Placenta Encapsulation
The Tree of Life
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Photo Copyright
Ashllina Rochelle Photographie
~ $200 for Doula Clients
~ $250 for Non-Doula Clients
The Placenta is a beautiful organ that nourishes and protects your baby throughout pregnancy. It also plays an important role in the postpartum process and was divinely designed not only for your baby, but for you as well. The customary process of handling the placenta after birth is for it to be discarded as, “Medical Waste.” However, this beautiful “Tree of Life,” which nourished and protected your baby throughout your pregnancy, can continue to share it’s incredible benefits with you and your baby, long after your birth.
What is Placenta Encapsulation?
Placenta Encapsulation, or Placentophagy, is the practice of preparing your placenta into medicinal pills/capsules for consumption back into the body. Utilizing the medicinal properties of your placenta, helps to restore your Motherly balance in a natural and spiritual way. For many it can be a very sacred, powerful and healing process, allowing the placenta to continue to nourish and protect you and your baby after birth, as well as promoting a more pleasant postpartum recovery.
Why Placenta Encapsulation?
Most mammals (including primates) consume part or all of their placentas. Consider what a Momma Cat does after the birth of each of her kittens. She eats the sac that each baby kitten is born in and then consumes the placenta, immediately. Many women in diverse cultures throughout history have consumed their placentas for re-balancing their bodies after giving birth. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) has used the placenta for its multitude of healing benefits for thousands of years. Your placenta contains your body’s own natural hormones and iron stores, which remain after birth, as well as your baby’s storehouse for everything your baby needed throughout the gestation period. Your placenta also contains all of the information between you and your baby in regards to your labor and birth process, so it naturally contains reserves of what you both need to recover efficiently.
Many women report experiencing more energy, a bountiful milk supply, decreased postpartum mood changes (including postpartum depression), and less bleeding and discomfort after the birth .. overall, a more peaceful postpartum recovery period!
Benefits of Placenta Consumption
- Smoothing the hormone fluctuation after birth, as the body transitions from a pregnant to a non-pregnant state
- Balancing of emotions through the “baby blues” stage
- Reduction in the chances or severity of postpartum depression
- Replenishes vitamins & minerals (specifically iron) lost during pregnancy and birth
- Reduction in postpartum bleeding
- Less postpartum pain/discomfort as the uterus is encouraged to return to it’s pre-pregnancy state
- Helps in establishing a healthy and abundant milk supply
- Commence and encourage the body’s natural healing process
- Return of the body’s natural energy level, sooner after birth
- Increased openness to the bonding process with baby, without many of the barriers created by postpartum depression
- Protection of the “couples bond” from after birth stress and strain
Photo Copyright
Ashllina Rochelle Photographie
The Process
According to TCM, it is imperative that the individual whom is processing your placenta be in a very calm, collected, peaceful and respectful frame of mind while handling your placenta. The energy surrounding the process is just as, if not even more, important than the specific process of encapsulation, itself. The placenta should be handled with the utmost of care and respect every step of the way. The Encapsulation process requires two – three days of prep and work, back to back.
Placenta is gently cleaned, bled-out, steamed, dehydrated (at very specific temperatures), allowed periods of rest, and then ground down into a fine powder to be encapsulated.
It is ideal to schedule placenta care services with me at least 6 weeks prior to delivery, to ensure an available slot for services surrounding your EDD, and making pick-up arrangements smoother.
Even if it has been awhile since your birth, you can still experience the benefits of your placenta. Double-bagged and properly frozen solid within 3 days of birth (Refrigerated within 4 hours of birth), a placenta can be encapsulated even after six months or longer. Blooming Water Lilies will only encapsulate a placenta which has been frozen for no more than 60 days, to ensure no chance of distortion of the internal properties which can be caused by the length of freezer time, or the possibility of improper freezing. If frozen, please thaw the placenta overnight in the fridge prior to pick-up. Encapsulation process will be delayed a full day if placenta is frozen upon exchange.
A Note on the Addition of Herbs
I am often asked by clients if I add, or if I can add, additional herbs to their placenta capsules. It has become common practice by many encapsulation specialists to add a mixture of dried herbs into the placenta capsules during the encapsulation process. There are many reasons for this, such as cleansing and detoxifying the body, promoting healing, and sometimes particular herbs are added as a means of working as a buffer to actually calm the sometimes strong effects some woman experience from their capsules.
Every woman’s body is different and what works for one woman is not necessarily what is right for another. There is no way to know how ones body will respond to a “cleanse” of herbs, especially after such an event as birth. And respectfully, it probably is not the right time to ask anything additional of the Mother’s body at this very vulnerable moment.
While there are many benefits to encapsulation, the main purpose of placenta encapsulation is to promote a smooth transition of hormones while the body transitions from a pregnant to a non-pregnant state.
The placenta is made up of everything unique to that Momma and Baby, specifically, and to allow those properties to work as intended, they need to be uninterrupted or “tainted” by anything additional. Should a Mother have a less than desirable response to an herb which was added to her placenta capsules, then the entire placenta has been wasted and is no longer of use to her. Had the placenta capsules and herbal capsules been taken separately, then she can choose on her own how to adjust the amount she is consuming of both and find the right balance for her body’s needs from week to week.
It is for this reason that I do not, and will not, add additional herbs to an encapsulated placenta. Should you, as the birthing Mother, desire to take additional “healing or cleansing herbs,” alongside your placenta capsules, I would encourage you to do so on your own. Follow your body and be responsive to what your body is telling you in the process.
Hospital Release of the Placenta Organ
HB 1670 – An Act relating to the possession and removal of a placenta from a hospital or birthing center.
Scheduling Services
Register Here
1) Email Shelby to receive the Venmo link to register – BWLBirthCareServices@gmail.com.
2) A non-refundable deposit of $75.00 is due to secure placenta services.
2) Remaining balance is due upon delivery of your placenta item(s).
3) The following information is necessary/required to secure care. When you email to establish care, please include this information:
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- Placenta Services selecting services you want (encapsulation only – encapsulation & Tincture, etc,.)
- Your Full Legal Name (Expectant Mothers Name – For contract purposes)
- Due Date (estimated date of Baby’s arrival)
- Birth Location (ex. Family Birth Center, St. Luke’s Baptist, Home)
- Physical Address (your home address – for delivery after encapsulation)
- Email address (the one that you would like the placenta care contract sent to)
- Phone Number (personal cell for text / phone communications during placenta exchange)
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