Placentophagy

I wanted to include with this post a link to an article about placentophagy so that people could understand the biology behind the practice of consuming the placenta and how helpful it has been for me in my battle with postpartum depression, but unfortunately, most of the links I found when I googled the word were just blog entries by people talking about how "icky" it is.

Placentophagy is the practice of consuming the placenta after birth. It is practiced as a cultural ritual by some, and taken medicinally as a remedy for postpartum depression by others. I have to admit that when my midwife suggested I consume the placenta from MaryElise's birth, I was not enthusiastic about the idea. For one thing, upon googling it, I found instructions for separating the placenta from the membrane and baking it to produce a resulting meal that resembles liver, to be eaten with knife and fork. The idea of handling the placenta so extensively and then eating it as a liveresque main course squicked me out, I admit it. As Tim put it, it was "Too granola even for [me]."

My first memory of liver is that of my Aunt Gladys basically shoving it into my face encouraging me, in her own special way, to "Try it! Try it!". I remember it smelled bad. I didnt "Try it!". The only other experience I have with liver has to do with medical training. With that in mind, I decided that no, I could not filet and then bake my placenta and then eat it with knife and fork. Then my midwife mentioned eating it a different way, one that I could potentially stomach.

You may be wondering why we had the placenta two weeks after the birth. We had saved it in the freezer because I had hoped to plant a tree over it for MaryElise. What we ended up doing with it instead:

We thawed it in the fridge over night, then Tim, God Bless Him, processed it in the blender (which chose to die midway through the task) and poured the resulting froth into ice cube trays. Every day, I remove two cubes and process them in the blender with other ingredients"I to make a smoothie. And I have to say, the smoothies are really quite delicious. Not a hint of placenta flavor (whatever that may be). Mostly Ive been adding blueberries, juice, vanilla yogurt and bananas. Passion fruit juice is my fave so far.

Okay, so that's the how. "What about the why?" you ask.

Well, it turns out that postpartum depression that comes on quickly after the birth is a result of rapid, dramatic shifts in a mother's hormonal balance after birth. I basically had a huge stockpile of estrogen for nine months and then WHAM! none. It's like PMS a thousand times over. I don't know how else to tell you how bad it was except to say "It got so bad that Im eating my placenta in order to get rid of it." Yeah. That bad.

I will keep searching for a decent link. I want people to know about this because I think it's really important that we acknowledge that once again the body's wisdom is so perfect and once again our culture denies this fact by mocking the idea (I even found an entry on a blog site called "empower her" that did nothing but talk about how ICKY the idea is. How empowering!) or by denying the possibility that it actually works without doing any sort of research whatsoever.

oops, baby's crying.

Peace
Heather

MaryElise Kathleen Noonan, Day One 7-22-08

You must forgive me for not having posted this sooner. For some reason, even attempting to log on to the blog site from home crashes our internet explorer, so while I can access the site for reading (not much good when you're the writer) I can not post anything to the blog from home.

Well, she's here.
MaryElise Kathleen Noonan was born on July 22nd 2008 at 5:45am. She was born at home, just inches above our living room floor, where her Daddy did the catching and the cord cutting. My midwife arrived at around four am, after I had been in what turned out to be pretty rapidly-advancing labor since midnight. No contractions at that time, just water breakage. The contractions started around two, I called her at three, and well, the baby was on her way.

When Jen (my midwife) arrived, I had to confess that I had drunk a really putrid disgusting combination of vodka, orange juice and castor oil beginning around six pm the evening before in order to bring on labor. My mucous plug had been making its way out for days and I knew I was ripe. The Wise Woman Herbal for the Childbearing Year had arrived in the mail that day and i decided to go for it once I found the recipe inside. It only works if you are ready to be pushed over the edge, and apparently I was because just like clockwork, after some brief nipple stimulation, my water broke and we were on our way.

I know you are dying to see her as opposed to reading my description, so here is the first-ever picture of MaryElise, taken by Daddy, while the midwife was getting her dressed. She and I had been cuddling all naked and bloody for a while before the midwife cleaned her up a little bit and got her dressed in her tie-dye onesie and a nightgown. We had already nursed at this point, too.

I love homebirth!


The next pictures are of MaryElise and myself taking a Leboyer bath. Google it :-).




And here she is snoozing, looking just like her Mama.


Of course, she is almost a month old as I type this. There is lots more to blog, and I will do so this week, so thank you for your patience and keep checking back!
-heather and maryelise