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Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Witch Doctor

So yeah, I'm eating my placenta.

Well, not eating it exactly, but taking placenta pills.

Then again, Alex and I stopped at McD's on the way home from the hospital so I could get a cheeseburger and diet Coke. So you can see that we are a bit confused about where we fall on the Crunchy-Conservative continuum. Or maybe not confused, just open minded.

We had not really decided one way or the other if we were going to keep the placenta, whether or not to have it dried and encapsulate it for postpartum consumption. But at the hospital our doula asked us whether we wanted her to take my placenta home and freeze it for us. We didn't want to close any doors, and knew we had about a day to make the decision. Originally a girlfriend had offered to do it for me, citing her own success taking the pills, but ultimately we opted to pay another doula, Wendy, for the service, as it was through the same doula company. Two hundred bucks for her to come to my house, sanitize my kitchen (that's reason enough, really), bake, dry, blend, and encapsulate the placenta, leaving me with specific administration instructions. And to provide hours of entertainment and education for my in-laws. I say that's a screaming deal.

"You have a beautiful placenta. You must have taken really great care of your baby."

This was the first thing Wendy the Witch Doctor (as Papa Pablo lovingly called her) said when I met her. She guessed that Francie weighed about 7 1/2 lbs at birth, given the size of my placenta. And she complimented my umbilical cord. Again, another one of those times where I am strangely flattered. I'm convinced that my placenta was big and juicy only because I spent the first three months of my pregnancy curled up on the couch eating chips, chocolate, and napping nearly 12 hours per day.

Part of the appeal to encapsulate was simply because both Alex and I were so awestruck by the placenta during the afterbirth. The side of the disposable organ that was attached to my uterus LITERALLY looks like the Tree of Life. Another part of the appeal was simply because I don't want to rule out anything that might aid me in reducing anxiety and depression, so why not support an ancient Chinese medical practice? As someone who took Zoloft throughout her pregnancy (sidenote: a Class B drug, recommended only if benefits outweigh the costs, and a perinatologist was consulted on my behalf), I'm not about to start throwing around judgments regarding health practices from across the world. I'm open to any and all, including even the placebo effect.

A few fast facts about the amazing organ that is the placenta:
- It is the organ that connects the developing fetus to the uterus for nutrients, waste, and gas exchange.
- The word "placenta" comes from the Latin word for "cake."
- The human placenta averages 9 inches long, 1 inch thick and weighs about 1 lb.
- It is connected to the fetus by the 24 inch umbilical cord, which has two arteries and one vein.

Reasons to take encapsulated placenta?
- To support lactation
- To facilitate easier postpartum recovery
- To increase maternal energy
- To ease life transitions
- To avoid postpartum depression
- To decrease iron deficiency
- To decrease insomnia
- To decrease postpartum night sweats
- Ultimately, the theory is that you're replacing the hormones you lost during the birthing process.

I was told that I might not necessarily notice a difference, being that I'm a first-time mom and don't know how the postpartum period might otherwise unfold. I'm now on Day 6 as I finish this blog. I have nothing but anecdotes to go off of, but I am indeed convinced that the pills have made a difference, at least in my milk supply.

How it's done: sanitize, steam, slice, dehydrate, grind, fill capsules, sanitize and refrigerate. I'm taking 2 capsules 3x/day for 3 days, then 2 capsules 2x/day for 2 weeks, then tapering off, saving some for my return to work.

Here are the less gory of the photos documenting Wendy completing the placenta encapsulation process.


Here's Wendy the Witch Doctor, preparing the placenta. If you didn't know, looks just like any other red meat, does it not?

Dried placenta ... just like beef jerky.

And the end result. No "worse" than a multivitamin.


P.S. I just read on Jezebel that January Jones does it, too. So there.

Article from 3/28/12:

Placentas Are Delicious, Sure, But Should You Eat Yours?

New moms, have you taken your placenta pill yet today? January Jones has and we all know how you always do exactly what January Jones does. You might want to hold off, though, considering there's some debate over whether or not it's doing you any good. While you and January, when your weekly mom club meets secretly in the walk-in freezer of that highway Denny's, insist that the placenta pills give you energy and much needed nutrients, there are scientists saying that's not the case. Then there are the other moms, la résistance, the traitors, who say that taking the placenta pills made them feel unstable and emotional (women, am I right?), along with that pesky FDA that has yet to approve anything.

To be fair, the FDA can be real dicks about approving non-traditional medicine (or, in this case pre-traditional medicine?) and mammals have been eating their placentas for nutrients for as long as we've been mammals. It's not the craziest thing you could do (forgive me, I grew up in a hippie community). On the other hand, we do live in a modern world where we have nutrients manufactured and ready for us. Instead of eating their afterbirths or spitting their food into their babies mouths as if they were birds, moms could embrace this crazy new era of store-bought vitamins and baby food like we have the locomotive and rock and roll. Or they can keep wolfing down their placentas — that's the beauty of choice — though, if you're going to do it, you might want to consider going full paleo and eating that puppy raw. That is how the other mammals practice, after all.


And a 3/25/12 column from the NY Times:

I Regret Eating My Placenta

It’s not as gross as it sounds, but then, it couldn’t possibly be, right? As a first-time pregnant lady living in crunchy Santa Monica, Calif., next to a raw food restaurant and a seemingly oxymoronic homeopathic pharmacy, hiring a so-called celebrity placenta processor seemed to make sense. Even the hospital birth class had suggested the practice of eating one’s own placenta as a natural way to ward off postpartum depression. It’s normal. It’s natural. EvenJanuary Jones is doing it.

Additional potential benefits of a placenta pill included the ability to improve breast milk supply, increase energy and even prevent aging. Talk about a miracle pill! Who wouldn’t sign up for placentophagia, the scientific word (usually referring to animals) for the practice of eating one’s own placenta?

Me — or at least, the prepregnant me. I’ve spent my career helping young women to avoid scams and misperceptions that prey on their body insecurities, and I pride myself on thorough research and general common sense. The old Nancy would have pulled the placenta pills out of a friend’s hand screaming, “You don’t know what’s actually in that! Natural doesn’t always mean good.”

But impending motherhood had shaken me. Delivery room horror stories and tales of baby blues caused my husband and me to spend months educating ourselves to best navigate the worst possible outcomes. So we were blindsided by the one scenario that seemed least likely: an awesome labor and delivery. Still, I was so freaked out about the possibility of awful things happening to me that I started taking the placenta pills as a sort of insurance policy.

After our son’s birth, I was meticulous about what went into my body. I declined all pain medication stronger than ibuprofen, and I even stopped using deodorant, fearing the rumors were true that aluminum might seep into my breast milk. I was a cheerful and healthy new mother. So why did I gobble placenta ground with what the processor mysteriously referred to as “cleansing herbs”? Somehow, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

But in my case, it was a terrible idea. Shortly after my first dose of two pills, I felt jittery and weird. By the next day, after just eight placenta pills, I was in tabloid-worthy meltdown mode, a frightening phase filled with tears and rage. This lasted another couple of awful days before my husband suggested that it wasn’t postpartum mommy madness finally making its appearance, but the hormone-and-goodness-knows-what-else-filled placenta pills.

My husband isn’t a doctor (though he is the son of doctors and has played one on screen), but he was right. After I went cold turkey on the placenta pills, I immediately felt better —exorcised even, of an entity that had willingly left my body but that I had stupidly, and with no medical supervision, scarfed back up.

Motherhood returned to being marvelous, save sleep deprivation. At my six-week checkup, I told my wonderful obstetrician that she should have never let me take my placenta home (medical consent is necessary at most hospitals, and she had somewhat grudgingly plopped my placenta in a to-go plastic bag as soon as I delivered it). While the Internet is teeming with individual pro-placenta stories, they are as anecdotal, and in my case as absurdly off beam, as alien sightings. Eight months later my son and I are fine, but I’m kicking myself for being so gullible without a single shred of proof.

Perhaps one day there will be clinical studies on human placentophagia, and we’ll find out more about the pros and cons of the practice. Possibly we’ll eventually be able to obtain a prescription for placenta processing, to make sure we know what’s really in those “cleansing herbs.” These are all concerns I have with the unregulated process in hindsight, which of course is always 20/20. And I wonder: how many other women are putting their trust in their placenta as a minimizer of baby blues when it very well may be a cause of their mama drama?

Maybe it was sheer coincidence that I went nuts right after I started taking my placental pills and returned to normal almost immediately after stopping. If I had continued, I might not have all this new gray hair, and I might have lost this stubborn baby weight faster. Who knows? I do know that I regret eating my placenta — if only because I am disappointed in myself for letting fear and insecurity cause me to make a potentially dangerous decision without doing due diligence on its safety.

Part of the reason I wanted to eat my placenta in the first place is that I am fascinated by the human body and all that it can do. The placenta is an incredible organ that deserves celebration. But — as with the appendix and other organs that the body tends to deem unnecessary — once it comes out, maybe it should stay out.

1 comment:

  1. Holy crapola Jo - (I almost swore, but remembered I was on blog camera!!). I didn't even know this existed or that people did this!! Wow. I am learning a lot and I can't wait to hear more about it. Do you have to tell your MD about this before you go into labor? Do you have to have a doula to have this done? I'm still a little speechless right now ;o)

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