Um…dangit, I knew someone might ask this. 5 years. Yep, it’s still in there in the freezer.
I’d think the great majority of hospitals have policies ensuring that parents can take the placenta home for whatever ritual they desire, as well as other organs (unsurprisingly, few patients want their colons to keep in a jar on the mantlepiece).
I’d always envisioned this as the way to eat it, not to barbeque it or something. I think some people use (goat’s) placenta as a cure for asthma in traditional Chinese medicine. Actually, seeing they use HUMAN placenta in traditional Chinese medicine, maybe it wasn’t goat’s after all… (the Chinese phrase for placenta is “purple river vehicle”. Haha.)
As an aside, I think placenta is the most common least mentioned body organ/product. It’s like it’s taboo or something. I just looked at images of placentas and they’re huge! I thought they would be the size of a hand, but they look big enough for a baby to sleep on!
I got “All My Babies” from the library once because there are so few documentaries on midwifery and natural childbirth, only to realize that Miss Mary delivered several of my dad’s siblings. At the end with the poor couple (staged, BTW) on Hardup Road? My aunt lives on Hardup Road. The same one. You can totally tell.
I make it a practice to never eat any lady parts that are not firmly attached to the lady in question.
If you think about it… for about 9 months babies do sleep on them. 
Has anyone yet questioned the need for the qualifier “human” in the subject?
Not really, in http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f1/Placenta.svg/581px-Placenta.svg.png they’re more beside/above the baby. And smaller.
The smilie is often used to indicate this thing called a “joke” or other form of humor, it was not meant to be a literal comment with the notion that feti fluff up the placental mass like a blanket and tuck a corner of it under their head like a pillow.
Does placenta, like a fine wine, improve with age?
Bump.
Just finished Stiff by Mary Roach, which is worth a read (although not for the squeamish). She touches briefly on the consumption of human placentas. Still pretty uncommon.
Can you get Mad Kid Disease from this?
that would be a nibble.
Old man Dicky lived in a log cabin near us in the Adirondacks. Dicky’s wife delivered all their children in their cabin and Dicky assisted. After, he fried up a piece of each placenta and ate it.
Several years ago poor Dicky was out in his canoe, and he drowned trying to save a dime bag of weed (his own harvest most likely) that had fallen overboard. He was a character and he’s very much missed.
I know this is an incredibly old post, but why would you want a “spiritual bond” with a tree?
With regards to the OP, even were I not a vegetarian, I would not eat medical waste, nor organ meat, nor would I engage in an act of cannibalism. So, no, no, and no.
Here’s someone you could ask (he’s recently been active on youtube again).
TMI warning:
Maybe with some fava beans, and a nice chianti.