Last week I snuck my placenta out of the house...

[sunflowergrrl]

I've noticed that placentas haven't been talked about in a while, i.e. what do/did you plan to do with your placenta after the birth? Plus I have a question about placenta encapsulation, and a story about my placenta.

So, last week I snuck my placenta out of the house. I was taking it to a lady who encapsulated it for me. I had missed several opportunties to get my placenta to her, and she lived about an hour away. Finally, on this night, I had a chance to send my placenta with someone who was traveling to her town the next day and could get it to her. My placenta was in the freezer, in a freezer storage bag. My husband kept joking and calling it adobo chili peppers (it did really resemble them.) This was my first homebirth so I had never kept my placenta before. I didn't want to plant it in the yard (we're moving next year) so I decided to encapsulate it so I could get the nutritional and hormonal benefits without the "eww" factor. (incidentally, after reading some old placenta threads, I'm not grossed out anymore at the prospect of consuming a placenta in other ways.)

Getting back to the reason I snuck it out of the house. My parents were in town staying with us, about 10 days after the birth of our daughter. They were not exactly pro-homebirth, so I'm sure they would have been totally freaked out that I still had the placenta in the freezer, let alone what my plans for it were. I got the baby all packed up in the car, and very casually went into the freezer, as if I were going to get a popsicle to take with me (that was going to be my excuse - but who drives with a popsicle?) and I grabbed the ice packs and my placenta and casually went back out to the car where I had my cooler waiting in there for me. Whew! I made it without any questions from my parents! Then I realized - hey, those Eggo waffles weren't where I left them, and hmmm there seemed to be a lot of room in my freezer - and it dawned on my that my dear mother had cleaned out and reorganized my whole fridge and freezer for me! I wonder what she thought about that freezer bag full of adobo chili peppers!?!

So, here's my question. Because of the delay in getting my placenta encapsulated, I feel like I missed the window when I really needed it. I got my capsules just shy of 3 weeks postpartum. I'm taking them, but not noticing any difference, but I don't really have any symptoms that need treatment anyway. So, should I go ahead and keep taking them, or save them for menopause instead of taking artificial hormones (not that I would, but if the capsules would help with hot flashes or whatever, then that would be great!)

[erin_brycesmom]

Dh dehydrated and encapsulated mine and I'm still taking it (ds just turned 4 months old yesterday). I'm a little iffy on their freshness at this point though. I don't think I would want to save them for years until menopause. If I were you and didn't notice a difference/didn't feel like I needed it then I probably wouldn't take them just because I'm lazy about taking pills. There wouldn't be much motivation for me to keep with it.

[MsBlack]

Let me just say that I totally enjoyed your story!

My rule of thumb about any form of med, herb or supplement is that if I don't need it I don't take it. Maybe you weren't feeling particularly in need of 'help' that might be given by encapsulated placenta, but wanted to see if the pills could give you some sort of boost or whatever--fair enough. Now that you know that they're not really doing anything noticeable, why bother?

But I'd definitely keep them for a year or so (in the freezer, I think--in a bottle, inside a ziploc with the extra air flattened out of it). Who knows--maybe there will come a time during this first year or so that you DO need some help of the sort that placenta can bring.

Great story! Then there was the time a 13yr old boy peeked under the saran wrap covering the bowl of red stuff in the fridge, mmm yummy, jello, right? Nope--placenta in blood--and from his scream you'd have thought he'd just got snake bit. I love placenta stories

[JorgieGirl]

I wish I had done something sooner with dd's placenta. It's still in my freezer a year and a half later. I do plan on doing the smoothie thing with the new lo's placenta, right away. I don't hemmorage, nor am I a real candidate for PPD, but I would still like to see if I could benefit.

Also, I do like to freak people out. It's amusing.

[Sihaya]

I know it's too late to be of much help to the OP, but maybe this will help someone else. The person who encapsulated my placenta made a tincture from it, in addition to the capsules. The pills were to take right away and helped extremely in preventing PPD. The tincture can be used in a multitude of ways, given to both mom and baby over the years. The great thing she does is she keeps a master tincture for every placenta she's encapsulated so if you run out of the tincuture, she can always make more. I would highly suggest discussing this with the person who is encapsulating your placenta as it has so much more value than the capsules alone.

[camprunner]

My husband was kind enough to encapsulate my placenta for me. I never really recovered from the birth and had a large hormone balance. Part of me thinks that consuming the placenta may have contributed to this so next time, I will not be consuming the placenta. I will bury it and plant a tree.

[mamamoonbirth]

I know this is an old post but I have heard plenty of stories of women saving the capsules in the freezer for menopause, I don't think that keeping them would be an issue, especially if they are kept out of light and frozen. Something new to add to my list of looking into though!

[CBEmomma]

I encapsulated mine. I felt awesome when I started them on day 3. I felt a hormone boost, increase energy and increase lactation. You could save yours. I have half of mine left in the freezer. I was feeling so good that I thought I'd save them for when I menstrate or menopause. Eventhough I do plan on having more children.

[CrunchyChristianMama]

I just found out that DH threw mine away.  He didn't ask me first.    I'm a bit upset about it.  I wasn't overly attached to it or anything and didn't plan on consuming it, but I did plan on planting it at some point with a tree or something. 

[goldenwillow]

We planted ours. 

There was a corkscrew willow tree next to the house we had DS at so we decided to buy a golden corkscrew willow tree (my hair is gold and curly and my DS is a leo).  Our placenta was frozen for awhile and we planted it a week before we got married.  We hung our rings in that little tree for 3 days (celtic ceremony) prior to our wedding. 

I didn't have the resources at the time to make a tincture or a tea at the time I had DS... happy with planting it. 

[AFWife]

I got mine encapsulated. I started taking them around day 3 or 4. I didn't notice too much of a difference between right after birth and taking them...

However!

I'm 6 weeks PP now and having some light PPD issues from time to time. I still have plenty of pills left (my doula added St John's Wort and Echinacea so it doubled the amount) and when I start to feel "down" I take 3 or 4 pills and feel better WITHIN HOURS. I was super stressed last week and ended up taking 7 at once and noticed a difference that lasted for days.

[lsmama]

Great story!  I am 37 weeks and still conspiring about how I'm going to get mine out of the hospital and into my parents' freezer (where we'll be staying for a week or so before returning home).  They are a bit squeamish!  The plan right now involves bringing a cutting board, knofe, and covered ice cube tray into the hospital and having DH bring it home in a cooler.  Am I insane?

[goldenwillow]

Originally Posted by lsmama 

Great story!  I am 37 weeks and still conspiring about how I'm going to get mine out of the hospital and into my parents' freezer (where we'll be staying for a week or so before returning home).  They are a bit squeamish!  The plan right now involves bringing a cutting board, knofe, and covered ice cube tray into the hospital and having DH bring it home in a cooler.  Am I insane?

Not at all insane!  Love the idea! 

[MegBoz]

The evidence for consuming it isn't compelling enough for me & I just didn't have any desire to plant it. I'm donating it for training of human remains detection dogs. LOL - I thought when I emailed the rescue dog organization, they'd think I was bonkers, but they're happy to have the placenta. :)

[Marissamom]

I'm donating mine to my student midwife because she wants to learn how to do encapsulation. I don't have any interest in ingesting it myself, but there are many women who are, so I'm happy to give her a practice placenta. if we owned our own place I would plant a tree, but not an option. 

[averlee]

I've heard of some families planting the placenta in a very large pot with a small growing tree- a crab-apple or kumquat for example. Then it is possible to move it if you move house.

I wasn't interested in consuming the placenta and had no one to hide it from. But I'm the only person I know who threw the placenta into the ocean. I yelled, "Back to the birthwaters with you!" and chucked it in, then a bunch of seabirds fought over it. I joked that if it was found the headline would be "Placenta discovered on beach, mother and baby still missing" but the birds seemed to take care of that for me.