Placenta

A couple of years ago I buried Virginia's placenta and planted an azalea on top of it because I didn't know what else to do with it.

This time around I was actually considering encapsulation. Life with infant Virginia was hard - the always wanting to be held, the fountains of spit-up, my fear of going to sleep when she was so far away from me (in a playpen at the foot of my bed). If there was a chance that ingesting placenta hormones would make taking care of an infant easier I was ready to try it.

But I didn't want to encapsulate myself. It is a lot of work and has to be done within 72 hours after the birth. I was pretty sure that I was not going to be dehydrating placenta and filling pills mere days after having a kid. I found one person (with certification for placenta encapsulation) in the area who would do it for me. I was all set to go this route until...hubs and I decided we couldn't afford it. I think the price was entirely reasonable since, as I said, it is a lot of work. But reasonable and affordable are two different things.

Part of what helped me come around on placenta encapsulation, since, I can't help it, I still think eating placenta is a little icky, was that it is in capsules. I mean, you just swallow these pills. They don't look like placenta. They don't taste like anything. It is easy to not think about what you are doing.

The alternative my midwives suggested was not as neat and clean. They offered (very kindly) to help John blend the placenta right after birth and put it into ice cube trays. Then I could add a cube of blended placenta to things like smoothies or soup. Actually, the placenta is more potent this way - but you do end up with gross red cubes in your freezer.

I knew how I had struggled with Virginia as a tiny baby...so, I agreed to this solution.

Well, it's not bad. One or two cubes in a smoothy made with red berries completely disappear and leave no strange taste as far as I can tell. And, I can still kind of pretend I'm not drinking the equivalent of raw meat.

Does it help? I can't honestly say. As it turns out, Horatio is a much easier baby than Virginia was and I have him sleeping next to me in a sidecarred crib. But when I am having a difficult moment, a smoothy is nice - even if it's just the placebo effect.