Lifestyle

Woman decks the halls with her placenta

A mom of two has revealed how she handcrafts beautiful Christmas ornaments — by mixing glitter with her own powdered placenta.

Jordan Harrison, 29, keeps her 3-year-old son Ezra’s dehydrated afterbirth, which has been ground into powder, in her freezer.

She then mixes the granules with glitter and paints blank ornaments with the result to create an unusual festive decoration.

Harrison, from Michigan, Ill. also makes her placenta into chocolate treats so she can eat it as well as mixing into soups and smoothies.

She also takes it in capsule form, swearing by its mood-boosting properties and even insisting it helps ease period pain.

The mom was initially skeptical when she heard that stars like Kim Kardashian and actress January Jones have eaten their placenta.

She said: “I used to think, ‘You couldn’t pay me to eat a placenta,’ but it’s made such an amazing difference.

“I didn’t do anything with my placenta after having my first child, Avery, who is now seven and the difference between then and this time around was like night and day.”

She added: “With Ezra, I was so much more energized. Of course, being a parent, there are always hard days, but the difference was amazing in terms of being able to function every day. I never felt exhausted.”

To create the unusual chocolates — which she now makes for other moms — Harrison mixes the powdered placenta with cocoa, coconut oil and either honey or sugar, before shaping and leaving to set.

“They taste slightly salty, but otherwise you wouldn’t notice anything different about them,” she continued. “I made two huge bars, which have lasted me three years. I often eat them when I have period cramps, as they’re really full of iron. As it’s powdered, you can have it in pretty much anything, like soups and smoothies.”

Harrison, whose partner property manager James Reighard is the father of both her children, said she was “fascinated” by her placenta when she had Avery but had no desire to eat it.

“I found myself inspecting it. I thought it was the coolest thing,” she said.

“I didn’t know then that there was so much you can do with placentas, though, so I left it with the midwife to throw away.”

Over the years, however, as she read more reports about the benefits of eating placenta, she became increasingly intrigued.

Then, when in 2014 she fell pregnant again, after talking to another mom at the school gates who had completed a course in placenta encapsulation, she decided she wanted to try it.

Following Ezra’s birth, she took the placenta home with her, where she gave it a water bath, before slicing it up and putting it in a dehydrator.

“When it was done it almost looked like jerky,” she laughed. “I then ground it up into a really fine powder, which I used to create the chocolates and pills.”

“I still take them three years on. I worried that the potency might decrease over time, but it hasn’t for me.”

“The difference I feel since taking them is amazing. With Avery, I suffered quite bad baby blues. It never progressed to postnatal depression, but I haven’t had anything like that with Ezra.”

Keen to help other women, Harrison eventually decided to become a full-time doula, supporting moms during and after their pregnancies.

As well as attending both hospital and home births, she has also trained to process placentas, which she does at home.

Not only can she put them into capsules, but she also provides mothers with prints of them and can even turn them into jewelry, by setting some of the ground powder in crystal.

“It’s fun for people to be able to say that they wear a bit of their placenta every day,” she said. “It’s such a fascinating organ and the fact you can turn it into powder form makes it really versatile.”

“I don’t want this information to be exclusive to me, either. I want to help people. I love telling other moms about the difference in my postpartum experiences.”

“I think my story shows just how beneficial the placenta can be. To those who are on the fence — which I understand, because I used to be as well — I’d advise them to at least learn about it before deciding for sure.”