I appreciate you might not feel comfortable eating your placenta raw or in a smoothie, like many of my natural nutritionist friends have gone on to do. This is why exploring the wonderful option of encapsulating your placenta like I did, can make for an easier way to consume the goodness within.
When you are pregnant you create an incredible organ called the placenta. And it is the placenta that connects to the wall of the uterus to allow your baby to receive nutrients from the mother to grow, eliminate waste, exchange gas via the mothers blood supply, fight against internal infection and make hormones to support pregnancy. In short, this powerful organ is your babies life line until it goes on to live outside the womb, which is why I really want to help inspire more women to consider, at the very least, encapsulating their placentas.
Why Wouldn’t I Want to Prevent Postpartum Depression & Increase My Milk Supply?
My personal reasons for wanting to consume my placenta were because I had heard it could help a women not suffer from postpartum depression and can also help a women have a good milk supply. These two reasons sounded logical to me given we also are one of the few mammals that do not eat their placentas after giving birth, and quite frankly why wouldn’t I want to decrease my chances of having postpartum depression and encourage a good milk supply? All naturally of course which is what I loved best!
I strongly believe women have stopped eating their placentas since the art of birthing became over-medicalised in the last 200 years give or take. Ever since doctors were looked to as the experts when it came to giving birth, out went the wise old wisdom of eating your placenta passed on from generation to generation, enter a whole new breed of women as a result of all of this medicalisation. Women who suddenly began fearing giving birth and losing faith in their inner ability to give birth naturally (and the power that could be harnessed from eating their placentas).
Scientific Studies Proving Eating Your Placenta Has Benefits & Did Not Harm Mother or Baby
Whilst when you type in on a search engine ‘scientific studies benefits of eating placenta’, now what appears at the top and all the way to the bottom are repetitive mentions of one study that was released in June this year that found no benefit to women in the post partum depression area when they ate their placentas. But step away from this, and the fact I haven’t dissected that study yet to see how credible and factual the conclusion was, and you go to page two, where you will find a link to a page called ‘Placenta Wise – It’s not weird, or freaky, or gross – it’s science’.
Placenta Wise has listed all 8 studies that has found consuming your placenta to be of benefit to women, for a multitude of reasons.
Why I Could Not Eat My Placenta Raw
I had originally planned to consume my placenta raw, in a smoothie over several days or weeks, in tiny chunks stored in my freezer, but due to my son Kade doing his first poop on the way out of my birth canal (technical term ‘meconium’), I could not. So, instead plan B was employed which was to simply encapsulate it instead.
And as soon as I could muster up the energy after giving birth, I called the lovely Beverley from Birth Your Way to tell her my placenta was ready, and she as quick as a flash arrived at the hospital to collect it from the midwife staff along with my husband, who all knew of this plan and were more than happy to accommodate my wishes.
I then received my capsules within 3 days via first class post. Just in time for when my milk supply was due to come in.
Consuming My Placenta Did Nothing But Good For Me
I suffered absolutely no ill effect from consuming my placenta, in fact I often attribute the fact that I didn’t get postpartum depression and that I went onto breastfeed for 16 months to the fact that I had encapsulated my placenta. Even if let’s say they were all ‘placebo’ effects, and taking the placenta capsules made me positively believe I had a great milk supply or was not going to get depressed and so tricked my mind into not – the point is, taking my placenta in this way caused me absolutely no harm, and none to my beautiful baby boy! As we both demonstrated this by thriving so well after he was born.
To learn more about Beverley from Birth Your Way, encapsulating your placenta and the benefits to health doing so can bring, read the full interview with Beverley here.
1 thought on “Why I Consumed My Placenta In Capsule Form”