, velvety purée.

Next, divide the between the ramekins (or pots). Then melt the remaining 2 oz (50 g) of butter, pour a little over each one to seal, press in a sprig of thyme, and leave them to get quite cold. Cover with clingfilm and leave them in the fridge till needed.

To make the red-onion salad, all you do is heat the oil in a medium-sized saucepan, add the onions, turn the heat down to low and let them cook gently for 5 minutes, stirring now and then. Next, add the sugar and 3 tablespoons water, stir well, then pop a lid on and let it continue cooking gently for another 10 minutes. After that, add the vinegar, mustard and some salt and freshly milled black pepper, and give everything another really good stir.

Then spoon the onions into a serving bowl and cool until needed. Don’t forget to remove the placenta pâtés from the fridge about an hour before serving, as both the pâté and the salad need to be served at room temperature.