Powdered Placenta - How We Did It At Home Ourselves

Warning for the squeamish: There are pictures!

 When we discovered we were pregnant, I had already heard about placenta encapsulation and I knew that we would be doing it. I suffer from inflammatory arthritis and although was currently in remission, I knew that the drastic change in my body's hormones after giving birth could easily send me back into a painful flare. Placenta encapsulation helps to balance these hormones. In addition, I also worried about being able to breastfeed due to my hypothryoid condition. Consuming your placenta also has the health benefit of helping milk production. Lastly, I wanted to make sure to avoid any "baby blues" or post partum depression. Although there are doulas and other professionals that will do the placenta encapsulation for you, my husband and I decided to do it at home ourselves to cut costs. We looked up several recipe instructions on the internet and thought it sounded easy enough to do. Below I'll describe the process of how we did it at home ourselves. By "we", I actually mean my husband. He did all the work.

First of all, we first had to request at the hospital that they not dispose of it and instead keep it for us. They kept it refrigerated until we were discharged. We brought it home in a cooler and immediately started the process.

1. First we cleaned the placenta. He rinsed it under the sink until no more blood ran off and out of it. My husband had to massage it to get it really clean. It took about 10 minutes to fully clean and rinse it under the running faucet.

My placenta was small.

2. Once cleaned, then we steam cooked it in our rice cooker, which made it shrink to almost half in size.

3. After cooking it, then we sliced it up into thin pieces like beef jerky about an 1/8 inch thick. Then spread the pieces onto tin foil or any other non stick surface is fine.

 4. We baked the placenta slices in the oven at 170 degrees, the lowest our oven would go. If your oven doesn't go lower than 200 degrees than you can crack the door open to make sure it doesn't cook too fast and become too hard.  We flipped the pieces every 30 minutes and let them cook for about 1.5 -2 hours. Some of the pieces were thicker than the others and required more time.

5. Once it was done cooking, we used our food grinder to powder it. Once powdered, it can be put into capsules. We decided to forgo the purchase of the capsules; instead, I place a quarter tsp in my daily morning breakfast yogurt.

 There you have it - powdered placenta. It was actually quite easy to do at home ourselves. Even if you don't have the stomach to do it at home yourself, I still highly recommend you find a professional to do it for you! Its helped dramatically with the emotional roller coaster of being a new mom, has definitely helped my arthritis and I haven't had any milk supply issues despite my hypothyroidism.

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In addition to powdering the placenta, my husband also created a tincture. Very simple and easy todayU We let it soak in dark cool place for 6-8 weeks, then once I was finished with the powder, I took a couple of drops of tincture under my tongue whenever I needed extra energy, came down with a cold, or whenever I thought I needed it. 
"Placenta tincture is an added bonus in that it can be used in addition to and long after the capsules are gone.  By tincturing a small piece of the placenta in a high grade alcohol, you can increase the length and benefits of your placenta for both mother and child.  The tincture can be used in any time of trauma, transition, emotional distress and for mother later in life during menopause and even turned into a homeopathic remedy! If you are interested in having enough placenta tincture to last the lifetime of mother and child, you can continue to add 80 or 100 proof high grade alcohol (vodka) to the bottle as the tincture is used, never allowing it to get below half full, or even better, 3/4 full."

UPDATE: 

I chose to do the same for my next pregnancy in addition to a raw placenta smoothie. I birthed at a different Hospital this time, and their procedure was a little different in that they would not keep the placenta until discharge. Rather, they required us to remove it from the building immediately after surgery was done. My sister drove it home to put in our fridge until we got home to prepare it. 

I was discharched from the hospital after three days. Within an hour of getting home my husband had prepares the raw placenta smoothie for me. He did it by using a small chunk of it and blending it into a regular banana and strawberry smoothie. I could not taste it. After just an hour after the smoothie, my milk came in full force. I also believe it helped me with post partum cramping pains, as I was warned with a second child they are often worse, but after the smoothie, I had none! 

Both times after each birth, I noticed on the days I didn't take my placenta that I had less energy. If I skipped a couple days, I would notice a drop in my milk supply. I recommend atleast placenta encapsulation to every pregnant woman I know, but also recommend the smoothie and tincture too.