Before becoming a doula, I never thought much about placentas.
To be perfectly honest, I’m not confident that I even knew that they existed.
Geez, that’s embarrassing, because I’d taught about reproductive health. But the separation between sexual health education and pregnancy education is another soapbox, for another day. (Don’t ask me what I thought umbilical cords were attached to. I don’t have a good answer.)
Hopefully your sex ed was more thorough than what I received, and you weren’t mindblown to learn that we grow not only babies, but entire organs to feed them. Cool party trick, right?
If you have been aware of your placenta, then maybe what I’m about to tell you isn’t news.
But for everyone else, hold onto your hats!
Did you know that after your placenta is born (it happens in what we call the 3rd stage of labor, after the baby’s birth), you can decide what to do with it?
You have choices! Let’s lay them out for you:
The path of least resistance is to allow the medical staff to deal with it. You can choose to look at the placenta, or not. Afterward, the hospital will dispose of it with the other medical waste. If there was something unusual or concerning in your pregnancy or labor, it may be studied in pathology to understand what happened. Otherwise, it is whisked away and you never have to think of that placenta again.
You can choose to take the placenta home with you.
Why would people take their placentas home? I’m so glad you asked!
Some families and cultures have traditions about these things.
You might consider:
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Burying the placenta. You can pray over it, or plant a tree there, to mark your baby’s birth.
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Using the placenta to make an art print. The placenta is sometimes called the tree of life, and prints can be used to commemorate its special place in your baby’s growth.
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A lotus birth, a practice in which the baby and placenta stay attached by the umbilical cord until the cord detaches on its own*.
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Encapsulating the placenta. This is a service that DCMM provides, and our in-home encapsulation allows you to replenish some of the nutrients given to your baby during pregnancy.
*We understand that this ritual has become important to some families. We like to let our clients know that it will likely be challenging in a hospital setting, and encourage them to talk to a homebirth midwife about this. We also like to reassure parents that they can achieve delayed cord clamping with most providers in DC, Maryland and Virginia, which allows for the baby to receive the benefits of oxygen rich blood from the placenta
These are the most common choices that our clients make. It’s pretty amazing what’s possible, right?
As always, we won’t tell our clients what to do with their placentas. Your body, your choice. But we’re happy to help you weigh the pros and cons of any of this. Or support you in never thinking about your placenta again. You get to decide!
Sign up for our live childbirth classes here
