The marvelous placenta produces hormones, implants into the uterine wall which secures the fetus a safe home, provides oxygen through blood, and provides a selective barrier between maternal and infant blood. All the critical nutrients, hormones, and antibodies traverse the sophistically inter-wound blood vessels of the placenta. Waste products also share a turn, and are passed across this amazing filter. The placenta is a selfless organ, only existing as an extension for developing life, and then usually in 40 weeks time discarded without a thought.

Rituals and ceremonies honoring the connection between placenta and baby are not new, people have been honoring this life-line for thousands of years. Today many people bury the placenta in a special place. Some families plant a garden, tree, or shrub to grow up from the ground where the placenta lies. In many parts of the world burying the placenta represents the child's connection with the earth. The placenta in some parts of the world like Kenya, Malaysia, and Nigeria, is referred to as the baby's twin, and is thought to have a spirit of it's own. In other places, like Mexico, the placenta is honored as a companion of the baby. In some cultures it is thought that the placenta plays a role in the afterlife. Either as a place that the person's spirit must return to, or a mortal badge they take to heaven with them.

Non-severance of the cord and placenta is also a variation of what some do with the placenta. Some people have what is called a Lotus birth where the placenta is not severed from the baby, it is left to naturally fall off from the umbilicus. The placenta while attached to the baby is dried well and drained of excess blood, and then anointed with herbs and salts and kept in a aerated pouch with the baby. The cord usually falls off within a few days. This is a custom that has been recorded in the cultures of the Balinese, and aboriginal people such as the !Kung. Interestingly American pioneers were recorded to have practiced non-severance of the cord and placenta as a measure to protect the infant from an open wound infection.

It is well known that most mammals eat their offsprings placenta after childbirth. This provides nutrients, hormones, and energy to new mothers. It shocks many to think of it but consuming placenta is thought to have many benefits for human beings as well. It is believed that just some of the benefits of consuming placenta can improve the look of the skin, promote cell regeneration, increase immune system function, stimulate milk production in new mothers, aid in the recovery of childbirth, help with depression, and much more. Dried human placenta has been used in Chinese Medicines for over 1,400 years. Placenta supplements in capsule form are sold over the counter in nearly all parts of the world, even here in America.
The benefits of placenta are not without notice to the mainstream cosmetic or health industry either. Many of today's beauty products, creams, and anti aging formulas actually contain human or animal placenta. In Switzerland you can get placenta injections into your skin as a beauty treatment. The results are said to be sudden and dramatic, and with a price tag of $20,000 per treatment I would hope it's sudden and dramatic! It is said the results last about two years, upon when you'll need to receive another series of injections. While placenta has been commercially put in products and sold in America since at least the 1940's, the placenta's health properties have been used for beauty and health for over one thousand years.

Many women and midwives can attest to taking a small bite of fresh placenta to prevent or reduce heavy afterbirth bleeding or hemorrhage. The hormones in the placenta are said to be responsible for this miraculous remedy. Those that choose to consume their placenta for health benefits can do so by cooking it using recipes easily found online, cutting it up (cooked or uncooked) and putting it into a smoothie, or by drying and encapsulating it.

There are people who are trained in the art of placenta encapsulating based on Traditional Chinese Medicine. For a fee you can have your placenta encapsulated for you. There are also kits you can by with step by step directions and pictures so you can do it yourself. I have read it's quite simple and you don't necessarily need a kit. The kits however provide you with the information needed as well as helpful information, dosages, and other considerations. One such kit can be easily found online.
While to many in our modern world it sounds off putting or even barbaric to use placenta internally or externally the truth is many things on the market are just as weird sounding. For example Botox (the deadly botulism toxin) is used both medicinally and for beauty treatments. An even a better example would be Premarin, a drug made from estrogen obtained from the urine of pregnant mares. An estimated nine million women a year in America alone use mare urine in pill form as treatment for symptoms of menopause and prevention of osteoporosis.

Choosing what to do with the placenta after childbirth can be as varied and unique as how you choose to give birth and with whom. There are many interesting options and beliefs you can examine. No matter what you do with your baby's placenta, at it's final rest, this organ remains the miraculous transcendent life line between mother and child, and child and earth.