Do-It-Yourself Placenta Encapsulation

After encapsulating my placenta for Little Brother, and learning about the benefits of placenta encapsulation, I decided to do it again with Baby Brother's placenta. You can read more about the benefits of placenta encapsulation here. You can find someone in your area to encapsulate your placenta, and pay them a couple hundred dollars to do it for you. Or you can do it yourself. (It's really not that hard, and kinda fun.)

To start, you need
-a placenta that has been kept refrigerated since birth (preferably only a few days old), or frozen and defrosted prior to encapsulating.
-fresh, organic ginger root
-fresh, organic orange or lemon
-fresh, organic jalepeño
-an encapsulating machine (I have one similar to this one)
-size 00 capsules. You can buy those here.

Then wash your placenta to get the excess blood off. I did mine in the kitchen sink, in a bowl. Here it is still with the umbilical cord attached. Don't use soap! Just warm water is fine.

Then cut off the umbilical cord and the amniotic sac.

Boil the placenta in filtered water with your ingredients for at least 30 minutes. I boiled mine for over an hour.

It will really shrink up after boiling.

Then cut it into pieces not more than 1" thick.

Then you want to dry them. You can do this in your oven at the lowest setting overnight. Just place the pieces on a cookie sheet and bake. If you have a dehydrator, you can use that. I put mine in the dehydrator on the "meat" setting (155*). Then I left it overnight. Here it is in the morning.

Then I ground it up. You can do this in a coffee grinder. I used my Vita-Mix dry blender (the one used to grind flour). If you have something strong that grinds flour, that would work too. I'm pretty sure they would be too much on a standard blender (*says the girl who has killed four blenders*).

You want it in a fine powder.

Then I got out my little capsule machine. You can find these at health food stores, or here. Mine takes size "00" gel caps, and I have some leftover from Little Brother's placenta, so I used those. You can also buy the gel caps here. I opened each capsule, and put the long end into each hole on the base, and the short end into each hole on the top.

Then I poured my placenta powder over the base.

Then I used this little green card (it came with my machine) to smooth all the powder into the holes.

I then used the tamper to push the powder down into the capsules.

Then I filled them again, and smoothed the powder out with the green card.
I pressed the top onto the bottom, and here's what I got:

Here's The Princess (she was my helper), proud as can be at our accomplishment. :-)

The main reasons I like placenta encapsulation are:
- Ingesting placenta postpartum really helps (naturally) reduce postpartum depression.

- (I think this is the coolest one!) You can save your unused capsules (freeze them in your freezer) for menopause. They act as a natural hormone replacement in menopause. And it's totally safe because it's your body's own hormones that you're using! I just think that is the coolest, and can't wait to use mine when I go through menopause.

I personally really noticed a difference in my postpartum disposition after doing this with Little Brother's placenta (I didn't know about this after The Princess' birth, so I didn't do it then). Even with my brother being murdered two weeks after Little Brother was born, I managed to not slip into a postpartum depression. Not that I wasn't deeply affected by my brother's death, but I truly believe in my already-vulnerable-state, it would have been much harder for me emotionally if I wasn't taking my placenta everyday.

There you go! Wasn't that fun?!?

Update On Our Plans

Since it's been more than two months since I posted about out adventure, I figured it was time for an update.

We decided mid-September to move into the RV pre-baby, rather than try to do it with a newborn. The thought of packing up and moving while pregnant was also a little daunting, but I think it was the better option of the two. Considering this has been my easiest pregnancy so far, I was feeling up for it.

So, we began the remodel. First, The Hot Contractor rebuilt the area over the cab. It was all dry rotted, and he even found three ant colonies living under the loft bed! He rebuilt it, and now it's water proofed.

Then he tackled the dry rot in the other areas of the RV. He ended up replacing/rebuilding almost all the other walls, as he kept discovering more dry rot with each removal. It took a little longer than we planned. Once all the walls were done, he repainted them (and the cabinets). We chucked the gold cabinet hardware, and put on our oil rubbed bronze ones. I plan to do a before and after post, and I don't have my "before" pics handy right now, but here's a little sneak peek of the "after".







We also decided to paint the fridge and the gold laced mirror cabinet doors with chalkboard paint. They're super fun! The kids draw on the fridge whenever they have an artistic itch, and we use the freezer part for our grocery list. We've been using the other three (previously gold-laced ones) for our to-do list. Here's a sneak peek.





You'll notice our family shrine here too. :-)

Here's how the bedroom turned out.





The Hot Contractor and I both sewed new curtains. He did most of it, as he worries I might destroy them. Again, justified worry.

Without going into too much detail, we became very stressed as the Mad-Rush-to-Finish-Before-Thanksgiving arrived. We loaded up Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and hit the road! Somehow we made it. It was probably those days working from 7am-11pm for the two weeks prior. Ugh. It was hard, but it's over.

I left Oroville before The Hot Contractor because he had more things to load, and I needed to get to Sacramento to buy our refurbished washer/dryer before they closed. The Princess and I were in the RV, towing The Hot Contractor's work trailer loaded with all his tools. Unbeknownst to us, the ball on the hitch was a little too high, and every time I touched the breaks, I would skid. Sometimes not even stop. It was the scariest drive of my life! We made it (miraculously) to Sacramento 15 minutes before they closed. I told The Hot Contractor how scared I was driving. I thought the brakes had gone out, but he checked everything he could think of, and found nothing wrong with the brakes. He had the thought about the ball on the hitch being too high, and the weight of his trailer lifting the back tires on the RV when I braked. He lowered the ball, and it fixed the problem. I love that he's so knowledgeable, and that he can figure out stuff like this! I felt so safe and protected by him, knowing he wouldn't let us get on the road again until he was sure it was safe. We ended up spending the night in Sacramento, parked in the driveway of the RV salvage place. We left early Thanksgiving morning, and made it to Santa Cruz only a couple hours after we told my in-laws we would be there. I was full of gratitude. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving.