I recently had the privilege of encapsulating a unique placenta. This placenta belonged to a client who had her baby at 41&4 weeks, and was in an unusually well condition for it's age. This placenta had an irregularity known as a succenturiate lobe, an accessory lobe of placenta is a variation in the normal shape of the placenta. It is a small lobe of the placenta attached to the main disc through blood vessels. There can be one or more accessory lobes attached to the main placenta, and occurs in approximately 2 per 1000 pregnancies. Also, there is no distinct racial, ethnic or geographical predilection observed. This did provide about ten more pills than I normally get from a placenta without added herbs.
What causes this to happen? Glad you asked!
An Accessory Lobe of Placenta is formed by non-involution of the chorionic villi, which means that some of the chorionic villi fail to disappear, resulting in the formation of an extra lobe of the placenta.
Chorionic villi arise from embryonic membrane (chorion) and their function is to provide the maximum area of contact between maternal and fetal blood circulation.
The disc shape of the placenta is due to the result of remodeling of placental tissue during its growth, wherein some chorionic villi disappear, leaving behind a disc-shaped placenta.
This is not only efficient in helping supply nutrition to the growing baby, but also the disc shape helps conserve space within the pregnant uterus.
The condition of this placenta had the midwives questioning how far along the mom actually was when she went into labor. It looked younger than a placenta this age normally looks, we were guessing maybe more like 40 weeks gestation based on the physical features of the mother's side. This placenta was the largest that I have encapsulated and gave me roughly 180 pills, when I normally get a little over 160. (without added herbs) This placenta also had a nice long cord, which required a good amount of twisting when shaping the keepsake.
