My Plan To Eat My Placenta

My first reaction to the idea of eating your own placentas was “GROSS NO WAY! I mean it’s great if others can but I couldn’t EVER do that.”

At this point I had only heard of people cooking up and eating their placenta or throwing it into a smoothie.  I had no idea that you could dehydrate and encapsulate your placenta until I read Caitlin‘s post. Then I became a little curious, but was still in the “um I don’t think it’s for me” mindset.

Then one day Neil and I were making the drive home from my parents house and we decided to listen to the Pregtastic Podcast “The Placenta: Encapsulation and Other Benefits.”  This podcast really started to get both of us thinking about the benefits, the process of encapsulation and whether or not it was for us.  After listening to the podcast Neil and I discussed things and decided that the potential benefits of ingesting my placenta out weighed “the ick factor.”  Now it was time to find someone in our are who actually does placenta encapsulation.

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After a few weeks of searching I came across two different people who offer this service and after talking with both and weighing the costs (huge difference in service charge) we made our decision.  SO our plan is to have the encapsulation done within 24-48 hours of the birth.  Our encapsulator (not sure what the technical name would be) does everything in her own home so our doula will deliver the placenta to her (in our designated placenta cooler) after the birth and then we will pick up the encapsulated placenta on the way home from the hospital.

We also spoke with our midwives to let them know of our plans to keep the placenta after the birth and to have it encapsulated. Our midwives don’t have much to say about our decision to encapsulate/me ingesting my placenta with the exception of one who expressed their skepticism about the real benefits it has on things such as postpartum depression but she did highlight that one of the benefits she does recognize is that of the iron.  Many women experience postpartum iron deficiency and ingesting your placenta can help with your iron levels.

Overall the way Neil and I see it is that it can’t hurt to try it.  Maybe it won’t really help anything at all. Maybe it will provide a placebo effect and “help” in that way.  In the end though the potential benefits are much greater than not doing it at all.

(Also we plan on having a placenta tree of life print done as well!)

After giving birth what did you do with your placenta? Did you ingest it? Did you get a print done? Did you plant it? Did you save it?

Additional Placenta Stories:

• Pregtastic Blog: My Experience With Placenta Encapsulation
• Baby KERF: 30 Weeks: Yes I want to Eat My Placenta!
• Healthy Tipping Point: A Special Debate