Your placenta...

What an amazing organ! It nourishes your baby as he or she grows every moment they are in utero, and it will continue to provide them with oxygenated blood cells and life force for the first couple of hours after birth.

You have several choices as far as what to do with your placenta postpartum...taking it back into your body immediately after birth, burying it, offering it to your midwife, discarding it, or making it into medicine.

Even the easiest of births requires quite a bit of work by your body. Taking placenta medicine postpartum has been known to quicken recovery, restore lost hormones, shorten bleeding time, boost energy, lessen postpartum depression and augment milk production.

Taking it back into your body immediately...

Some joke about cooking it up like you would liver, and that is an actual choice! You would use the same spices and follow the same technique as you would cooking an organ from an animal. Another method is making a smoothie. I suggest using one heaping teaspoon of placenta cut into very small pieces and blending it with yogurt or coconut milk, mangoes, berries and juice.

Burying it...

In a special spot or at the base of a tree that is planted to watch grow as the child grows. The powder can also be used in your garden, which nourishes the earth and the plants.

Offering it to your midwife or discarding it...

Some midwives use the placenta in their own gardens, especially when growing herbs used in their midwifery practice, or it might be used as an educational too for soon-to-be-parents.

Making it into placenta medicine...

I use a Chinese preparation method which entails first gently steaming it. I then dehydrate it and grind it so that I can capsulate it for easier ingestion. I will dry the umbilical cord at the same time. Some keep this as a funky keepsake, others will use it in the future at the child's coming-of-age ceremony.

A combination of these choices...

If several of these ideas appeal to you, I can leave you some to bury and make medicine out of the rest, or whatever combination you wish.

If you would like me to prepare your placenta into medicine for you...

• Make sure that taking your placenta with you is a part of your birth, if having a hospital birth.
• Please let your Midwife know your wishes, if having a homebirth.
• Call me and let me know your approximate due date.
• Have someone at the birth place it into a ziplock baggie or Tupperware container.
• Have someone call me to make arrangements to get the placenta and a $75 payment to me.
• It will be fine for a couple of days in the refrigerator, otherwise put it in the freezer.
• I will return it to you within a few days, with direcitons on how and when to take it.
• If you had a difficult birth (very long, blood loss, etc) please let me know and I will try to get it to you within 24 hours.