144 Capsules of Awesome (or, What I Did With My Placenta)

This post contains "graphic" images of a human placenta, as well as discussion of the ingestion of placenta.  If you don't want to read about these things, then don't read it.  If you still choose to read it, then you can't say I didn't warn you...

I intentionally made the first picture of this post benign-looking for the purpose of thumbnails, on facebook etc, and to avoid shocking those who may stumble upon this post who actually don't want to see the graphic photos.
This is the lid of the jar from my placenta pills.

Lets begin with some interesting things about this placenta.  It was on the large size, as placenta's go.  Here is a picture of the fetal side, with the umbilical cord branching into a "Tree of Life"

Placenta: Fetal Side

Placenta: Maternal side

What is different about this placenta was the maternal side.  It was more...lumpy than normal.  I don't know the correct scientific words to describe this phenomenon.  It was all divided up into separate pieces.  

One possible explanation I heard for this is that it could be nutrition-related and that it is usually associated with small babies.  My daughter, though not really small, at 6 lbs 11 oz, was a whole 15 oz lighter than her brother, my biggest.   She has put on weight really quick, though.  She's 11 lbs 9 oz at 2 months!

Another unsual thing was my baby's umbilical cord, which I didn't get a picture of.  She had a short cord, so short that the only way I could hold her in the water with the cord attached was right against mychest.

Placenta: Maternal Side, another view

The midwives noticed a small gush of blood in the water as the baby was born, and they also said said that her cord did not pulse as long as they typically do.  They think they discovered why when they examined the cord later.  The cord appeared to be damaged. It had three spots, right near each other, where the Wharton's jelly was missing.  They think this damage must have been what caused the blood and the shorter pulsing time.  They said that they had only seen one other cord like that, which was also a short cord, and those spots were right around where the cord had snapped in two as that baby was being born.

So, on to what I did with the placenta.  When I first heard of placentophagy, I thought it was totally gross.  I thought burying it under a tree might be more my style.  But then I had depression in my pregnancy, and wanted to do anything I could to avoid having it postpartum as well.  Although I was hesitant to do something with so little human research evidence, the logic behind it made sense to me and I figured that I didn't really have anything to loose.  Human placenta pills have been used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for thousands of years.  I have a friend who is also a doula and childbirth educator, who recently started training to become a midwife.  And she's a placenta encapsulation specialist.

"After" Picture

My husband heard me tell the midwives that I was considering having this friend encapsulate my placenta, and he asked me why I had to be so weird.  He feels having a homebirth is weird enough, why do I have to go doing things like eating placenta? (Yes, he still thinks homebirth is weird, even after catching our daughter in a plastic pool in our bedroom.  Still thinks its weird, but understands why I prefer it.)

My friend came by about a week after the baby was born to prepare the placenta.  The process is pretty simple.  I watched and we chatted about the birth.  She stuffed the membranes with lemon, ginger, and jalapeno (in attempt to negate the post-pill burp issue) and steamed the placenta (steaming causes it to shrink considerably).

Next, she removed the membranes and diced it up and put it on a foil-lined cookie sheet, which she put in the oven set at the lowest temperature.  She told me to check it after about 8 hours to see if the pieces easily snapped in half, and then to turn it off.  She came the next day to grind it and put it into capsules.  It became 144 placenta pills.

I do believe that taking the pills during the first month postpartum was helpful for me, if nothing else but to increase my iron levels (as I was anemic during pregnancy).  I have had really good postpartum experience, but I've never had issues with feeling depressed after my other births (only ever had a problem during this pregnancy), so it may have nothing to do with the placenta, but I think it has helped at least some.  I take them occasionally now when I feel run down or emotional, and it could be placebo, but it seems to help.  I still have quite a few left.  I have no regrets about doing it.

Pregnancy Update: 36 weeks!

I really have been in denial about this baby coming! Two nights ago, I had some serious feeling pre-birth pressure waves (Hypnobabies lingo for false labor), and I think that made me finally start to accept that this is really going to happen!

I have had two midwife appointments since I posted my last pregnancy update. At my 32 week appointment, I learned that the results of my glucose screen were excellent. I also learned that there had been a mistake with the tube the blood was drawn in for the CBC I had drawn at the same time. I decided to re-draw it because I really wanted to know what my iron level was. The midwife and I discussed the supplements I was taking, and she told me the vitamin D I was taking (2,000 IU) was probably not high enough. A recent study found that routine supplementation with 4,000 IU in pregnant women (ten times the current recommended daily intake) resulted in no harm and better outcomes. Considering that my level was very low in my prenatal blood work (and that was in the spring time), I need to be taking a much higher dose, so I have upped it to 10,000 IU a day.

A couple days later, my midwife let me know the results of my CBC--my iron was low. Not dangerously anemic low, but low enough for me to feel tired. I started taking Floradix, and feel so much better. I realized that the amount of sleep I was needing to function (about 9-10 hours in a 24 hour period) was not normal, and I have so much more energy now. I am keeping my house clean while busy with preschool and Hypnobabies and feel like I'm staying on top of things pretty well! I took it in my last pregnancy when my iron came back a little low at the same time and I thought it increased my energy level then, too. Why didn't I start taking Floradix earlier? Probably partly because Floradix is really expensive...

My 35 week appointment was a nice, long one. We talked about everything we need to do to set up for the birth. I asked about placenta encapsulation, and how I am interested in it but I'm not sure because there doesn't seem to be much definitive evidence out there. She said that everything she had seen about it is very positive. I have a friend who does encapsulation, so I might just have her do mine. The midwife said that they will make sure to take care of the placenta if I decide I want to have it encapsulated.

Somehow we got on the subject of cord clamping and I said that both of my prior two babies had their cords clamped earlier than I wanted. She said that they prefer to wait a long time, because even after all the blood has gone to the baby, there are stem cells that transfer from the placenta to the baby. I said that with my prior babies, they were taken away to be given oxygen, deep suctioning, etc. The midwife explained that it is possible to do those things in the mother's arms. She explained that at a recent neonatal resuscitation class she attended, she demonstrated, using the neonatal resuscitation doll, that the way that people instinctively hold newborns actually keeps their airways open.

The fee for my midwives is paid and the birth kit is ordered! My midwife will be giving me the birth pool next week, and I also ordered a liner to go in it along with my birth kit. I have a student doula who will be coming to the birth to help out with whatever we need--filming the birth, helping with the kids (who I plan to have present, as long as they want to be there and are not bothering me), helping with Hypnobabies tools, etc. I really want to capture this birth on film, which is something I didn't do with my others. I am really happy to give this opportunity to this student doula--I know I appreciate those who agreed to be my first few doula births! She is working on a nursing degree and hopes to eventually do a Masters in Midwifery at Bastyr, so I think seeing my birth will be great for her!

Physiological 3rd Stage, without the "as long as..."

I shared a link to my post A Natural Third Stage with Buscando la Luz after reading two posts on her blog, Birth Faith, called Preventing postpartum hemorrhage naturally and Preventing Postpartum Hemorrhage: a follow-up. She shared it on her facebook page and my live traffic feed has been going crazy with hits to that post. One commenter was a former L&D nurse who said her experiences backed up the theories I wrote about.

If it is true that keeping mother and baby together reduces the risk of hemorrhage, then that is a good reason not to cut the cord immediately. According to Dr. Nicholas Fogelson of AcademicOBGYN,research does not support the current standard practice of immediate clamping. (I also love this post also because of his example of routine episiotomy as a practice that is very obviously passe. I know from a first hand conversation that there are some dinosaur OBs out there who don't stay up to date on research who still use them liberally--I should post about that conversation sometime)

Someone on the Childbirth International e-mail group recently shared a link to a beautiful series of birth photos by Patti Ramos called Emergence. One of the photos shows an attached cord that is simply beautiful. I never knew they were that color.

Later timing of cord clamping may better for both mother and baby. However, after two hospital births where clamping occured earlier than I preferred both times, I have come to believe that physiological cord clamping is still quite rare in hospitals. I think this is partly because they have been conditioned to believe that routine immediate clamping is normal and may subconsiously look for a reason to cut the cord, partly because they have narrow parameters for what constitutes a "healthy" newborn and are quick to provide support, and partly because they aren't set up to provide transitional support to neonates without moving them away from their mothers. Often "delayed" cord clamping is only available at special request and "as long as the baby is doing okay."

In a post at her blog Midwife Thinking, The placenta--essential resuscitation equipment, one homebirth midwife discusses her reasoning for keeping cords intact no matter what and explains how she goes about doing that. She also talks about obstetric pracitces that contribute to the need for babies to be given support. In a response, Navelgazing Midwife shared pictures of the wooden board she brings to births so that she has a hard surface she could use without cutting the cord in case she ever needs to do chest compressions on a baby.

This just goes to show that in some things, both your choice of provider and the equipment aviailable in your chosen birth location can influence what happens in your birth.