A year ago, I was a little less than a month away from giving birth. And of the many things that were giving me anxiety, the most frustrating one was that I had just processed that birth doesn't end when the baby is out of your body. After that, you have to give birth again, this time to the placenta. I knew giving birth to a baby would be painful, but the idea that I would have to do it again shortly after having done the most important part felt insulting.
Of course, what I learned a month later is that with all of the adrenaline and euphoria of a baby in my arms, the birth of the placenta would barely register. And as much of a relief as that was, I wish I'd had a moment to appreciate my placenta. Or should I say, my baby's placenta. Because that organ is pretty much his, made from cells that were part of his being before he was even a fetus. We all made the placenta before we could make things, implanting it into our mother's body for nourishment and protection. And what would happen to us months later would be shaped by that early process.
And yet, the placenta remains a mysterious organ. So for this recent Tiny Matters episode, I talked to an evolutionary biologist about what we know about the evolution of the placenta, and an engineer about how the early days of placentation in pregnancy shape outcomes months down the road. In the process, I learned so much about what makes the human placenta so unique, and how that makes it so hard to study.
