A model who was filmed as she ate her just-born son’s raw placenta in the baby delivery room has told how it tasted like sushi.
Brazilian health influencer Fernanda Lacerda, 34, had just given birth to her first child, Gabriel, on 29th October after an emergency C-section.
But astonishing footage recorded just moments later shows Fernanda lying on a maternity ward bed popping a thumbail-sized cube of her baby’s placenta in her mouth.
In the clip, posted on Instagram, Fernanda laid back with her son snuggled up to her as someone wearing surgical gloves held up a slice of the organ to her mouth.
As it was placed in her mouth, Fernanda, in full make-up, chewed cautiously at first apparently puzzled by the taste.
Then she finally swallowed the raw body part and smiled, opening her mouth and sticking out her tongue to show that it was gone.
She said: “It tastes like a little sushi, like sashimi. With how hungry I am, I would eat the whole thing. It’s tasty.”
Earlier Fernanda had kept her nearly three million followers up to date with every twist and turn of her delivery.
She told how she had arrived at the maternity ward with about six centimetres of dilation.
Fernanda said: “With each contraction, I was getting closer to our meeting.”
But as the baby did not start to appear doctors told her she had to undergo an emergency cesarean section.
She said: “We had tried everything, even with 10 cm of dilation, he was still high up and not descending.
“Not everything happens as planned, but God makes everything happen perfectly as it should… and the only thing that matters is him coming into the world in the best way for him, with great health.”
Although eating part of your baby’s placenta has become trendy and is thought by some to be natural, doctors warn against it.
Placentophagy is believed by some to have the ability to replenish iron levels in the body to increase energy and improve milk production.
Some even believe it can alleviate postpartum depression and anxiety.
But in the US doctors from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention say it can lead to bacterial infections like Group B Streptococcus.
It can, they say, cause dangerous issues in newborns’ lungs, brain, blood, bones, and joints.
Doctors from the Brazilian Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics also discourage its consumption.
Leading gynaecologist Rivia Lamaita said: “We have a great concern about the transmission of diseases because the placenta acts as a filter between the mother and the fetus, and some diseases can affect pregnancy, such as HIV, syphilis, viral hepatitis.
“Thus, this organ can be a contamination vector.”
