Santa Monica Mom Regrets Eating Placenta

Best-selling author Nancy Redd lives next to a homeopathic pharmacy and a raw food restaurant in Santa Monica, so it apparently didn't seem too strange that she would eat her own placenta, she wrote recently in a parenting blog on the New York Times

She ingested the placenta—the lining of her uterus—in pill form, after it was ground up and mixed with "cleansing herbs."

Called placentophagy, it's not common practice among humans like it is in animals and many doctors are skeptical. In a move that was later overturned in court, a Las Vegas-based hospital even refused to release a placenta after birth. Still, some women say it makes them feel better.

Initially, Redd was sold on taking the pills as a natural way to ward off postpartum depression.

Impending motherhood had shaken me. Delivery room horror stories and tales of baby blues caused my husband and me to spend months educating ourselves to best navigate the worst possible outcomes. So we were blindsided by the one scenario that seemed least likely: an awesome labor and delivery. Still, I was so freaked out about the possibility of awful things happening to me that I started taking the placenta pills as a sort of insurance policy.

As it turned out, "after just eight placenta pills, I was in tabloid-worthy meltdown mode, a frightening phase filled with tears and rage." It was a terrible idea, she said.

Read the full blog post here.