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Placenta in my freezer

9 February 2009 4 views 3 Comments

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This post over at The Human Pacifier reminded me that we currently have a placenta issue.

We’ve got J’s placenta in our freezer. It’s been there for almost 4 years now. For awhile, I considered burying it in the backyard, but that never seemed quite right. I always knew we’d be leaving this house, and I never wanted to leave something so personal behind for strangers to live with.

Last summer, when we decided to go on a family camping trip in Upstate NY, I finally realized that the lake we were heading to was exactly the right place for J’s placenta. This was both the place of my yearly childhood camping trips, and also the place where M and I communed with the trees when I was pregnant with him. But you know what happened? We forgot to bring the freakin’ placenta when we left for the 6 hour drive upstate. I can’t tell you how irritated I was when I discovered that fact.

Now we are making this international move, and the placenta is still in the freezer. Obviously we can’t take it with us. Can you imagine what might happen at customs if I tried to breeze through with a ziplock bag with placenta inside?

So a few minutes ago Arp asks me what we are going to do about it. I think I’m going to leave it in his parent’s freezen for now. I know that I will eventually come back, and I know in my heart that I will have to come back to that lake upstate someday. It’s a place that pulls me back like a magnet. So the buriel of the placenta will just have to wait for a little while.

3 Comments »

Sarah said:

Ha ha, now I feel better about the placenta I’ve had in MY freezer for two years.!! This made me smile…

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Couldn’t get your “contact me” page to work or I would have left this there.

# 11 February 2009 at 2:40 pm

kate said:

Now I can’t remember how I happened upon your site. Maybe API? Anyway, yes, what DO you do with placentas? We’re due in 6 weeks and this will be our first homebirth and I’ve heard people keep their placentas for things… but what? I’d like to put all those nutrients to good use. I’ve heard of planting a tree too, but we’re in a rental house right now. I guess I could freeze it, but, yeah, not sure how I feel about keeping a placenta in my freezer for years…!

# 17 February 2009 at 12:49 am

Trish (author) said:

I think people have different reasons for saving them which are very personal. Some people eat a piece of it after the birth, although I haven’t tried that. I’m a vegetarian, and I think the texture would just about kill me. For me, I just get a little emotional about the placenta because I know it helped me to feed my baby for 9+ months. Sort of like pre-breastfeeding. If I imagine it going in a garbage bag to the garbage dump, it seems like sacrilege. Somehow the idea of it going back to nature, sort of like where it came from, just seems right in my soul. So that’s why I think burying it somewhere special will be right for us. And maybe telling my baby where his/her placenta is, someday, will resonate? I hope so. But either way, you will have to find what works for you, what seems right. Maybe my tale will get you off your butt and out to the garden to bury it sooner after the birth than we did. Wouldn’t want to find that placenta in back of the freezer twenty years down the line, eh? Major freezer burn!

# 23 February 2009 at 8:33 pm