Placenta Joy - Wow Wednesday series 1
Did you know you grow a completely new & incredibly sophisticated new organ when you are pregnant? Yes sure you are growing your baby but you are creating and growing your placenta too.
A placenta and umbilical cord - remember to wait for white before clamping the cord 🙏
Your baby grows from the size of a tiny pinhead to a 7/8lb boy or girl in around 40 weeks. Your beautiful body is perfectly designed and able to create this magic. I am a firm believer that it really helps to understand the changes your incredible body goes through. This is one of the reasons behind my WOW Wednesday series – honouring your incredible body, giving her a huge high five and almighty hug for her incredible creation in pregnancy.
Today is all about the Placenta – I mean you literally grow a new organ! How incredible is that?
Yassss, your placenta is a multi-talented brand new organ that passes oxygen and nutrients from your blood stream to your growing baby. It is your body’s only disposable organ, protecting your baby from infection and helping to remove your baby’s ‘waste products’, such as carbon dioxide. Linked to your baby by the umbilical cord, your placenta will weigh around 1.5lb by the time your baby is born.
It is your baby’s lifeline. 🙏
Every minute, one pint of blood is pumped to the uterus, exchanging oxygen and nutrients via the placenta. The mother's blood and baby's never mix instead, they pass through separate arteries in the placenta.
The placenta is the only organ that naturally expels itself, self cauterising and releasing when it's purpose is fulfilled. Each pregnancy grows a new placenta to perfectly support that baby. Do you know that you have to give birth to your placenta – it is the 3rd stage of labour. Completing the birth process with the release of the organ that made your pregnancy possible - wow!
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How can you help maintain a healthy placenta? Mamas need to consume nutrient-rich calories, which contain a large number of nourishing vitamins and minerals that are essential for placental health. This includes lots of iron-rich foods as the baby absorbs large amounts of iron from the maternal blood. Nutritional tips for the placenta – Eggs – protein, iron & colein; sweet Potatoes – Iron, potassium, Vit A; Nuts – Healthy Fats & magnesium; Green Veg – recommended intake of iron doubles in pregnancy – spinach, broccoli, kale; Greek Yoghurt – protein & calcium – superfood for the placenta!
Some Mamma’s eat their placentas because there are numerous benefits, including more balanced hormones, increased energy and milk supply, a reduction in postpartum bleeding, and replenished iron stores. If that sounds too gross for you you might consider placenta encapsulation where you can have your placenta turned into capsules to swallow like a normal tablet. Here is a link to the wonderful @ Wessex Independent Midwives who organise Placenta Encapsulation: https://wessexindependentmidwives.co.uk/1_41_Placenta+encapsulation
Placenta Encapsulation is one way to recover from postnatal depletion. Would you be keen to try this?
Remember that once you baby is born and it is time to clamp the umbilical cord, wait for white and until the cord has stopped pulsating. 1/3 of your baby’s blood is in the cord and it is returned to your baby once the cord is white and stopped pulsating. Once the cord is cut you baby will have a short bit of the umbilical cord attached to their belly button and within 1-3 weeks it will naturally dry out, fall off and create your baby’s belly button.
Did you or would you like to see your baby’s placenta? Looking at the picture above, doesn’t it look like the tree of life - all the wonderful energetic tributaries. It is such a clever organ - I am in awe! Would you or did you have it encapsulated? Please share your views in the comments below!!