WARNING: This blog post may contain images that some viewers find graphic or disturbing. This post contains images of a real human placenta (my placenta) and the encapsulation process following the Traditional Chinese Medicine Method. If you are easily disturbed by blood or graphic images of human organs, please do not continue. Thank you.

So, my husband is amazing.
Like, honestly, he blows my mind sometimes. Early in our pregnancy, we talked about the idea of consuming your own placenta. While we agreed that there probably were many benefits, we (especially I) brushed off the idea. (I mean, honestly, the thought of sitting down to a placenta steak turned my stomach. No offense to all you ladies who consume it that way – you have nerves and stomachs of steel!). Later on in the pregnancy, we came across placenta encapsulation and eagerly brought it to our midwife. She hooked us up with the right woman, a doula in our area, but after hearing the price, we ran far far away.

We had just spent over $400 the night before on our cloth diaper stash, and there was no way we were comfortable with dropping another $300 to have my placenta encapsulated. So, what do you do when you want something done? You do it yourself!

So big A, being the sweet man that he is, stepped up to the job. He had the placenta tucked away in a cooler before my midwife could even finish her uterine “massage”. (ha ha) And his mom had it safely in our refrigerator before the sun went down. After 24 hours in the hospital, my husband stood in the kitchen with his task at hand. And let me tell you, he handled it with such grace.

We decided to follow the Traditional Chinese Medicine Method. I figured capsules would be the easiest way of getting those benefits while avoiding as much of the ick factor as possible.

 

So, if you’ve never seen one, this is a placenta! It’s actually a lot bigger than I thought it would be, and just so cool to look at. It’s important to really rinse as much of the blood from the placenta as you can. After sitting in the fridge for a day or two, it’s common for most of the blood to be coagulated and clotted. Remove the membranes and cord (you can even do a cord keepsake if you want), so that you’re just dealing with one big organ without any frills attached. Below, you’ll find see a photo of the sac – inside is where the sweet little baby lives for over nine months, growing and thriving. I find it so fascinating to look at and am so happy to have this photo.

Once cooled enough to handle, cut the placenta into small strips. The smaller the better! Not only will it make the drying process faster, but it will also make it much easier to turn into a powder. We left ours in the dehydrator overnight (so, about 8-9 hours) and they were very ready when we took them out!

The pieces were put straight into our Ninja blender and blended into a very fine powder. We used a capsule holder (which can be purchased here), and capsules size 00. This was probably the longest and most frustrating part. It’s just time-consuming and easy to spill the powder as it is extremely fine.