Placenta used to fight 'baby blues'

AUSTIN (KXAN) - It is an unusual way to fight postpartum depression, but a pill made from placenta is being touted as the natural way of fighting the "baby blues."

"We use the placenta,” said Lindsey Roberts, a placenta encapsulation specialist. “It's a natural process. We steam the placenta and dehydrate it and capsulate it. We put it into pill form."

Pills in caplet form were something first-time mother Kyrstie Schultz Pellum was not sure about after she had her son Sebastian.

"I thought, 'That sounds so strange. I am not into that,'” Pellum said. “I don't want to eat placenta or put it in a smoothy or anything like that."

Then, she reconsidered the option while trying to deal with a number of life-changing events that happened late in her pregnancy.

"My husband's deployed to Iraq, so we've been in a lot of transition and a lot of movement," Pellum said. "So my concern about the baby blues or postpartum depression, that was a concern for me."

Studies show 80 percent of new mothers suffer from mood instability starting in the first week after giving birth.

Getting the placenta pills is a process that starts before the child is born. The mother arranges for the placenta to be brought home from the hospital, which can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 72 hours.

She contacts a specialist like Roberts, with Placenta Benefits . Roberts arrives shortly after the mom comes home and spends two hours preparing the pills.

While dried placenta is new to mothers today, it has been around for thousands of years and was used with traditional Chinese medicine.

"It's not about eating your placenta,” Roberts said. “It's about taking just a few pills a day."

Roberts said the benefits speak for themselves the first few weeks after giving birth.

"It helps put the hormones back into your body, and it helps avoid the baby blues," Roberts said. "And it helps to increase milk production, and it really gives you a lot of energy."