Placenta Encapsulation: Part II (Guest blogger Daddy)

Somewhere in my obituary, when I die in February of the year 2100, I want it to mention that I cooked the innards of my wife and watched as she ate them.

Maybe not in the first paragraph, but perhaps between “He tried to be a good father,” and “Today the world mourns the death of the last of the Great Lovers.”

This is meant to be a companion piece, if you will, to Kelly’s description of the placenta encapsulation that we did after Jakiah’s birth. Our doula recommended that I share my experience, being the partner and non-devourer of said placenta (those may or may not have been her words exactly). You know, in case there are any partners who are reading this blog and thinking one or more of the following things:

A) My partner wants to do it, but I’m afraid.

B) I don’t like touching raw meat, let alone raw meat that came from my partner’s body.

C) YOUDIDWHATOHMYGODTHAT’SDISGUSTING – but like a car accident or Jersey Shore, I can’t look away.

D) I’m genuinely curious (or, I Have Been Instructed to Read This By A Person Who Shan’t Be Named But Is Carrying A Baby And/Or Lives With Me).

Whatever your mindset, allow me to share my experience with you. Even if you think it sounds terrible, you can tell your partner you read it, and maybe get some brownie points. And you know what brownie points get you, right? Yep, brownies. Mmm, brownies.

Anyway, somehow we hadn’t heard of placenta encapsulation before Kelly was pregnant with Jakiah (which is kind of weird since we’re non-practicing hippies), and even then it wasn’t until we took a Hypnobirthing class. Kelly did a good job describing what placenta encapsulation is, so I won’t bore you any more than I already have by rehashing it. Basically, you keep the placenta after the birth, take it home, cook it, crush it up, put it in pills, and ingest the pills. A tongue-in-cheek (placenta-in-cheek?) way of describing it would be socially acceptable cannibalism.

So after we (Kelly) did some more research on it, we (real we) decided to go all in and do it. The initial response from our parents was the best part of the decision – it was like we were 18 and telling them instead of going to college we were moving to Los Angeles to be musicians. “Oh…uh…right. You’re very talented sweetheart, but isn’t there anything else you’d rather do? Like, ANYTHING ELSE?” The only one of them who seemed unfazed was my dad. When we told him, the first thing out of his mouth was ‘Oh yeah, like mammals. Mammals do that. And you’re mammals.’ Clearly, my father is a scientist.

After Kelly had Jakiah, and subsequently the placenta, they took the latter to a freezer (which in my head looks just like Mr. Freeze’s lab in the mid-90’s Batman animated series) for safe-keeping. For some reason, it had to stay at the hospital longer than we did (we took Jakiah home after two days, but I couldn’t come back to get the placenta for a week). When I finally did come back, it was like a Monty Python sketch:

RECEPTIONIST: Hi, can I help you?
ME: Uh, yes. I’m here to pick up…um…a placenta.
RECEPTIONIST: (stops typing) A what?
ME: My wife had a baby last week and we left the placenta here. I mean, we couldn’t take it. So they told me to come back and get it. I think it’s here. I mean, I know it’s here, but I don’t know where. Maybe in a giant freezer or something.
RECEPTIONIST: (silence)
ME: Or maybe a small freezer. It wasn’t that big. The placenta, I mean. It was a regular-sized placenta. Maybe a regular freezer.
RECEPTIONIST: (silence)
ME: A placenta.
RECEPTIONIST: (silence, then) Let me call someone. Go ahead and take a seat.

I sat down in the lobby with a middle-aged woman who hadn’t heard the fumbling conversation earlier. And then,

LADY: Did your wife just have a baby?
ME: Yeah, a week ago.
LADY: My daughter is in labor now. Are you here to pick your wife and baby up?
ME: No, they went home a few days ago. I’m here to pick up my wife’s placenta.
LADY: (silence)
ME: Yeah, we’re doing placenta encapsulation. It’s this thing where apparently you take the placenta home and eat it or something.
LADY: (silence)
ME: I mean, not raw, you cook it first, with, like, lemons and ginger.
LADY: (silence, then) Oh. (more silence)

Then, a nurse comes out with the placenta in one of those blood-red hazard bags, holding it away from her body as far as her right arm will allow. I feel like she’s bringing me a bag of poopy diapers or a severed head.

NURSE: Here you go.
ME: Thanks!
LADY: (silence)
ME: (sprints out of the hospital)

I got home and we kept the placenta in the refrigerator for a while until our friend (and midwife-in-training) Sarah could come up and help me with the preparation. It was fun to pretend we were in a Sunny Delight commercial directed by Tim Burton (‘What do you guys want? We got OJ, Purple Stuff, my wife’s placenta – SUNNY D!’).

Sarah arrived at our house after a few days, and we got to work. First, we had to wash all the blood of the placenta, or at least as much of it as we could. I was tempted to make a joke about that scene in ‘Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday’ where the coroner eats Jason’s heart and then becomes Jason, and then I remembered that movie is horrible and no one would get the reference.

After washing, we stuffed it with lemons and ginger, and steamed it on the stove. The smell was admittedly weird (pla-scental!); not GROSS per se, but not something I’d like to smell on a daily basis (kind of like Cheerios or egg salad in that sense). When it was steamed up good, we cut it up into strips and baked it in the oven. Really, the whole cooking process wasn’t really that different from making dinner. So unless you hate making dinner, it’s no big deal.

After the strips were sufficiently cooked/hardened, they went in the food processor to be ground into a fine powder, and subsequently packed into small pill capsules. I think we ended up with something like 72 pills, which I think means Kelly’s placenta was pretty big. I’m still unsure of whether this is something to brag about or not.

All in all, it wasn’t weird. Or gross. It’s certainly not for everyone, but neither is eating red meat, or being a vegan.I would be happy to do it again, or assist someone else who is wanting to do it. Plus that way I can say I've handled your wife's lady-parts and it won't technically be inaccurate.

And if you're wondering, I didn't try one of the pills.

OR DID I?!?!?!?!

(No.)