by Claudia Boyd-Barrett posted in Pregnancy

Eating your placenta after birth ? including in pill form ? may not be safe and could put your baby at risk of infection, according to health officials.
The warning stems from a single case in Oregon where a mom unwittingly passed a deadly blood infection to her newborn twice after ingesting contaminated capsules made with her dehydrated placenta. It appears the mom passed the infection to her baby through breastfeeding.
Thankfully, the baby survived after receiving antibiotics, but the infant was admitted to hospital twice before healthcare providers figured out the source of the infection.
According to the report, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the mom contracted with a company to make the placenta pills. The company ? which is not named in the report - dehydrates the placenta at between 115 and 160 degrees Fahrenheit and then grinds it up before putting it in gelatin capsules.
One problem, according to the report, is there are no standards for processing placentas. Companies do have to heat the placenta to at least 130 degrees Fahrenheit for more than 2 hours to reduce Salmonella bacteria, but that may not be enough to get rid of all pathogens, the authors wrote.
Ingesting the placenta ? either raw, cooked, dried or in pill form ? has become something of a fad in recent years, especially after Kim Kardashian promoted the idea on Twitter. Advocates claim it can help with postpartum recove...