Our Placenta Encapsulation
Around the beginning-mid part of my second trimester, I heard about placenta encapsulation for the first time. What this entails is steaming and dehydrating the placenta, grinding it up, and filling empty pill capsules with the intent of being consumed. Sounds crazy and gross to the average person, lol. But as I'm sure you're all aware, I'm not the average person. :-P There are so many nutritional benefits contained in the placenta. It's a lot of the reasons why animals eat their placenta after giving birth.
Now, I'm not about to cook up our placenta and eat it in a stew or something... that's a little TOO out there for me. If someone else is cool with doing that, then by all means go for it! I still wanted the benefits of the placenta (the primary three being that it reduces the risk of postpartum depression, it increases your milk supply, and it provides a boost in energy... all great benefits for the postpartum mother), so when I found out about placenta encapsulation, it seemed like the perfect compromise. I'd be having it in pill form, so it'd just be like taking any other pill really... instead of eating the placenta like a steak or something, lol.
Anyways, initially we were a little nervous about doing the encapsulation ourselves (I was slightly squeamish about it, and both Gwydd and I were a little worried that we'd screw it up), so I looked into hiring a professional. Believe it or not, there are enough people out there in the world that encapsulate their placenta that there's a need for professional services all over the nation, lol. However, the closest encapsulation specialist was in Chino... which is pretty far away from us. Plus, it costs about $200 or so to have a professional do it (depending on the professional), and we'd probably have to pay for her driving expenses and such for her to come to our house. So we decided to look into doing it ourselves.
It's surprisingly easy to do. I'm not going to go into the step-by-step of it, but this site explains pretty well how to do it (warning, graphic pictures): Click HERE. Really, the only reason NOT to do it yourself is if you're just too squeamish (which I don't blame you), or if you don't have all the supplies. Gwyddion is one of the least squeamish people I know (heck, he was totally fine with cooking it up like a steak, lol), and while we don't have a dehydrater, we do have an oven, which is an appropriate substitute. All we really needed were the empty pill capsules and a capsule filling machine (you *could* do it manually without a capsule filling machine, but it's just a lot easier with it. Plus, the machine was not expensive at all), both of which I got on Amazon.
If you've read my birth story ( Click HERE) then you read about the issues we had with the hospital about storing the placenta. Well, we were worried that the placenta wouldn't be good anymore, BUT Gwydd opened the container on Saturday morning to check it, and it was still good! *phew!* So that morning he started the whole process of encapsulating. :-D
The pills turned out great! Gwydd was worried that we wouldn't get very many pills out of it, but we got 95 pills! There were actually 96, but one of them broke. I've already taken a few since Saturday, and it was just like taking any other pill. I didn't taste anything. It was actually easier taking them than I thought... as I was worried the pills would be too large for me (I'm terrible at taking pills), but each one I've taken slid down easily, with no issues. :-)
I took pictures of the whole process... these are GRAPHIC pictures, so if you do not want to view pictures of my placenta, don't proceed beyond this point, haha.
Washing off all the blood:
Pulling off the membrane sack:
This is the side of the placenta that faced the baby. Kind of looks like a tree of life. :-) :
This is the side that faced the uterine wall. When Gwydd showed me this, I went "eew", lol:
Steaming the placenta:
The umbilical cord. It was too short to make a little heart out of it (which is what most people typically do with their's), so we just left it be. It gets dehydrated along with the placenta. I ended up putting it in a little baggie at the end. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it though:
Chopping the placenta up into little strips (this also made me go "eew", haha):
All chopped up and ready to go into the stove:
After being cooked for several hours (dehydrating it), the strips resembled jerky:
Setting up the pill capsule machine:
Putting all the pieces of placenta jerky in the food processor:
This is what the ground up pieces looked like... filling the capsule machine:
The first batch of pills (the machine filled like 25 pills at a time):
Finished product! We used an old pill jar that had vitamins in it. We got 95 pills total, and because we got so many, not all of them fit into the little jar... so we put the rest in the little bowl there:
And that's all folks! Sorry if any of that totally grossed you out, haha... but I warned you! :-P
Even though the process was a tad gross (though of course Gwyddion wasn't bothered at all by any of it, haha), it was a really fascinating process. The pills turned out great, I don't taste anything when I swallow them. I definitely plan to do this again with our final two kids. It was really easy to do. :-)
Now, I'm not about to cook up our placenta and eat it in a stew or something... that's a little TOO out there for me. If someone else is cool with doing that, then by all means go for it! I still wanted the benefits of the placenta (the primary three being that it reduces the risk of postpartum depression, it increases your milk supply, and it provides a boost in energy... all great benefits for the postpartum mother), so when I found out about placenta encapsulation, it seemed like the perfect compromise. I'd be having it in pill form, so it'd just be like taking any other pill really... instead of eating the placenta like a steak or something, lol.
Anyways, initially we were a little nervous about doing the encapsulation ourselves (I was slightly squeamish about it, and both Gwydd and I were a little worried that we'd screw it up), so I looked into hiring a professional. Believe it or not, there are enough people out there in the world that encapsulate their placenta that there's a need for professional services all over the nation, lol. However, the closest encapsulation specialist was in Chino... which is pretty far away from us. Plus, it costs about $200 or so to have a professional do it (depending on the professional), and we'd probably have to pay for her driving expenses and such for her to come to our house. So we decided to look into doing it ourselves.
It's surprisingly easy to do. I'm not going to go into the step-by-step of it, but this site explains pretty well how to do it (warning, graphic pictures): Click HERE. Really, the only reason NOT to do it yourself is if you're just too squeamish (which I don't blame you), or if you don't have all the supplies. Gwyddion is one of the least squeamish people I know (heck, he was totally fine with cooking it up like a steak, lol), and while we don't have a dehydrater, we do have an oven, which is an appropriate substitute. All we really needed were the empty pill capsules and a capsule filling machine (you *could* do it manually without a capsule filling machine, but it's just a lot easier with it. Plus, the machine was not expensive at all), both of which I got on Amazon.
If you've read my birth story ( Click HERE) then you read about the issues we had with the hospital about storing the placenta. Well, we were worried that the placenta wouldn't be good anymore, BUT Gwydd opened the container on Saturday morning to check it, and it was still good! *phew!* So that morning he started the whole process of encapsulating. :-D
The pills turned out great! Gwydd was worried that we wouldn't get very many pills out of it, but we got 95 pills! There were actually 96, but one of them broke. I've already taken a few since Saturday, and it was just like taking any other pill. I didn't taste anything. It was actually easier taking them than I thought... as I was worried the pills would be too large for me (I'm terrible at taking pills), but each one I've taken slid down easily, with no issues. :-)
I took pictures of the whole process... these are GRAPHIC pictures, so if you do not want to view pictures of my placenta, don't proceed beyond this point, haha.
Washing off all the blood:
Pulling off the membrane sack:
This is the side of the placenta that faced the baby. Kind of looks like a tree of life. :-) :
This is the side that faced the uterine wall. When Gwydd showed me this, I went "eew", lol:
Steaming the placenta:
The umbilical cord. It was too short to make a little heart out of it (which is what most people typically do with their's), so we just left it be. It gets dehydrated along with the placenta. I ended up putting it in a little baggie at the end. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it though:
Chopping the placenta up into little strips (this also made me go "eew", haha):
All chopped up and ready to go into the stove:
After being cooked for several hours (dehydrating it), the strips resembled jerky:
Setting up the pill capsule machine:
Putting all the pieces of placenta jerky in the food processor:
This is what the ground up pieces looked like... filling the capsule machine:
The first batch of pills (the machine filled like 25 pills at a time):
Finished product! We used an old pill jar that had vitamins in it. We got 95 pills total, and because we got so many, not all of them fit into the little jar... so we put the rest in the little bowl there:
And that's all folks! Sorry if any of that totally grossed you out, haha... but I warned you! :-P
Even though the process was a tad gross (though of course Gwyddion wasn't bothered at all by any of it, haha), it was a really fascinating process. The pills turned out great, I don't taste anything when I swallow them. I definitely plan to do this again with our final two kids. It was really easy to do. :-)