The placenta

[YouWerePrettyIWasLonely]

My niece is training to be a midwife and she was talking about the placenta last night. I never realised what a magnificent organ it is and that women's bodies make it from scratch. This amazing system of sustainability.

Women are just amazing.

The placenta has never been something I've thought much about so a great thread to educate in the true sense of the word.

I've always been more fascinated by breastfeeding and how nipples can sense if a child is suffering from a cold and it sends a signal to the milk glands to produce colostrum for the anti-bodies.

I have been known to cure my baby's conjunctivitis with a drop of breastmilk. It was gone within an hour or so. Amazing stuff. The biology women possess is worthy of more study.

I was off my face on drugs by the time I gave birth to my twins, so unfortunately forgot to look at their placentas. IIRC, each placenta weighed basically the same as each baby, so my giant pregnant belly was 50% baby and 50% placenta

You've forgotten the amniotic fluid. And also of course the uterus is greatly enlarged.

Lilac sorry for your loss.

I was amazed at the size of the placenta the first time found, also the amount of amniotic fluid. I remember realising my bump had shrunk after my waters went spectacularly! I don’t know why anyone’s got a problem with me saying we are clever. Lol. There are lots of amazing things in nature. One of my favourites is the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly. Am I not allowed to say this as it’s generalising butterflies as metamorphosing machines? The female human body is AMAZING. We literally grow a whole human being with a brain, working organs and it’s own unique features from a couple of cells.

I work in horse racing and there’s a well known vet researcher in these parts who often used to phone round stud farms and ask them to call her when a mare went into labour so that she could collect them as freshly as possible (horse labour is very short compared to humans!). She’s found out all sorts of interesting stuff like how first foals tend to be smaller as the placentas of maiden mares are not as good for some reason - almost as if the mares body gets better at growing them the more foals she has!

@CaveMum I recently went down a bit of a rabbit hole with horse reproduction as use of surrogate mares is quite established in breeding competition horses. It allows a top mare to keep competing during what would be her best breeding years, using a lesser mare to gestate her foals. (Not allowed with Thoroughbred race horses - different rules re breeding).

Anyway, I learnt that horse placentas are a bit different to human ones.

"In horses, placentation is epitheliochorial and occurs over the entire surface of the endometrium. Thus, the nutritional supply to the fetus, which depends on the contact surface between the placenta and the endometrium, is governed by the size of the uterus and therefore by the mare's size."

"Fetal growth was increased by transferring pony and saddlebred embryos into draft mares and restricted by transferring saddlebred embryos into pony mares."

So it makes sense that maiden mare's placentas would be smaller and thus the foal also a bit smaller. Next time around the uterus is probably a bit bigger and so, also the placenta and the foal.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4090198/

Pollution particulates have been shown to cross the placenta, so whilst it does an amazing job of filtering out a lot of nasties, unfortunately living in a polluted area can have negative effects in pregnancy. Especially in areas of the world where the air is hazardous everyday (not UK), it could be comparable to smoking I guess.

www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/17/air-pollution-particles-found-on-foetal-side-of-placentas-study

It is incredible what female bodies can be capable of. As a society we celebrate lots of physical aspects that are heightened in males - e.g. strength and speed.
I don't think anyone here is suggesting pregnancy Olympics but I don't see how it's a bad thing that marvel at/celebrate what the female does to create and sustain life.

I have never been more amazed at and comfortable in my body than when pregnant (well maybe not physically comfortable past 35 weeks!).

I often see comments from women that they finally reached "body acceptance" after having kids, after years of insecurity at not meeting society's standard for the female form. A big part of that was seeing and celebrating what their bodies had done and gone through, and putting value on that instead of subjective beauty standards.

I've always found it amazing. I have made and then discarded 4 whole new organs in my lifetime. Incredible.

Thanks @CheeryTreeBlossom I wasn't sure and hadn't really looked into it - there will be lots of different toxic substances in pollution particles with different potential impacts.

Going back to horse placentas being epitheliochorial - human placentas are hemochorial. I never knew about the different types but this article was posted on a different thread and explains a lot. I think this must be why we can get aggressively invasive/adherent abnormal placentation which is very dangerous for the mother. (Three grades - placenta accreta, placenta increased and placenta percreta).

qz.com/675898/your-period-is-just-as-violent-and-awful-as-you-always-knew-it-was/

@FannyCann that’s right! You’re reminding me if those lectures I had to sit through 20 years ago during a stud management course!

Yes embryo transfer, and AI, are banned in competitive racing Thoroughbreds, though quite a few experiments have been fine using them.

I do remember being shown slides of Shire foals who had been transferred into pony mares and vice versa - for obvious reasons the Shire foals born to pony mares were much smaller than their peers and likewise the pony foals born to Shire mares much bigger, but over time they did even out and catch up to where their genetics dictated they should be.

Professor W “Twink” Allen was involved in that study, he references it in this later piece of research - rep.bioscientifica.com/downloadpdf/journals/rep/127/1/1270067.pdf

He’s also Frankie Dettori’s FIL, and I’d also add a raving misogynist - I recall him giving us students a lecture where he said that the reason fertility rates (in women, not horses!) were falling was because we were all too active and that women should just stay at home and be housewives

Oh wow. That must have been one rage inducing lecture to sit through!

The reason I was looking through research around horses was because I have long been concerned about hefty westerners impregnating tinny Asian women with their foetuses and wondered about the risk of them having a baby much to big for them to safely deliver. I'm not sure I've got my answer. Placentation and the effect on fetal growth is different in horses and humans, I now know that much.
I'm not sure though that humans aren't also able to regulate the size of the baby to some extent but I'm not sure how that happens. It's different. That's as much as I have worked out!

*tiny not tinny

I did read something about the egg thing not necessarily being true. I'm not sure if things have changed since this article came out in 2012

www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/120229-women-health-ovaries-eggs-reproduction-science

Studies have shown that pregnancies are on average shorter in Black and Asian women than White.
This isn't premature babies, still after 37 weeks so "full term" but they were more likely to be born around 39 weeks rather than nearer 40 weeks considered the standard in the west.
They still don't know for sure but it is believed the placenta has a key role in triggering labour and essentially saying when it has done it's job, perhaps based on size/nutritional need of the baby.

I remember reading up on due dates when I was at full term as I knew several Asian women who went into labor at 37 weeks. In France I read due date is considered to be at 41, not 40 weeks.
I tried to deduce what that meant for me as mixed race but baby arrived before I came to any conclusions

It is a fact though that the placenta is genetically the baby so sorry it is the babys miracle!

Fabulous thread. I knew none of this stuff til this thread.

@CheeryTreeBlossom that's really interesting. I'm Asian and went into labour at 38 weeks. It didn't feel early, but just right.

Bodies are incredible things, they can be the source of creation, beautiful and terrible and rare.
Years ago I had a gestational trophoblastic disease, in the form of a choriocarcinoma (arising from a molar pregnancy)...where tumours grow in the cells that would normally develop into the placenta during pregnancy. It became cancerous and led to months in hospital and a year of chemotherapy.
3 years after this I had dd1 (then dd2 and ds ...who is both beautiful and rare, having a very rare genetic disorder).
It is amazing to me that my body was able to be part of the creation of all of that, that it could create a placenta that could have killed me and then go on to grow 3 babies.
When I had each of my 3, the placenta was sent off for research, due to the rarity of the particular form of molar pregnancy I'd had.

Yes, fabulous thread. So much that I didn't know either.

It is miraculous. And it should be celebrated. We celebrate all sorts of things that are due to nature, like beauty and athleticism, and including 'being clever' itself.

I've heard older women talk about breastmilk being good for eye infections, but I never realised it had a well known scientific basis. Wouldn't it be useful for all this to be taught in school?

And yes, no wonder it's frequently exhausting. Knowing that my baby had access to my calcium came as bit of a shock, to be honest. (So did the knowledge that my dentistry was free for the duration - which was nice).

I've seen a thread on Twitter where quite a few men are rather put out by women celebrating this. And are quite happy to vocalise it. It's quite telling, in my opinion. And explains why all this information, which absolutely should be celebrated, is not particularly well-known.

Women talking, eh? Tut.

I've seen a thread on Twitter where quite a few men are rather put out by women celebrating this

What, men talking about this thread in particular? Or just women talking about the workings of their bodies in general?

@EdgeOfACoin

I've seen a thread on Twitter where quite a few men are rather put out by women celebrating this

What, men talking about this thread in particular? Or just women talking about the workings of their bodies in general?

No, not this thread. But a Tweeter talking about the miracle of women's bodies, and what happens - exactly and specifically as discussed in this thread.

From the same source, is what I mean.

@EdgeOfACoin

The placenta is genetically part of the baby, isn't it?

Yes, that's true, I think. The original ball of cells splits into what will become the baby and what will become the placenta.

Yep.

I got told off by the consultant obstetrician after saying "my placenta". He said: "It's not yours. It's Baby Packing's placenta!"

Apparently there have been cases where a fertilised ovum has not been caught by the wiggly bits at the end of a fallopian tube and has fallen into the abdominal vault and gestated. The ovum can attach and a nascent placenta can develop outside of the uterus.

Of course, this is wildly fatal situation for a pregnant female to be in. I think the case wa resolved by surgery, but I bet women have died in the past from this.

The thought of it is terrifying. It's a real life version of Alien.

I remember looking at both my children after they were born and thinking ‘you were just in me looking like that and we created you with microscopic DNA!’. They’re now 9 and 6 and every so often I will look at them and think ‘I made you’.

*Apparently there have been cases where a fertilised ovum has not been caught by the wiggly bits at the end of a fallopian tube and has fallen into the abdominal vault and gestated. The ovum can attach and a nascent placenta can develop outside of the uterus.

Of course, this is wildly fatal situation for a pregnant female to be in. I think the case wa resolved by surgery, but I bet women have died in the past from this.*

@Packingsoapandwater

Abdominal pregnancy is a rare and very dangerous complication. Basically the fertilised egg is happy to implant anywhere where there is a good blood supply if it hasn't made its way down the Fallopian tube as it should. Here are a couple of case reports that may interest you.

Interestingly, in the second case, which wasn't diagnosed until elective LSCS the placenta was left attached to the bowel, which I think is the recommended management as it would be so dangerous to try to detach it. I suppose it just reabsorbs into the body but I don't understand how it doesn't end up being a nasty collection of pus/fluid.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5889830/

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3158531/

Urgh. Two links there. It's so annoying how they run into each other when you post.

First one

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5889830/

Of course, this is wildly fatal situation for a pregnant female to be in. I think the case was resolved by surgery, but I bet women have died in the past from this.

Until a very targeted and specialised identification, monitoring and treatment programme was set up in specialised centres issues like molar pregnancies and trophoblastic gestational diseases were nearly always fatal. There are still cases which are fatal, as the persistent and invasive forms can spread to the lung and brain.
The placenta is a marvellous thing, but when the cells that create it become tumours instead, it is pretty terrifying!