Your Placenta's Origin Story

The star of this episode is the trophoblast cell. It goes for broke during implantation, fully embeding into the uterine lining and laying down the early building blocks of the placenta. This action is given an appropriately dramatic name:  trophoblast invasion. I’ll share some of the sci fi details of how a ball of cells, only half related to you, burrows into your body, creates a new organ to change the way your body metabolizes food and syphons off your nutrients and oxygen to grow. Keep in mind that there are a ton of chemical reactions going on to make this happen and it is in fact happening while you are in line at starbucks, working at your desk or out for a run….Today’s episode breaks down this critical process in some detail for three reasons: (1) its not at all uncommon for pregnant women to hold themselves responsible for things in a pregnancy that go wrong.  Settle in for this episode and listen to the boatload of complicated things going on in your body that you couldn’t possibly control even if you wanted to; and maybe loosen your grip on this idea that you are responsible, (b) This is one important inflection point–errors in this phase can have significant consequences for the rest of pregnancy, and potentially for the health trajectory of both the mother’s health and the baby's health going forward, and (c ) If you know some of these details you can appreciate  some of the amazing work being done to try to address these errors.