Placenta Encapsulation (Placenta Pills): Should You Have Your Placenta Encapsulated?

Apr 242013
 

This is the end result of placenta encapsulation - dried powder in capsulesHere in Portland (PDX), most of my clients to have their placentas processed and encapsulated (made into capsules) to take postpartum. I have never personally heard a Mom regret doing it, but I have known a few who regretted ::not:: having ‘happy pills’ made out of their baby’s placenta.

As a doula, I make very few recommendations – I do actually recommend this for my clients. If you’re pregnant and wondering about whether or not you should invest in placenta encapsulation as part of your birth plan, here are some articles and blog posts to consider:

About Placenta Encapsulation In The Media:

Moms Blog About Their Placenta Eating Experiences:

DIY Placenta Instructions/Recipes:

Of course, f you’re considering placenta encapsulation and you live in Portland, Oregon, please get in touch.
 Portland MamaBaby offers off-site placenta encapsulation and tinctures and serves the entire Portland metro area.

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Recently Pinned on Portland Mama Baby (on Pinterest)

Apr 222013
 

PinterestHere are six of my favorite recently pinned pregnancy and birth-related photos, articles, and blog posts:

  1. Nine Reasons Not To Carry Your Baby Facing Out
  2. VBAC after prior VBAC
  3. Group B Strep in Pregnancy: Evidence for Antibiotics and Alternatives
  4. Vaginal (Hospital) Birth of Triplets
  5. A Nice Photo of a Diamniotic/Dichorionic Placenta
  6. Childbirth and the Language we Use: Does it Really Matter?

Which one is your favorite? If you’d like to point me in the direction of your blog, Pinterest board, Twitter, or Facebook page, please add your URL to your comment.

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DIY Placenta Capsules: The Traditional Chinese Method

Apr 242012
 

placenta encapsulation portland oregonPlacenta encapsulation and tinctures are a service that we offer at the Portland MamaBaby Center. Our resident midwife has processed hundreds of placentas and has special equipment in her home and works under sanitary conditions to prepare your placenta for capsules. As a former nurse, she understands infection control and works diligently to ensure that your placenta is treated properly and your pills are medicine.

However, if you’re the DIY type and you choose to make your own placenta capsules, then here is a recipe I have used and and I’ve even included a few tips, too:

  1. Make sure you have the appropriate tools necessary. You’ll need a clean and sanitized kitchen to work in, a clean and sanitized kitchen sink, knife, food dehydrator, and ideally you’ll use a brand new spice grinder, because you probably don’t want your placenta pills to taste like your morning coffee or vice-versa.
  2. Make sure you and/or your partner(s) has the stomach for it. The placenta is bloody and will take quite some time to rinse and slice properly. It is an organ. You can smell the iron from the blood as you process it. This may not be something you’re up for. Also, think ahead – when you are postpartum and sore and just want to be taken care of, do you want to be standing in your kitchen processing your placenta into pills? This may be one of those times where it’s better not to DIY. It takes some time to do it right and you should be resting in your bed snuggling with your baby, not up cooking your placenta.
  3. Make sure you and/or your housemates can handle the smell. I’ll be the first to tell you that the smell of a dehydrating placenta is… the smell of a drying organ being fanned through your house by the dehydrator. You may want to even place it outside on the terrace, if you have one. You will also probably want to have a dedicated dehydrator – I don’t think my husband wants to make dried pineapple on the same dehydrator I used to dry out my placenta… but that’s just us…
  4. Buy an encapsulator if possible, and a couple of hundred ’00′ capsules (buy extra, you’ll probably have to practice a bit)
  5. Decide on the raw method or the traditional chinese method. The raw method is pretty straight forward, you don’t add any herbs or do anything special to the placenta – you clean it thoroughly, slice it, dehydrate it, pulverize it, and encapsulate it. The Traditional Chinese Method is the recipe I’ll share below. You’ll also need to buy a steamer for this recipe.

You’ll need:

  • a whole, fresh, placenta
  • 2 cups of fresh water (1 liter)
  • 2 fresh ginger slices
  • 1/2 a lemon
  • 1 pinch of hot pepper
  1. To cook the placenta, wash the excess blood off and wrap the bloody side (maternal side) back inside the membranes. This rinsing process could and should take some time. Take care to do a good job.
  2. Place a steamer over water. Combine ginger, lemon, and hot pepper and add the placenta. Steam for 15 minutes over low heat. Turn placenta and steam 15 minutes more until no juice comes out when pricked with a fork. Expect the organ to shrink significantly as it is steamed.
  3. After steaming and cooling, slice the placenta into very thin strips using a very sharp knife. Thin strips are key for dehydrating your placenta! It should not take days and days.
  4. Place strips on the trays of the food dehydrator and allow it to dry completely until powdery and brittle. Some people will tell you that you can dehydrate your placenta in your oven on a cookie sheet on the lowest setting of your oven. That’s not how we do it, and it’s not how I think it should be done. We never do our placentas that way and we don’t recommend that you do either.
  5. Grind the strips into a very fine powder using a spice/coffee grinder and put into capsules. Do not use a mortar and pestle (in my opinion) because it will not crush up the pieces finely enough. Take 2 pills twice a day for the first week and then as needed. They should be stored in your freezer in an airtight container. You can also use the powder that you yield to make a few other DIY placenta remedies.

If you’d like to skip all this and just have your placenta pills delivered to you with some postpartum support, just contact us! We’re more than happy to pick up your placenta from you or your doula at the hospital or birthing center or at your home and return it to you within just a few days as a pretty jarful of pills.

Placenta encapsulation is one of those things that we genuinely believe in, support, and recommend to our clients, friends, family, and generally everyone we know. If this is the first you’re hearing about it, do a little research for yourself and see what all the placenta eating hubbub is about.

 Our Placenta Encapsulation and Tinctures Services Page

Thank you to Cornelia Enning for the recipe – if you are interested in placenta medicine, you should buy her book called Placenta: Gift of Life The Role of the Placenta in Different Cultures and how to Prepare and Use it as Medicine.

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Our First Monitrice-Doula Baby as the Portland MamaBaby Center

Apr 092012
 

Welcome Audrey!! 

My last client was also our first monitrice-doula baby since opening the Portland MamaBaby Center on March 1st, 2012. This sweet little girl decided to be born on her due date with that full head of thick black hair weighing 8 lb. 4 oz.

I am so lucky that I was there to witness Audrey’s birth. Her Mama labored so peacefully and calmly, really reaching inward and focusing internally on bringing her down and relaxing to make it easier for her to wriggle her way out. Her Papa physically held them up as Mama slow danced her way through many contractions. The nurse (Sarah) never once mentioned pain meds or epidurals and only provided positive, supportive affirmations, suggestions for position changes, and offering great advice. Her doctor sat on the floor and caught her as she was born into her own Mama’s loving arms and given a chance to transfer all of her blood from her placenta to her body before her cord was clamped and cut. She was allowed to snuggle right into her Mama’s chest where she remained until long after I left. And this doula was happy to keep her Mantra promise that, “Soon I’m going to be leaving you all cuddled up with your sweet baby girl to rest and sleep.”

After every birth, I try to reflect and learn and grow as a human and as a birth worker. The gift I was given from Audrey’s birth was a restored faith that women can and do labor and deliver their babies in hospitals without interventions and medications (just like I did almost 18 years ago!) It’s been a while since I’ve seen a natural hospital birth like this. Dr. Michelle Sang was the attending OB and she came in for the birth, despite being off call (that rarely happens, in my experience, with most obstetrics practices.) She was totally supportive of her client’s natural childbirth, reminding Mama not to fear the intensity and to trust in her body. She was so positive and I could tell that her presence and affirmations were really helping Mama to more effectively push through the intensity. I was also reminded by this birth just how important it is (lucky?) to have the right nurse, the right doula, and the right obstetrician (and ideally, the right partner) by your side if you are pursuing a natural childbirth

placenta pills portland mamababy center

I took this photo of Audrey on day 4 when I stopped in to do a little postpartum follow up visit and bring Mama her placenta pills. She looks like she was posed in that position for a perfect little newborn photo, but really she had just figured out how to get her tummy full and fallen asleep contentedly.

Is natural hospital childbirth something you’re planning? Laboring at home for as long as possible is undeniably the first rule of avoiding unnecessary interventions.

Monitrice-Doula care with a midwife is the best of both worlds. Labor at home with a midwife and have your baby at the hospital with your doctor. Give us a call (503) 206-7715 or email to arrange a consultation with our monitrice-doula team.

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Considering Placenta Encapsulation ::and:: Hospital or Birthing Center Birth?

Mar 272012
 

Photo From Welcome Home Doula ServiceMany pregnant women I know who are considering placenta encapsulation or other placenta rituals are also planning a hospital birth. What you might not have considered is that you will need to do some logistical planning while you are still pregnant to get your placenta from the hospital to the person who is going to encapsulate your placenta while it is still fresh.

Have you thought about how you’re going to communicate your desire to keep your placenta with your provider and the hospital staff? Have you included this in your birth plan and made certain that your provider is on board with your decision? Having your doctor or nurse-midwife behind you is probably the single most important key to having your placenta released to you without any hassle. Have you planned for the storage and transfer of your placenta? Did you know that some hospitals have a ‘hold policy’ several days long that prevent them from releasing the placenta while it is still fresh? You will need to have a plan before you walk through the doors of the hospital in labor.

Chances of a positive childbirth experience in the hospital
improve greatly when you do your homework
and when you are confident in advocating for yourself.
This is especially true if you are planning to keep your placenta!

Your wishes are much more likely to be respected if they are well-documented clearly in your chart. Talk to your provider while you are at a prenatal visit, so that s/he can document your wishes in your chart. Your provider can also help you by communicating with the hospital staff and signing off on paperwork. S/he can also document your wishes for your baby’s placenta’s care clearly in your chart at the hospital.When you go into labor, be sure to talk to the nurse in charge of your care about your wishes for your placenta so that s/he can document your request in your chart, as well. If you are making a birth plan, make sure that you include a section about your expectations for the care of your baby’s placenta. A birth plan is your opportunity to ‘write’ in your own chart, since your birth plan becomes a part of your chart at the hospital.

You need to find out your hospital’s policy on releasing an organ (remember, this is a biophysical hazard in the medical model of care) and fill out any required paperwork in advance. Here in Portland, chances are that the labor and delivery nurses, doctors, and midwives have heard the request before. But even here in the PDX, you still need to be able to confidently advocate for yourself and your baby.

A sister doula who does encapsulation shared that in her experience, the Providence Hospital Systems are the least placenta-friendly hospitals when it comes to requests. Portland Providence is reported to be generally the hardest to negotiate with.They keep the placenta for 8 to 15 days (longer than anyone else). Their normal policy is to refrigerate them, but if you advocate to the care provider and the nurses (mostly the nurses) you can get them to put it in the freezer for the duration of the holding time.

Providence St. Vincent has recently changed their policy to allow for an immediate release. I’m not sure of the details yet, you should check with them directly if you are planning to have your baby there. Providence Milwaukie seems like the best of the local Providence hospitals. They have similar policies as far as length of holding, but I’ve been told that they put all of their placentas in larger tupperware-like containers and triple bag it.

Kaiser Sunnyside has a stated policy of keeping the placenta for 5-7 days, but they are reported to be very flexible when an OB is backing the request (midwives don’t seem to have the power to sign off on the required form). OHSU is very placenta-friendly. They have no policy of holding a placenta and allow a doula, placenta encapsulation specialist, or other family member take it after the birth. They will not let it come up to the recovery floor, so you have to ‘grab it off the counter’ before they move rooms. They have been reported to just wrap it in a trash bag, so if you are using your placenta for medicine, you should make sure to bring your own container. Legacy Good Samaritan doesn’t have explicit policies about holding or releasing the placenta, but they are reported to put up a fuss sometimes.

Not surprisingly, the most placenta-friendly providers in Portland are not hospitals at all. They are reported to be Alma Midwifery and Andaluz Birth Centers and also the Natural Childbirth and Family Clinic. Placenta encapsulation specialists report that they are great about respecting families’ wishes for their placentas and that they consistently have really nicely cared for, well-drained placentas.

I recommend that if you are requesting your placenta from the hospital, sharing less information with them about your plans for your placenta is better. Simply stating that you have religious or philosophical beliefs for your request should suffice. In fact, some placenta encapsulation specialists have reported that mentioning your plans, whether it be eating or burying your placenta, may actually cause the hospital staff to limit your access to your baby’s placenta. Portland Providence is reported to make the clients jump through a lot of bureaucratic hoops if you mention that you are using the placenta for encapsulation. Just stick to “religious or philosophical reasons.”

If the hospital does not place a hold on the placenta, don’t let it out of your sight! Sign for it right away and keep it with you. Get a cooler filled with ice to store it until someone can come and pick it up for you. Hospitals are busy places and proper care and storage of your placenta so that you can have it encapsulated is probably not the staff’s priority. I’m not saying it should or shouldn’t be, I just think it’s a safe bet that a hospital could mistakenly send it out to be destroyed as a biohazard, send it to pathology, or even just render it useless by not storing it properly.

For placenta medicine, a fresh placenta is the required. It probably necessary to have your placenta frozen if it will be held by the hospital. I would take special care to ensure that the hospital has a good, sturdy, well-marked container to freeze my baby’s placenta just in case there is a hold placed. I would even offer to provide such a container at my own expense, if it were my birth. The bottom line is that you are going to have to really advocate for what you need and negotiate with the hospital to make sure that they are following your wishes with respect. Then you need to follow up. There are too many horror stories about people whose placentas were ‘accidentally’ destroyed by hospital staff before they could be picked up.

We would love to make your placenta pills for you. Tia does all of our placentas for us and we jump through hoops to pick up your placenta and deliver your pills back to you within the shortest amount of time possible because we really believe in the importance of the placenta medicine we’re making. We know and recognize that you ::need:: your pills back promptly, so we’re going to take professional care of your baby’s placenta, treat it with respect and work under sanitary conditions, and return professionally dehydrated, ground, and encapsulated pills to you to take with a ‘zero ick factor’.

If you’d like to arrange for us to take encapsulate your placenta and/or make a tincture for you, please contact
Kate [Kate@PortlandMamaBabyCenter.com]
or call me at the center (503) 206-7715
and I’ll help you through the process!

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