Placenta Encapsulation in Richmond, VA

During HypnoBirthing training my teacher mentioned that her colleague had recently taken up placeneta encapsulation and that it was becoming very popular and I thought to myself “yak” but I was a little curious. Then a couple of months later I was teaching HypnoBirthing to my first couple and the mother asked me what I knew about it and I told her the only thing that I knew which was that it is becoming more popular. I went home and did a little online research about it. I read many testimonials of mothers that had had their placenta encapsulated and then ingested it like a vitamin supplement. These mothers seemed genuinely convinced that their placenta capsules made them feel happy, upbeat, and energetic. Many of the testimonials were written by moms who had a severe case of postparum fatigue and/or baby blues before choosing encapsulation and then felt fabulous after ingesting placenta from subsequent births. So after a bit of research I decided that offering placenta encapsulation would be a good way for me to meet expecting families that might want me to tell them about HypnoBirthing. I decided to pursue training through PBI because the director is involved in academic research on encapsulation and because they have policies that honor laws regarding transporting human tissue and meat preparation. This seemed like the most responsible and well thought out training program after reading about the different ones. Training involved reading alot of original research and rewriting it in a reader-friendly format. Then I recieved a training manual and video and a mentor who I adore. The HypnoBirthing family that had inquired about encapsulation had since decided that they were definately going to encapsulate and I offered to do it so that I could gain experience.

It seemed like that placenta took forever to get here. Of course the baby was exciting too, but I was so anxious to get my hands on the placenta and apply what I had learned. Late in the evening on the night before Christmas Eve it finally arrived. I went over to the families house and the placenta was still very warm when I began working on it. There was no yak factor at all, it was all fascination and I loved doing it. I know you want to know all about it, so I give to you the encapsulation in pictures :)

So here she is! Don’t be jealous, they are rarely this beautiful. The reflection of the placenta around the side of the bowl is perfect. This picture should be in a museum. A placenta is about one-fifth the size of the baby that it supports. This one is very close to 1.5 pounds. So the first thing to do is drain the blood out of the placenta and then steam it.

This is what she looks like steamed. Still beautiful. After steaming the placenta it is sliced into thin strips to be dehydrated. I am not sure why slicing it was the step that had me a bit worried. You don’t want to make a sloppy mess out of someone’s placenta. I had my knife sharpened in preparation. The slicing was not hard at all.

This is what she looks like steamed and sliced. Still beautiful. Then it is put onto trays to go into the dehydrator.

Looks like bacon! At this point the bacon looking placenta strips went in the dehydrator and I cleaned up and returned the next day while the strips dehydrated overnight.

After the strips are dehydrated, they are ground into a powder to be put into capsules for mom.

Here is the ground placenta in the encapsulator being made into capsules. Cool, but not necessarily beautiful :)

And here you have 119 happy pills as they are often called! I felt a little weird about how much I enjoyed doing this, but then I found out that alot of people feel the same way.