Placental Encapsulation

It never fails to amaze me the things that people are comfortable sharing with strangers. Ok, well maybe that's an odd statement for me to make, since I've talked openly on here about the goings on of my girly parts time and again. However...we were at a neighborhood block party on Saturday night. This woman looked at me and said of Sophie "oh, are those breastfed legs?" I said yes, to which I got a thumbs up.

Apparently, she took this as a sign to open her mouth and let it all come out. She asked how long I was planning to breastfeed, and I said to 12 months. Her response was "oh, you should let her go as long as she wants." I saw where the conversation was heading and knew I had to nip it in the bud, fast. So I was honest. "We had Sophie through IVF. We have 2 frozen embryos. We want to use them asap. I can't take the IVF meds while bfing." Thankfully, that shut her up.

blah, blah, blah...lots more useless info that I didn't care about...then she started talking about placental encapsulation. I made the mistake of telling her I'd never heard of that. She gave me the full scoop. Basically, she sent her placenta from her 2nd child home with a friend who dehydrated it. She would have done it at her house but the smell was too much. The dehydrated placenta was then crushed and put into capsules...which she then took to prevent PPD. And, since her daughter was such a large baby at birth, her placenta was HUGE.

That, my friends, was wayyyyyyyy T.M.I.

EDITED:

I started feeling bad after I posted this yesterday. I generally am very open to different ideas, and I really started feeling like a closed-minded biotch for sounding so negative about this process. I was not trying to knock the benefits of this technique. I was more or less just dumbfounded that someone would share that with a stranger that had not asked about it. And the descriptives about the smell and the size...it was just too much for me. Then, I got the following comment from Laura. Hopefully she won't mind if I post it here...hopefully it will encourage anyone who might be interested (or just curious) to look into this further. Thanks, Laura:)


Actually, placenta pills are an amazing medicine for postpartum recovery. There is no taste and you just swallow it as you would any other vitamin or herb capsule. The placenta is an endocrine organ which regulates hormones throughout pregnancy. When you give birth your hormone levels plummet (if you've ever suffered PMS you know the havoc fluctuating hormone levels can wreak. If you've had any form of PPD/Blues then you'll know how that interferes with your best mothering). Lucky for us, our bodies tailor a medicine to bring those hormone levels back up until the hypothalamus "realizes" it has to get back to work--two weeks later! It also supplies iron and we don't even know what other goodness is in there! For nursing mothers, milk often comes in strong within hours of taking the first dose. Energy levels are boosted and lochia (postpartum blood) often ends sooner. If that doesn't sound like a great advantage to being able to bond with and care for your new baby....... I am one of many Placenta Encapsulation Specialists trained by PlacentaBenefits(.info) to provide this service to new mothers. I urge anyone to get educated on the subject of placentophagy--it may seem weird to you but that's because it's not very common right now. Hey, you can't honestly say it's any worse than sinking your teeth into the flesh of an animal you've never met! At least you know where your placenta came from ; )