How I live...Thinking outside the box: ‘MY GIFT TO NEW MUMS'

BUSINESS IS BOOMING FOR HAMILTON-BASED BIRTH PHOTOGRAPHER CASSIE EMMETT (42) AND HER MOTHER JUNE LACEY (64), WHO PROCESS PLACENTA CAPSULES FOR NEW KIWI MUMS

- Fleur Guthrie

“There’s always a discussion after a birth, where the mum is asked what she wants done with her placenta – does she want to keep it to bury at home or have it thrown away? Often it’s the dad who makes the joke, ‘Ha, you could eat it!’

In 2014, I was photographing a home birth when a mum said to me, “I really want it turned into capsules – do you know anybody who does that?”

The reasons for consuming placenta made sense to me, so I found online training through an American organisation and obtained my food safety certificate. That mum was my first placenta encapsulation client.

I’m sure people think it’s gross and that they wouldn’t want to touch another person’s placenta, but it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. It’s such a cool organ and a rich source of nutrients. Perhaps it’s because I grew up on a dairy farm in Cambridge, where the cows and even the dog would eat their placenta after giving birth.

But my mum took some convincing to come on board. One day while chatting, I broached the subject by asking if she had heard of women eating their placenta. Her initial response was, ‘Hang on, what?’ followed by a weird look that assumed I was kidding. We watched some clips of midwives and new mums talking about it and she agreed it made sense as a postpartum aid – although there has only been minimal clinical research.