This morning in the dentist waiting area while Dylan was getting prepped for his appliance check up appointment I learned something new. Written in the February issue of Peekaboo page 24 in bold letters, Placenta Encapsulation. It caught my eye and I wondered what that meant and was not prepared for what I read right there in black and white, second paragraph, the mother of all mothers. WTF?
"...The process of preparing placenta for ingestion includes several steps..."
Yes, I said ingestion.
It makes perfect sense when you get passed the puke factor. Some of the benefits for ingesting the placenta are milk production, pain relief, hormone balancing, increased energy. It also helps with postpartum depression or baby blues. All of that sounds wonderful when you are recovering from labor and delivery topped off with no sleep and sore nipples. Now that I have sufficiently grossed you out here is the part that is easy to swallow (pun intended). The placenta is washed and steamed, dried and ground into gelatin capsules. You can find a P.E.S (Certified Placenta Encapsulation Specialists) to do this for you in your own home at www.advocatingbirth.com.
Fascinating.
Now, if I can just get my appetite back for dinner.
February 15, 2010
Oh my...what a find. I remember in 10th grade my Health Science teacher was a beautiful Native American woman with long, shiny black hair. I thought she was amazing...until the day in the year when we talked about childbirth. Somehow she snuck in the little tidbit about the placenta ingestion and how common it is in a lot of cultures. Having a younger sister and seeing my mother go through childbirth not many years prior, this was about more than I could handle too. But it is definitely fascintating and gives you one of those 'things that make you go hmmmm.'