Forget capsules, people are now planting placenta trees

Pregnancy and birth is a special time for many families. And once your baby has arrived some parents are keen to commemorate their entrance into the world.

While some new mums turn their baby’s umbilical cord into a keepsake, others go for some placenta art and more still decide to turn their placenta into a capsule to help ward off post-natal depression.

While this is process is popular with celebrities (The Kardashians, Rochelle Humes, Coleen Rooney and January Jones are all rumoured to have had their baby’s placenta turned into capsules), there’s another placenta birth trend that is proving popular right now – planting a placenta tree.

Just like with placenta pills, the placenta is turned into a capsule, but instead of popping the capsule with a glass of water, you plant it in the ground.

As reported by Kidspot, the capsule is known as the Happy Birth Tree, comes as part of an urn, which is made from 100 per cent biodegradable materials and contains two sections.

The lower section holds the placenta, while the top section contains an organic growth medium specifically designed to encourage the urn to grow.

Life from life, you see.

The idea for the placenta urn came about when founder Bryce Roberts lost his dog to cancer in 2016.

He wanted to find a more meaningful way to preserve Sabre’s ashes and came across a product called Bio-Urn. He started his business, Tree of Memories, and went on to discover the alternative use for the product.

The Happy Birth Tree can be bought online for $189 (around £106).

Though the bio-urn is a reasonably new concept, the idea of planting a placenta tree has been around for many years.

Within the Māori culture of New Zealand, the placenta is much revered and often buried in a place of familial significance, or planted with a tree.

“The ancient practice of burying the placenta, whenua ki te whenua, reflects the Māori philosophical view that the placenta, like the land, provides physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual nourishment and furnishes all the needs of humanity,” Ngahuia Murphy, a PhD candidate on Māori Philosophy and Cosmology at Waikato University, told Mashable Australia

Even celebrities have cottoned onto the idea of planting a placenta tree.

Speaking about his placenta plans after the birth of his son, Levi, Matthew McConaughey revealed his desire to honour the ritual.

“When I was in Australia, they had a placenta tree that was on the river,” he said, “and all the placentas of all that tribe, all that clan, whatever Aboriginal tribe that was, all the placentas went under that one tree and it was this huge behemoth of just health and strength.”

Of course if the idea of using your placenta to plant a tree doesn’t grab you, you could always eat it.

*Shocked face emoji*

Tree it is!

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