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Welcome to the Free Birth Podcast, a supportive space for people who are learning, exploring, and celebrating their autonomous choices in child childbirth. Together, we'll unpack truths, share personal stories, and claim our ability to birth freely and intuitively. Here's your host, Emily
Speaker 1
Saldea. So, Emily yes, Katya? Our mother loving retreat is happening. We're really excited.
Speaker 2
Ugh. Beyond excited. The countdown is on February third through tenth twenty twenty, baby. I also love that it's a full moon.
Speaker 1
And I love where we'll be. It's the most epic fifteen cabana eco lodge overlooking the ocean right here in beautiful Dominican Republic. Tell me
Speaker 2
there's an infinity pool. Yep. And amazing food? What about endless tropical fruit and beach time?
Speaker 1
Oh, yes. And don't forget that while we're there, humpback whales come to birth their babies in Samana Bay right where we'll be.
Speaker 2
Oh my gosh. What should we do the rest of the time?
Speaker 1
How about nourishing yoga and transformational workshops and dancing, drumming, connecting with mama Earth?
Speaker 2
Oh, so good. And the group of women who've already signed up are incredible. So what else? A bunch of surprises and gifts. Like what?
Speaker 1
Like a yummy massage for every woman.
Speaker 2
Okay. What else? I'm not telling. Everyone loves surprises. Mother lovin
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Without the g. Retreat dot com.
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Okay. Hello, everybody. This week's gonna be a little bit different. I decided to finally record an episode I've been wanting to do for a long time, on cord care and placentas, what to do with your placenta, your different options, what to do with the cord. It's probably my most common question that I receive, is what to do with the cord. And so we're just gonna dive in and cover everything that I know about it. Thankfully, it's really, really simple. And, you know, I do just wanna kinda pause here to say or rather to point out, how nuts it is that we've been so indoctrinated into industrialized birth, that so many of us are genuinely confused as to how we would handle things like this ourselves. Not not your fault at all if you're one of those people. Not at all, but just wow. And I'm I'm excited to share this with you because it is really simple, and it can be done, with most likely not needing to purchase anything at all. Okay. So let's dive in. You have birthed your beautiful baby and your incredible placenta, and you now have essentially three options of how to handle the separation of your baby from the placenta. So you can cut it, you can burn it, or you can wait. It's easy to prepare for all of these and just see how you feel. That's what I did, because you might change your mind depending on how things go. For example, I thought that I would do lotus birth. I liked the idea of it, or maybe that I would even eat a few pieces of the raw placenta in a smoothie if I was feeling like I needed extra nourishment. But my placenta was born covered in meconium, which was unappealing to me. I felt great, thankfully, and the smell of the herbs on the placenta later that day was actually very off putting for me. And so after twelve hours, we burned the cord and separated the baby from the placenta. So I'll break all of that down in a minute. But, let's just go to option number one, cutting. So, you know, you see in all the movies, cutting the cord. If you've had a hospital birth, you know, usually the partner is, invited to do this, you know, kind of jokingly attempted ceremonial thing of cutting the the cord. So it's really, really simple. You could use scissors or a knife, really anything sharp. It's not a bad idea to boil it for about ten minutes or so, and then you sever the cord. It's really, really that simple. You wanna leave at least about six inches on the baby's side, and then you wanna clamp the baby's side. You don't have to do anything on the placenta side. And, yes, some people do use ties, and they make cute little ties to use. And that's fine most of the time, But we are a fan of the sterile clamp because there is no chance with using a clamp on baby's side that any blood will leak out from your baby's end, which could actually be quite serious and even fatal. So this is very, very rare, but something to know about, and it's not a bad idea, to have a clamp or two on deck for your birth anyway. For example, in the off chance that the cord snaps and you need to clamp immediately, perhaps even before the placenta is born. So it's totally not common, but it definitely happens. I know some women that it's happened to. So, yeah, option one, cutting. You just you can just boil some scissors or a knife, anything you have in your kitchen that's sharp enough, and then add about six inches minimum, you know, away from your baby. You just cut it. It's really, really simple, and then you clamp it. Like like we already mentioned, you can tie. A lot of women do. But if you had everything available to you, I would go clamp because then there is no possibility that blood is going to, leak in any way from from baby's side. So, hopefully, that's clear. And then moving on to option number two, burning the cord. So this is what I ultimately chose for a few reasons. When you burn the cord, it cauterizes it, so then there's no need for a tire or clamp, and that definitely appealed to me. Also, it felt really ceremonial and really special, and I love fire. So burning the cord is really simple. You wanna protect the baby, of course. You just lay the baby down on a couch or the floor or your bed. We used what we had, so I think Johnny went and found out of the recycling, like, a six pack of beer cardboard container thing, to block her from the area where we were gonna burn the cord. Yolanda was sweet enough to have made me a little square box to put the cord over so that the wax could drip in, but you can totally just use a plate or a bowl, a paper plate, doesn't matter. And then we used beeswax candles because they're nontoxic, and you ideally would want long candles, you know, in a perfect setting. Perhaps you and your partner, should you have one, or your child, if you have an older child, could hold, each candle together and burn the cord together. That was what we did. That was really sweet. You could totally do by yourself as well. And so, I we gave it probably a pretty generous, like, ten inches or so off of the baby. We each took a candle, and it burned together while we played some beautiful mantras of her name. I cried. The baby slept. It was really special. It will probably smell weird, and, there's probably going to make some popping and crackling noises. So that's all normal and just kinda par for the course, though a little strange, I guess. I have heard people say that it can take even up to twenty minutes. It was rather quick for us. I did choose the thinnest area to burn through. Anyway, it's really simple. Do be mindful that wax will melt, and you need a safe place for the wax to fall onto. And I will post on Instagram a picture of our cord burning ceremony so that you have a visual of what the setup looks like. But I I think I had overcomplicated it in my head until we did it. And just like option one, cutting, you know, burning is truly just grab a candle, protect the baby, of course, in case any, like, little sparks or anything flies off, and they will probably just sleep right through it. And then you just burn the cord, and it cauterizes itself, so you don't have to worry about anything. Okay. Moving on. Option three is do nothing, which is also referred to as lotus birth. So lotus birth is considered the most gentle and most natural, way of navigating the cord and the placenta, because it is keeping the baby and the placenta intact until the natural process of separation, which is many days later. So I definitely think it's a beautiful idea. I don't know if it's always practical or desired by a lot of families, but it's absolutely the right choice for others. So what it's what it literally looks like is baby is staying connected, you know, to the cord, then there's a placenta. You have the placenta in some sort of vessel. Some women crochet cute little bags. You could just put it in a bowl. And then a key component that would be ideal both for the smell and the drying process is that every day you're gonna sprinkle salt and whatever dried herbs, lavender, rosemary, whatever you have, sprinkle it onto the placenta as it cures or dries. So the placenta stays in the bowl next to the baby. You sprinkle the salt and the dried herbs on the placenta every day. It dries out. This does, in my opinion, rule out any ingesting of it. I think for most people, it does, but I do know women who have still done it and to each their own. I've always said, you know, think about this like a piece of meat. Would you just keep chicken on your counter for four days and then eat it? No. You you probably wouldn't. But like I said, I I do actually know women who have done it. And I think it was Alexandra's episode, the woman who birthed in the yurt who made placenta tacos after a couple of days, so I guess it was fine. So I think lotus birth is a really romantic idea. And for me, practically speaking, we had a queen bed. I couldn't really wrap my head around it with the and then the cord got cold, and it kept bothering my baby. And so for us, after twelve hours, I figured it would be good to burn the cord instead, and so I shifted gears. If you do wanna do a lotus birth, I think some really, really beautiful aspects of it that are super appealing is that it will keep you from passing the baby around, right, because the baby is attached to the placenta, so you're actually gonna be passing two things around. It will keep you in bed, which is awesome, and it very literally, you know, keeps you still in that immediate postpartum bed bubble, which is a great thing. You know, you're you're not gonna go to Target on day two with your baby and its placenta. Right? So I think that it could be a smart way to set yourself up if you, are someone who's prone to, you know, who who does need that extra nudge to stay in bed. There is a really beautiful book called Placenta, the Forgotten Chakra by Robin Lim that gets super into this, and then more of, like, the mystical side of placentas if you wanna learn more on that. Some things to be aware of, if you have animals in the house, you know, cats or dogs, it's gonna smell amazing to them if you do lotus birth. Right? Or even if you steam it, if you kinda do anything with it out in the open, you know, be mindful of what that is for an animal because I've definitely heard stories of, a mom going to the bathroom and coming back in, and the dog's eating the placenta, which, okay. That's I don't think anybody wants that. That's that's a crazy situation. So, another thing I've heard people do that I don't recommend is, secure it, like, close it with a lid. I think the intention was to keep it from animals, but then it is obviously gonna get really rancid. And in a way, it kinda does start to rot when it's out in the open, and so that's why you're curing it with stuff every day to try to manage that. Yeah. So just, like, let it be out in the open and cure it, and it should only take a couple of days. It begins to dry quite quickly, and it should only be a couple of days. But I do know women who have said that it's taken six, even seven days, which is definitely on the longer side. I think the average, I would guess, would probably be around four. So, you know, also, there's you can, you know, do some variation of all of this. Right? Like, you could do Lotus birth for a couple days, and then if you're over it, then you could cut it. People totally do that. So all of these are fine options. And and, you know, my approach to it was I was prepared for all of them, and then I just wanted to see how it went. I didn't know my placenta would be covered in meconium, so that definitely ruled it out for me of wanting to ingest it. Though, I should say there that you could do if it's a light amount, like, if it's not super soaked if it's super soaked, I'd probably just let it lie. But if, it was just kind of lightly touched with meconium, you could do an apple cider vinegar rinse, and that'll usually work, but, you know, up to your own discretion. Okay. Moving on. So those are the three options. I mean, it's really simple. You're gonna cut it, you're gonna burn it, or you're gonna let it naturally fall off in a couple of days. If you do choose to sever it, something that I think is really important and kind to do is pinch the cord and make sure the baby doesn't react, because sometimes they will even hours later. And then when it is time to sever the baby from the placenta, should you choose to do that, take the time and thank your placenta. Witness it. Acknowledge it. This is an this is a magnificent organ that you grew and shared with your child. You know, tell your baby what's about to happen. Tell your child that it's time to separate from their placenta, and they will be in a new way now, and they will now be nourished from your breast. You know, babies are so wise and so sensitive, and they really appreciate being spoken to with respect. So, you know, anything can be a ceremony. Anything can be ritualized. And to me, this is one of, the saddest examples of how traditions, and and, you know, what what yeah. Traditions have been bastardized in in industrial birth. You know, this, like, notion that the dad should cut the cord and, like, it matters in any way immediately following the birth in a hospital. You know, and there's, like, a photo and, you know, you guys know what I'm talking about if you've seen it. But, you know, there's no actual pause of reverence for why this is a ceremony, you know, why this matters, and thanking the baby and acknowledging that the baby for the first time ever in its life is now on its own. Right? It's no longer connected to what many cultures call the grandmother. So I think that, yeah, there's something there's something they're really sitting with, and even if it's a silent prayer or, just taking that moment to tell your baby and thank your placenta. You know, maybe you wanna touch your placenta. Maybe you wanna hold it. Maybe you wanna check it out. You know, go for it. It's an amazing thing, and, you know, it's something that I didn't really do too much of. Like I said, it was covered in meconium, and it just kinda went in the bowl, and then it just kinda wound up in the freezer once we burned it. And I never really checked it out until a couple weeks later when we buried it, and, I wish I had. Okay. So let's move on. Okay. So now the placenta and the child have been detached through one of these three methods. A few notes on the cord I did wanna mention here is leave it alone. I'm not a fan of putting anything on it unless maybe breast milk, but just leave it alone. It'll fall off in a few days. Two things I wish I had known that somehow I missed was it may stink like a motherfucker. Oh my god. My baby's cord smelled so freaking disgusting. I thought something was wrong, but nope. Just apparently, sometimes it stinks. I've had some moms who've had multiple kids say that some stink and some some others don't. Anyway, we got a stinky one. We could not wait for it to fall off. We actually clothed her to cover the smell the last day before it fell off. We were just desperately waiting for it to fall off. Anyway, so that's normal. And then also when it does fall off, it may bleed on and off, and that super freaked us out, obviously, because blood is scary on a newborn. But it turns out totally normal, and, again, leave it alone. And then I'm not big on baths for the first few weeks, but follow your gut always, you know, you you know best, and that's literally the premise of all of these episodes. Okay. So that's the cord. What about the placenta? We can eat it. We can encapsulate it. We can bury it. We can freeze it and then forget it when we move. We can give it back to the ocean, give it back to the earth. We can give it to your dog. We can throw it away, make tinctures, make art, photograph it. I mean, there's really quite a bit of options. So I'll break down some of the most popular ones or ones that need a little explaining. So ingesting it. It's said in midwifery circles that a piece of placenta or cord in the cheek or under the tongue, can help up all the hormones, oxytocin, and other wonderful hormones that help the uterus contract and, in theory, stop a hemorrhage. I have no idea if this is evidence based, but I have seen it work in real time, quite a few times, and it makes sense to me. So, you know, that was something in my mind that I was open to doing, if I didn't feel great after the birth was I was open to just eating a piece of it, and just putting it in my cheek, but that didn't wind up feeling necessary. Okay. So that's for immediately after. And then there's the raw dog in it, you know, eating it in a taco. I saw a midwife once prepared as carpaccio right after the birth, if you're into that. People I've seen just, like, literally put it in their mouth and eat it. But I'd say most people wouldn't be able to handle that. And then there's smoothies and pills, which are obviously more common and perhaps digestible. So I personally would do smoothies over pills any day, for a couple of reasons. I wouldn't want my placenta leaving my home. I don't want other people really messing with it. I don't want it processed. Raw is going to be way more potent. And in my mind, the idea is to reintroduce the placenta within the first couple of days. So, smoothies are really, really, really simple. You don't have to pay anyone to do it. It's really, really simple. Usually, what I say is just have someone take it into the kitchen, rinse it, you know, in a big popcorn bowl. You can cut off the amniotic sack if you'd like. You can cut off the cord and set that aside to dry it if you'd like. And then you're gonna lay the placenta on your cutting board, and you could cut it into fourteen pieces. This is just one idea. I mean, you could cut a couple and then encapsulate the rest. You could cut a couple and then, bury it or whatever. But in this idea, if you wanted to do all smoothies, a good rule is to just cut it into fourteen pieces, give or take, and then put them in a bowl in the fridge. So now you have two chunks every day. So they're gonna make two smoothies, one chunk per smoothie, every day for seven days. So a couple of things I wanna make sure to mention here is if you don't get to all of them, you need to be assessing them when we get, you know, closer to five, six, seven days, and make sure they always pass the smell test. You know, like I already said about the chicken, like, this is, you need to think about this like meat. It sits in the fridge raw for a couple of days. It should, still be fine, but, if after a couple of days it stops passing the smell test, then, yeah, I would either throw them away or do something else with it. Another thing you could do is after five or six days, you could move the other pieces that are remaining into the freezer and then thus keeping it safe. What else? Oh, so actually making the smoothies, really, really simple. Have someone prepare you a smoothie however you like it, and then just add the piece. And when I say chunk, I'm talking, like, three to five inches, you know, like a decent piece, and you put it in at the end, and you're not gonna taste it. You know, I've always heard blueberries cover the taste, but I've made a lot of them for women over the years, and I've never had anyone say that they could taste it. So I actually know one woman, Maya. Hey, Maya. She did half her placenta in one smoothie, which is kinda hardcore and amazing. So, obviously, this is yours. You do whatever feels right and good to you. But one idea is to cut about fourteen pieces so you have two a day for a week, and I would recommend doing one in the morning and one in the early afternoon. Later in the day, a lot of women report that it gives them so much energy. You don't wanna be, like, wired towards the end of the day. So if you only get to half of them and you're only getting them in the morning, great. And then just freeze the rest or do something else with it. So that's smoothies. Really simple. Don't overthink it. You just cut it up, put it in the fridge, and then throw them in smoothies. It's literally that simple. Okay. What else? Oh, so pills. So pills are the most common, you know, thing happening right now with with the placenta. Usually, pay someone a couple hundred bucks, and they take it away, and they process it. There's two different ways to do it. There's the raw way, and then there's the Chinese method where they steam it with some herbs. I've done a lot of my own tests, and it does seem like women report that they feel the effects of raw more. Plus preparing it the Chinese method way is a lot more clean up, and it smells pretty funky, pretty intense. So I'm not really into that method anymore unless you're, like, a Jehovah's Witness or something where you can't ingest anything, like, any blood, and then I've done it for some women. Anyway, so with the pills, it's something you can totally do by yourself if you want to, if you have a dehydrator. I mean, you could do it in the oven, but I don't really I've never done it that way, so I don't know how to give you instructions for that. You could probably look it up online, though, but it's really, really easy to do yourself. You're literally just gonna cut up small pieces and put it on a dehydrator, and you could put it on parchment paper or whatever. And then it's gonna dry overnight, and then you can grind it up in a magic bullet or some sort of blender or coffee grinder. Now it's powder, and then you can get little capsules at a health food store, and you can put them into capsules, and then you just take them. It's really, really simple. Obviously, that way I'm not gonna explain the Chinese method because it's just to yeah. I don't need to. But it's really simple to do, and you could totally pay someone to do it if you don't want to do it yourself, and that's essentially what they will do at at their home or elsewhere. Yeah. That's pretty much pills. I'm not really into pills. I think I've done them for a lot of women over the years, and I know women swear by it, and this is all anecdotal. Right? So, not to say that they're wrong. I just think that a classic thing that I'm witnessing happen is women are swearing by their placenta pills, having totally birth in a different way with their next baby. So a really common thing I see is first baby, you know, they have the standard hospital birth. It sucks. They have trouble breastfeeding or they have a c section. You know, everything got sabotaged for them. And, of course, then they navigate the murky waters of depression and trauma and and just the challenges that come with that. And then the next baby, they're like, I'm gonna do different things. They're more educated now. Maybe they switch from a OB GYN to a midwife, or maybe they do a home birth and they do placenta medicine and they, you know, don't get the epidural this time or they're not induced and they have a a more normal birth. Maybe they hired a doula or a postpartum doula this time, and they, in general, have a better birth experience. But then for some reason, they're, like, swearing that it's the pills that are the difference. So that's not to, discredit for anyone who who believes that to be true for them. I just think it's a lot bigger scope we need to be looking at of of what has shifted for them or for you. Anyway so there's really no harm to doing it. Anyway, so, obviously, I'm not that stoked on on pills. I just I haven't really seen anything to make me super behind routinely ingesting the placenta. I don't think there's any downside, but I think I guess my hesitation is I see more women putting money into that, and thinking it's a magic cure and then still doing all the same stuff postpartum. And, of course, I'd rather see women hiring postpartum doulas and taking longer times off work or, you know, having their partner stay home and staying in bed and, obviously. Right? So there's no quick fix to the challenges of postpartum, I guess, is the the long and short of what I'm trying to say. Hokey dokey. Let's move on. Oh, tinctures. I wanted to mention tinctures. They're really easy to do, and they're pretty cool. I didn't do them, but I've done them for lots of women, and they're easy. So you just get bottles, get a high brew vodka, and then you're just gonna cut a piece of the placenta. The closer to the cord center, the better, wherever the cord is on your placenta. And cut a piece of the placenta, just a small sliver so that it'll fit into the bottle. Put it in said vodka, and then let it sit for about six weeks, and then you should be good to go. Keep it out of direct sunlight. Keep it somewhere cool like a medicine cabinet. I wouldn't put it in the fridge, but, people make these for themselves for later and for their children to give later once done breastfeeding. You know, again, none of this has been properly studied, but if stored correctly, I don't see the harm. It's kind of a cool idea. I mean, again, like, the with so many of this stuff, I I know women who swear by this stuff who, would say that it balances their children's hormones during transitional periods, that they've used it during their own menopause. That's totally wonderful, and may maybe that's the case. Okay. So if you're not interested in ingesting it, which turns out I was not, burying it is another really beautiful way to hold reverence for it and put it to rest, so to speak. So this is such a dumb comment, but it needs to be said, bury it by itself, not in the plastic bin from the hospital or the ziplock bag that it was frozen in. You would be appalled how many people have told me that they've done that. So I love the idea of burying it, you know, should you have a place where that would be appropriate. I did it a couple weeks after my birth. It went into the freezer, and then it was right before the next full moon. I happened to give birth on a full moon, so it was an exact, you know, moon cycle. The the afternoon we went before the next full moon, and we walked deep into the woods, and it felt very meditative and and peaceful, and it was really beautiful. And I buried it, by myself, and everyone was quiet and just witnessed me. And, yeah, dug into the earth, and and it had thawed out by that point. And I got to feel it really for the first time, and I cried, and I thanked it, and I buried it, and walked away and really felt, a very real closure to the process of birth. And I didn't know that would happen, you know, many weeks later. It was almost a month postpartum, but there was definitely another layer of closure walking away being like my placenta is somewhere, somewhere right, you know, with the earth again. And who knows? Maybe coyotes ate it a couple hours later, and that would be totally fine, or maybe it you know, the earthworms got it, whatever. But something felt really special about that and and, like, a lot of closure there. If you own property, you know, that's beautiful, to do. A lot of people buy trees and plant a tree with the placenta. There's all sorts of things you could do. Some people you know, if you have an apartment, you could if you have a balcony or something, I've seen people do little lemon trees or, small little trees in a pot, you know, that the placenta goes in. I also know of traditions of giving it back to the sea if you happen to live anywhere near a sea or ocean. That's another idea. I heard about that in Hawaii on the big island that it apparently once upon a time with some of the people was to give it back to the ocean on the full moon after the birth, whenever that was, and to throw it into the sea for the sea creatures to enjoy. So, you know, to me, the point is whatever you do, do it with gratitude. Do it with ceremony, because it feels good. Right? It feels good to live in gratitude. It feels good to ritualize these powerful moments because they become markers in our memory. And so, you know, when I look back, I I feel. I can feel what that felt like to dig my hands into the soil and walk away, you know, knowing that my placenta was given back to the island where, where I gave birth on Hawaii. So, you know, you absolutely could throw it away, for sure. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Not everybody has the interest or ability to bury it, and even that. Right? Like, you can give it to the trash and be like, thank you. You're amazing. This you're you're why my baby is here. And you can even do that with reverence and ritual. So, you know, I think that's really, to me, the bottom line about all of this. Alright. So what other pieces of the placenta do we need to talk about? Burying it and eating it, throwing it away, freezing it, and then forgetting about it. That's something I've heard a lot about. Oh, making art. That can be fun if if you're into that. I've never done it, but I've seen a lot of people do it. And you would actually use the blood of the placenta. You could. You don't have to, but, you just get a piece of white, you know, canvas paper and you lay it on the the paper. And then when you peel it off, it's made a beautiful kind of tree of life picture. Of course, photograph it. I think everyone should photograph their placenta or have somebody photograph it. I think it's just so cool and special and, you know, I'm sure you've seen on social media people sharing their placentas and, yeah, I think it's a really, a cool thing that we're starting to care about this thing that was considered hazardous waste or rather still is considered in the Western world. You know, when you read about how the rest of the world treats it and thinks about it, it's quite it's quite alarming what we're doing. So, of course, it obviously speaks to, in general, how we treat birth and women and our body parts, but, that can end with us. Right? And we can start new traditions. I know a woman who kinda did a combination of everything. She ate a couple pieces raw, then did lotus birth for a couple days, and then encapsulated the rest, for her other child, and then rehydrated the cord to get a shape going, and then is gonna make a dream catcher out of it. So there's lots of options. I feel like that's the brass tacks. I mean, this is gonna be a short episode because I really am hoping to get across that this is not a complicated thing. You cut, burn, or or leave your cord with the placenta. You can throw it away. You can bury it. You can eat it. You can make, tinctures and smoothies. You can make tacos if that appeals to you. It's all really simple and easy, easy, easy to do it yourself. And so I did a q and a on Instagram with an announcement of this episode just saying that I would be answering questions. So I'm gonna go through some of those to see if I didn't cover everything I wanted to. What tools are needed to disconnect the cord? Like I said, scissors, fire, knife, you know, pretty simple stuff. I'm sure you have something like that in your home. Okay. Next question is best ways to store and keep the placenta fresh smelling for lotus birth. People normally just put it in a bowl and sprinkle salt and dried herbs on it every day like I had said. Be aware, like I said, that it would be probably amazing smelling to your animals. Also, I don't recommend sealing it because it's just gonna rot in there, which is nasty. People make all sorts of cute little things to put it in, or you could just wrap it in a towel or put it in a bowl. You can cover it with a fabric if you want, if you have people over. Fun ways to preserve the cord. Oh, yeah. I didn't mention this. So I've always just dried the cord into a heart, or if there wasn't enough length for a heart, then I'll do it in a spiral. And if it's really long, I would even be able to spell out a word. Like, usually, I'll do love, which is really cute when it's all dried. And then I've seen lots of women then take their spiral or their heart cord and turn them into dream catchers and other cute artsy stuff. So, I'm not an artsy person, so I've always just done it, like, one or two ways. Eating placenta if you are GBS positive. Great question because it's completely irrelevant. You being possibly GBS positive at the time of birth is irrelevant. It will have no effect. GBS is not a disease. We all have the bacteria in our systems. The test just registers an imbalance. So GBS is in your gut and digestive system, and the placenta is the placenta. It's not related. It is not a risk factor. What do you do about the length of the cord still attached to baby? Nothing at all. Just leave it alone. It will quite quickly begin to dry up and curl into a small little piece of cord. So just leave it alone. Keep it out of the diapers. You can kinda flip it up when you put the diaper on should you be putting a diaper on your baby. What is the ideal length to cut the cord? I would just leave it at least six inches on baby's side. You know, better to air on longer because like I said, it'll dry up really quickly. How long would you feel comfortable waiting for placenta before seeking help? Well, I mean, my question to myself would be, how do I feel? Do I feel great? Do I feel good? Then I would wait as long as it takes. Am I getting shocky? You know, am I bleeding and passing out? Okay. Well, then there's obviously some more urgency. So, personally, there's a lot of things I would do at home before I ever called outside help, or left my home because of a of a placenta not yet born. Mine took two and a half hours. You know, I I know women who it's taken five, ten, fifteen, twenty hours. You know, and I say that delicately because I don't I don't think that's great, but it was completely normal for those people. So, really, you know, my my go to with all of this stuff is how do I feel? I understand the signs of hemorrhage, and, how do I feel? And I can trust that. You know? And you can trust that. If you feel normal and good and, grounded and you're able to talk and you're able to connect with your baby and yeah. Tune in with yourself and and see how it feels. You know, there's obviously a huge scam around the placenta and it needing to come out right away and all of this fear of of hemorrhage and, you know, calling a placenta retained at ten minutes, you know, which I've seen in the hospital too many times. And so this is a a little bit of a paradigm shift for sure. Okay. But this is not an episode about hemorrhage. Let's keep going with the questions. So a midwife once told me that consuming your placenta past one week postpartum does nothing. What are your thoughts? Look. This stuff isn't really evidence based, and I think that there's a heck of a lot more things you could be doing to help your postpartum than eating your placenta. Anecdotally, I know that lots of women swear by placenta medicine, and that's wonderful. Perhaps it's placebo, perhaps it's the hormones, perhaps it's that they finally had a home birth and hired a doula. I mean, who knows? You know, to me, and this is just my opinion, it makes the most sense to use immediately postpartum, if at all. What needs to be sterilized and how far from baby is ideal to cut or burn the cord? In your own environment, nothing really needs to be sterile. I've witnessed many home births where they just use scissors or a kitchen knife unboiled. Yolanda has a wonderful story of her husband just taking out his hunting knife at one of his at one of their children's births and just wiping it off in his jeans and cutting the cord. But I'm not saying to do that. It does not hurt to boil your tools, obviously, and, you know, why not? Any risk of leaving placenta attached to baby for too long? I don't see why there would be any risk. Just use your intuition and your common sense. Will the placenta always come out on its own, or does it need gentle help? That's a great question. In a normal physiological home birth that is undisturbed and nothing has disrupted third stage, yes, the placenta will detach on its own and you may find that you wanna gently assist it to come out. So this can be done laying on your side or squatting on the toilet, standing in the shower, you know, you name it. You'll typically feel uncomfortable and crampy once it's detached. There's usually a gush of blood, and when it's just sitting on your cervix, then you can gently pull on your cord and bring it out. This will all feel very intuitive and very simple to you when it's happening, and hopefully really badass because it is. Adrenaline, disruption, impatience, distraction, I e, any sabotage of third stage can make this very simple process otherwise not so simple. So I guess this is a good area here where I just wanted to quickly say my recipe for what to do if the placenta is staying in and it, has not emerged, and, you're starting to think about wanting it to be out. So what we say in the course is, after about forty minutes, it's wise to have your partner or somebody there, kind of be thinking about it. And, okay, it's been forty minutes. If the placenta has not yet emerged, then it's really wonderful to have someone on your team bring it to your attention and say, hey. It's time to start thinking about the placenta. Not with any sort of rush or stress or pressure, just, hey. Let's bring it back into our consciousness. And so for you as the birthing woman, I think a really, like, easy way of thinking about this is that you wanna get up into a squat. And if you can keep holding your baby and doing skin to skin, hopefully, you're still naked from birth, that's great. I personally handed my baby off or maybe I laid her down. Yeah. Maybe I laid her down while I squatted because I was a little shaky. So either way, do what feels right. And you're gonna get up into a squat and over a bowl, and you and only you are gonna give a really light little tug on the cord and see how that feels. Now it's gonna be pretty obvious if the placenta has detached and and it will come out. You might need to give a little cough or a tug, but, we don't want anyone else pulling on it. Right? Because that could be dangerous and they could pull too hard, which which we definitely would not want. So if nothing happens, you know, you'll know, and then it's okay. Go back to laying down, latch, you know, nurse, skin to skin. You and baby, ideally, are naked. And then a big piece to this for the next twenty minutes or so is we wanna keep the room really quiet. We wanna keep it dark. We wanna keep it mellow. We're not FaceTiming our family. We're not, you know, doing a newborn assessment. We're not doing all of this stuff in the beginning. Right? We just wanna keep it really mellow, low stimulation, just mom and baby connecting, nursing, loving on each other. And that's gonna really help the normal physiological, element of the placenta emerging. So the recipe is every twenty minutes, you're gonna get up and try again. And then if nothing, no worries, go back to resting and nursing and skin to skin. But something that I really wanna impart to you is to remember that your birth is not done until your placenta has been born. So, you know, I hear stories of women who free birth and, they birth their baby and they take a nap or they, you know, they have everyone go home and they just think, oh, the placenta will fall out. And that's okay. That's no fault of theirs. You know, birth and midwifery, knowledge has been completely taken from us. Right? So why should you know anything different? And so I just really wanna impart that the birth is not done until both your baby and your placenta have emerged from your body and you're no longer pregnant. And I'm not gonna get into all of the what ifs and the dangers and all of that. Just, we want the placenta out, but it needs to happen in a in an environment that is conducive to that. So just like in your birth, you're gonna want it to be calm. You're gonna want low lights and no one talking to you. You know, your placenta is the same way. Adrenaline and distraction and disruption, you know, that that is not going to help it release. So a really wonderful thing that I usually say to mamas is, close your eyes, say a prayer, say a gratitude, prayer to your placenta, and tell your body that you're done with it. Placenta, thank you so much. You've done your job, and you can go now. You can be released from my body. I release you. I no longer need you. Thank you. Get out, or any any form of that. And I cannot tell you how many women, once they do that and they tell their body, hey. We're done with the placenta. Release it. And they finally get quiet with that and connect to that and imagine it releasing, plop, placentas out. So, you know, before the tinctures, before all of the stuff, you know, I would keep it really mellow, and remember your birth's not done until your placenta's out. And it's okay if it takes some time as long as you feel well. Like I said, mine took two and a half hours. No big deal. I definitely attended births where it took way longer than that, and it was completely fine. And then sometimes it comes out right away. But no matter what, you know, get back to the basics. Kick everybody out. Get off your phone. We don't need to be taking pictures. And we're gonna, every twenty minutes, get into a squat or you could sit on the toilet, be somewhere private, tell your body you're done, you're ready for it to come out, give a tug on the cord, and it should just come right out. And if it doesn't, then go back to nursing, skin to skin, keeping it really low, you know, low vibes, mellow vibes, and try again in twenty minutes. So hopefully that all made sense. Okay. So next question. Having a hospital birth, how can I stress and be heard about not wanting the cord cut too soon? It's extremely unlikely. In fact, it's basically guaranteed that no one will listen to you or care, about your wishes for your child to receive all of their intended blood, you know, infused from your placenta via the cord after your baby's born. So some people will tolerate a minute or so, but that doesn't scratch the surface of what normal physiological third stage actually is. So there's only a small chance that you'll even be immediately able to receive your child following emergence and an even smaller chance that no one will sever your connection, I'm sorry to say. I would have someone with you whose sole purpose at that time is to protect your cord. Make it abundantly clear to everybody, you know, your medical team when you arrive, and then have somebody being willing to speak up about it. But I will say if you have any presence of meconium, your baby will be cut from you immediately, and taken to the warmer and suctioned. You know, communication before, during, and after, yes, you need to do that, but it's extremely hard to be on the offense when you've just given birth. So, yeah, it's a bummer. I've seen so many staff, like, laugh at the request to delay the cord, cutting, and, you know, one doctor held the baby upside down and said that doulas made up delayed cord clamping, and that the only way that the baby could get, the blood was if they held the baby upside down and below the mother's body. So, yeah, a little outdated. So good luck with that. I'm sorry. It's hard. Okay. How long can you leave a placenta in the freezer and still be usable for smoothies? Anything frozen that sits for a long time is gonna lose potency, obviously. I don't personally see the point once frozen unless it's just been, like, a day or so, but you can make a tincture, I guess. How long does lotus birth placenta take to detach? A few days, two to six. Is it true that eating placenta can decrease milk supply? I've never seen any evidence of this. Anecdotally, I've heard women claim placenta pills do everything under the sun. Give them headaches, increase milk supply, decrease milk supply, give them feelings of euphoria, made them depressed, made them jittery. Yeah. Everything. So I don't know. I don't know much about the studies that that came out a couple years ago, but it basically, from what I gathered, just showed that they didn't really have an effect. Yeah. In the case of short cord that snaps, should I just clamp it or tie it? Yes. Like I said earlier, I would just clamp it immediately on the baby's side. Ideas for what to do with placenta after, I have two in my freezer. Bury it. You could practice placenta encapsulation. You could make art. You could freak your dinner guests out. You could donate to somebody wanting to learn placenta medicine. You could throw it away. You could give it to the sea. Yeah. Lots of options. And then, yeah, resources. I mean, I haven't read a lot of books on placenta. Like I said, there's the one by Robin Lim, the placenta of forgotten chakra, and then there's a lot of nice stuff about it in Sarah Buckley's book, gentle birth, gentle mothering. So, yeah, hopefully, this was helpful and got across. My main intention was, you know, just to say this is really simple. You can do it yourself. You don't need to be a medical expert to figure out how to separate your baby from, the placenta and and your options around it. And whatever you do, do it with intuition and respect and ritual and ceremony and reverence, and and you'll be good to go. Please remember not to take any of this as medical advice as I am not a licensed medical professional in any way nor have I ever claimed to be. This is just woman to woman information that should be available to everybody And, it's highly individualized. So as always, use your own critical thinking and your own research and your own knowledge and your own intuition. And with that, have a wonderful week. That's it for today, everyone. Join us next week for another episode of the free birth podcast. Thanks for joining us, and remember, your body, your choice. Lots of love.
