A Lovely Placenta

July 5, 2012

This placenta was really pretty, and practically textbook.  I have permission to post these photos from the mom who birthed it.

This is the fetal side, laid out for printing with the membranes tucked under.  You can clearly see the vessels branching out like a tree from the base of the cord, which is nice and plump.  Look how perfectly curled the one portion of the cord is!

Here we have the maternal side, which was attached into the uterus.  The tissue is arranged into little sections called cotyledons, each of which also branches underneath, so the part we see is like the top surface of a cauliflower stalk.

A close-up of the beautifully curled umbilical cord: so geometrically pretty.

These two pictures show different angles of the membranes that surrounded the baby and amniotic fluid.  They only broke at the hole that the water and baby came through–the rest stayed really strong and intact.

This is the great print I got from this placenta.  As you can see, it’s the mirror image of the first picture of the fetal side.

Here is that lovely umbilical cord, dried and shaped into a heart.  This is what I generally do with cords, instead of throwing them away.

Tags: Placenta

Author Bio: Jasper Moon, CPM LMT (they/ them)

Perinatal care specialist. Parent of two. Hosted three fetuses: my big kid, a surrogacy in the middle, and my little kid. Vegan; drinks a lot of tea. Board game (and general) geek. Goat hugger extraordinaire.

Read more about Jasper here.