At 19:45 2000-10-30 GMT, Stacie  wrote:
>(OMT: Moms who eat their placenta don't get postpartum depression. My
>firends who have eaten theirs say it is delicious.)

According to a book I am reading, "Evolutionary Psychology, A Critical
Introduction" by Christopher Badcock, the placenta genetically belongs
to
the foetus. During the pregnancy the foetus partly controls the mother
by hormones transmitted via placenta. After birth the mother is in
command, and she has now to decide whether to invest energy in it, or
just leave it to start a new pregnancy as soon as possible. That is
why she gets the postpartum depression. (Depressions probably serve to
help reconsider life situation (Nesse & Williams: "Why we get sick").)
My thought: By eating the placenta the mother gets more of the foetus
hormones and thus is helped deciding to keep the child, so no
depression
is needed.
(To understand this, one also has to know that the child has only half
of its genes from the mother, so the interest of the child is not
exactly
the same as that of the mother. This results in some conflicts. The
mothers
interest (or rather the interest of her genes) is to have as many
healthy
children as possible, that in turn can have many children. So she does
not
want to invest too much in only *this* child, but save resources for
more children. The foetus in turn, is more interested in itself than
in any
small siblings to be, as it is not sure they will share the same
genes,
there can be another father to them. So it tries to get as much as
possible
from the mother.)

- Hans