Placenta and its functions

- an organ which begins to form between 8 and 10 weeks into your pregnancy by growing onto the muscular wall of your uterus.- oxygen and nutrients are supplied to your baby via your bloodstream and carbon dioxide and waste products are returned to your circulation from the baby's for excretion

The placenta is an organ that connects the developing fetus to the uterine wall to allow nutrient uptake, waste elimination, and gas exchange via the mother's blood supply. Placentas are a defining characteristic of eutherian or "placental" mammals, but are also found in some snakes and lizards with varying levels of development up to mammalian levels.^[1] The word placenta comes from the Latin for cake, from Greek plakóenta/plakoúnta, accusative of plakóeis/plakoús – πλακόεις, πλακούς, "flat, slab-like",^[2] in reference to its round, flat appearance in humans. Protherial (egg-laying) and metatherial (marsupial) mammals produce a choriovitelline placenta that, while connected to the uterine wall, provides nutrients mainly derived from the egg sac. The placenta develops from the same sperm and egg cells that form the fetus, and functions as a fetomaternal organ with two components, the fetal part (Chorion frondosum), and the maternal part (Decidua basalis).

- makes a number of hormones in large quantities, including oestrogen and progesterone
- serves as the conduit through which substances carried in the bloodstream can be exchanged between mother and foetus
- this way it ensures that your blood and the baby's blood never mix