People keep their placenta after birth for three main reasons: to consume it for perceived health benefits, to honor cultural or spiritual traditions, and to turn it into a keepsake like jewelry or art. The practice has grown in popularity over the past decade, particularly placenta encapsulation, where the organ is steamed, dehydrated, and ground into capsules. While the motivations are deeply personal, the scientific evidence behind the health claims remains thin.
Consuming Placenta for Postpartum Recovery
The most common reason people keep their placenta is to eat it, usually in capsule form. Mothers who choose this route typically hope it will boost postpartum energy, improve mood, reduce the risk of postpartum depression, and increase breast milk production. Some also believe it helps with faster physical recovery after birth. Nearly all mammals consume their placenta after delivering, and proponents point to this as evidence that the practice is natural and beneficial.
Dehydrated placenta powder does contain measurable amounts of iron (about 565 mg per kilogram) and selenium. But the quantities in a typical serving of capsules are small, and a randomized, placebo-controlled study found that placenta capsules did not meaningfully change postpartum iron levels. The researchers concluded that the capsules are not an adequate treatment for postpartum anemia.
The claim about breast milk production also lacks support. Milk supply after delivery is driven by rising prolactin levels, not by hormones like estrogen and progesterone that may be present in placenta tissue. Studies on the topic have found no benefit to milk production among women who consume their placenta.
What Clinical Research Actually Shows
Only one randomized clinical trial has directly tested whether consuming placenta capsules affects postpartum mood. That trial, which enrolled just 27 participants, compared women taking steamed and dehydrated placenta capsules to women taking a placebo. The results showed no significant difference in mood between the two groups. Researchers did observe small, time-related improvements in mood during the first week postpartum among the placenta group, but the study was too small to draw firm conclusions.
In short, there is no strong clinical evidence that placenta consumption delivers on any of its most popular claims. The benefits people report are real to them, but placebo effects and the natural course of postpartum recovery make it difficult to separate genuine impact from expectation.
Cultural and Spiritual Traditions
Long before encapsulation became trendy, cultures around the world practiced rituals involving the placenta. Burial is the most widespread tradition, and it carries different meanings depending on the community.
In Benin, families bury the placenta in an unglazed pot to symbolize preservation, or directly in the earth to represent a return to the soil. Many communities plant a tree on the burial site, symbolizing that the child continues to receive nourishment just as they did in the womb. The Kikuyu people of Kenya associate the placenta with fertility and deposit it in an uncultivated field, placing grass and grains on top. Among the Tonga people, a fertility tree called the mupundu is planted over the burial site to honor the mother’s reproductive power. In Niger, placenta burial follows a specific method tied to the belief that it restores the mother’s fertility by bringing healing to the uterus.
Several cultures tie the burial location to the baby’s gender. In the Marakwet community and among the Kenyan Luo, a boy’s placenta is buried to the right of the house and a girl’s to the left. The Tonga people follow a similar practice, rooted in the belief that the boy will carry the family name while the girl may eventually leave through marriage. In some Vietnamese traditions, a boy’s placenta is buried beneath the home’s central column, considered the dwelling of the house spirit, while a girl’s is buried beneath a bedpost.
For the Native Hawaiian, Navajo, and Maori peoples, burying the placenta in ancestral homeland binds the child to the land and their heritage. Across many of these traditions, the placenta is considered sacred, a bridge connecting the child to ancestors, spirits, and the earth itself. How the placenta is handled is believed to shape the child’s future.
Keepsakes, Jewelry, and Art
A growing number of parents keep their placenta not to consume or bury it, but to preserve it as a physical memento. Placenta prints are one of the simplest options: the organ is pressed onto paper with ink or its own blood, creating a tree-like image sometimes called a “tree of life” print. These are typically done at home shortly after birth.
Specialty companies now offer jewelry made with small amounts of dehydrated placenta or umbilical cord. The material is preserved in resin and set into rings, necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. These pieces look like any other fine jewelry, with the placenta element appearing as a subtle colored stone or bead. Umbilical cord can also be dried and shaped into small keepsakes like hearts or spirals.
How to Take Your Placenta Home
If you plan to keep your placenta, the logistics depend on where you give birth. Most hospitals will release the placenta with the right paperwork. In Texas, for example, state law requires mothers to sign a consent form acknowledging the infectious disease risks, confirming the placenta is for personal use only and cannot be sold. The hospital tests for certain infectious diseases, and if results come back positive, the placenta will not be released. Each facility sets its own policies on packaging and handling.
It helps to mention your plan to your birth team in advance. Some hospitals require written requests before delivery, and having a cooler ready for transport is practical since the placenta needs to be refrigerated or frozen quickly if it won’t be processed right away.
Safety Risks Worth Knowing
The most concrete safety warning comes from a 2016 CDC case report. A newborn in Oregon developed a serious blood infection twice, caused by Group B Streptococcus. Investigators traced the bacteria to placenta capsules the mother had been consuming. The GBS strain found in the capsules was genetically indistinguishable from the strain in the infant’s blood. The bacteria carried virulence factors that allowed it to cross from the infant’s intestine into the bloodstream and potentially reach the brain.
The CDC’s conclusion was blunt: the encapsulation process does not reliably eliminate infectious pathogens. No federal standards exist for how placentas should be processed for consumption. Temperatures used during steaming and dehydration may not reach the levels needed to kill dangerous bacteria. Reducing Salmonella to safe levels, for comparison, requires heating at 130°F for over two hours, and many encapsulation protocols may fall short of what’s needed for other pathogens. Some encapsulation specialists recommend steaming to an internal temperature of 160°F and dehydrating at that same temperature for at least 12 hours, but these are voluntary guidelines with no regulatory enforcement.
Beyond bacterial contamination, the placenta can also concentrate environmental toxins and heavy metals that accumulated during pregnancy. Because there is no standardized testing or regulation of the final product, there is no way to verify what is or isn’t in the capsules you receive.