This time, I'll just eat the placenta. AKA, Will and the bloody fanny-pack.

The perfect crime. (Seriously, I hope it wasn't a crime...)

Because my family has gotten comfortable with my home birthing ways, I felt like I needed to raise the stakes.  I don't like anyone getting too comfortable.  Especially myself.  Whenever I hear of a practice or theory that aligns with my principles and world view while simultaneously being awkward or divisive to explain to others, I sigh to myself, knowing that there is no backing down.  And somewhere out there, my husband shudders, sensing that a stand has been taken.  Enter: placenta pills.

Once new baby is born, I will be calling over a placenta encapsulation specialist who will come over and get to work making me some very one-of-a-kind vitamins. Really, eating my placenta in tidy capsule form seems almost like a cop out, and I have honestly wondered whether I should be more hard core.  Placenta smoothie?  Maybe I am dulling around the edges a bit with age and am now merely a mainstream weirdo.  All in all, encapsulation seems like a pretty easy way to allow one to say "Oh, I ate my placenta." for the rest of her life.  Because, after all, sometimes you just want a quick way to end a conversation.

The benefits of this practice are said to be, primarily, easing post partum blues and aiding breast milk production.  If you've ever felt the sadness that can come after your baby is born, and I have, there aren't many remedies that don't sound doable if they stand a chance at quelling these feelings the second time around.  Maybe they'll work, maybe they won't, but I'm hopeful and more than willing to try it with an open mind.

And then there is Edie's placenta.  Which I did not eat.  But did have a good old time with, way back when.  In Germany, where E was born, it is apparently fairly common to take your placenta home from the hospital and later plant it under a tree.  I don't know the statistics on this practice, but it's not a very out-there thing to do.  Edie was born in a birth house, which was a small practice of just two birthing rooms that was not part of any hospital.  Being a little operation, and probably since it wouldn't be shocking to their clientele, the birth house did not acquire the medical waste license that would be necessary to dispose of placentas and therefore you were required to take yours with you.

While I was given the information regarding my very own placenta pal before the birth, it didn't really hit me until I was sitting in a cab, four hours after giving birth, with a very tiny baby in the car seat next to me and a warm placenta in a yellow plastic bag in my lap.  Even in my fog, I do remember trying to play hide-the-placenta with the cabbie, thinking vaguely that I was not quite secure enough to proudly display it, and that it could be just freaky enough to get us kicked out of his immaculate Mercedes Benz into the January snow.  So, with a sweatshirt draped over it, our little placenta made it home.  And into our freezer.  Where it stayed for some time.

But it didn't go totally unnoticed.  We didn't have a very big freezer after all.  So our conversations might have a "did you check under the placenta?" in them now and again.  Our plan was always to go ahead and do the plant the placenta thing, but the first summer came and went without that happening.

When we were planning for our move back the US, one of us remembered close to the end that something had to be done about our little freezer friend.  It was then summer once more, so Will decided to plant it at last.  We lived in a flat, so we'd have to go into the nearby park to do it.  The Englischer Gartens, to be exact.  Munich's largest and most renowned gardens.  Searching for a placenta carrying device resulted in Will's unearthing of his Mountain Smith, a bag that is really just a large fanny-pack for camping types.

And off he then went, running shorts on, shovel and daughter's 18 month old frozen placenta in tow.  I didn't see the actual planting.  But I do love imagining it.  Will trying to act casual as he veers off the beaten path to find a place where he won't be spotted hastily digging up dirt to, you know, dump a human organ in a hole.  Bless his heart, he returned just a little bloody and with a few photos of the tree now dedicated, whether it likes it or not, to my funny little daughter.

Eating it really is not too bad an option, all things considered.