claire

Not-Irrational Fear, Pregnancy, Self-Help

What Alicia Silverstone, January Jones, Kim Kardashian and I Have In Common

Or, that time I ate my placenta and lived to talk about it.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, back up. Did she just say placenta?

Okay I know what you are thinking. This is why I’m giving you ample warning before you continue reading. Here’s the short story: after Avery was born, I was afraid of getting postpartum depression again, so I had my placenta encapsulated and have been taking it in the form of pills for the last seven weeks.

Yes.

Really.

And here’s the end of the story: it totally worked. I feel better now than I’ve ever felt after having a baby before. I feel so good, in fact, that I’m encouraging everyone I know to do this. Seriously. And it isn’t just me. John totally agrees that I’m a different person than the usual post-birth-hormone-crazed-psycho-wife who takes out all her baby frustration on him.

We were both totally grossed out by the idea at first. This is how desperate I was to stay off antidepressants. So, in an effort not to offend or totally gross out all my friends, family, and readers, I’m not writing all about the experience here.

If you are interested, you can read all about my personal experience here.

If you are further interested, read about my placenta’s transformation into magic pills (with pictures!) here.

And if you now think I’m a complete freak and want nothing to do with me ever again, well, okay. I guess that’s the risk I run.

Confessions, Health and Wellness

Placenta Encapsulation: My Story

The first time I heard about “placenta encapsulation” was more than a decade ago, when all the gossip columns and TV shows announced that Alicia Silverstone ate her placenta for health reasons. Like most of the world, my ick-o-meter blew off the charts. Ate her placenta?! It was by far the grossest thing I had ever heard.

When January Jones and Kim Kardashian more recently joined that list I sort of chalked it up as little more than a Hollywood trend that some of the “crunchy” moms around me were doing, for some sort of super-mother validation or to simply be edgy. I’m sure even some doctors would say, don’t give me that hippy midwife hooey. Like many other Western, educated, epidural-loving, suburban women I know, I was adamantly against it.

So what made me change my mind?

My Story

I am currently the mother of four children. I have two girls, aged seven and five, one boy, who is twenty-two months, and I recently gave birth to my fourth child, another girl. I experienced severe postpartum depression after my first child was born, very likely the combined result of working-mother stress and hormone imbalance. I took antidepressants for the year following my first child’s birth, and then went on them again after my second child was born in an effort to combat what I assumed was inevitable.

When my son was born, though I probably had a normal amount of mood swings and what they call “baby blues,” I did not experience full blown anxiety or depression like I had before. I was no longer a working mother and I figured this meant I was cured, which is why I was surprised and almost angered when about twelve weeks into my final pregnancy, I knew something was chemically wrong. Instead of postpartum depression, I was diagnosed with prenatal depression and put on Zoloft. The plan was to continue taking this SSRI throughout my pregnancy and postpartum period in order to basically prevent postpartum depression, which was, in all likelihood, exactly where I was headed once again.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not against antidepressants. Now that I have actually needed them, I can say that they definitely work. That said, I hated being on them. It is hard to say which is more preferable: feelings of rage, insecurity, and the occasional impulse to consume my young, or a constant state of emotional nothingness. No appetite. No sex drive. No sadness. No extreme joy. Just a general state of blah, all the time. And, in addition to the blah, headaches, restless leg syndrome, and the ever-present fear of becoming dependent upon a drug that controls my moods.

Weighing these pros and cons, one afternoon, I found myself googling “natural remedies for postpartum depression.” Over and over, placenta encapsulation came up. I started reading personal stories and reviews, and noted immediately that they were overwhelmingly positive.

Most stories sounded a lot like mine. Women who had had multiple pregnancies and experienced postpartum depression. Everyone said basically the same thing: I wish I had known about this sooner; I wish I had done this after all my deliveries.

I admit it. I was desperate. And my desperation for a solution beyond antidepressants eventually outweighed the ick-factor. So I found someone in my area, Paypal’ed her the deposit, and tried to figure out just exactly how I was going to bring up this conversation with my doctor.
//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

How It Works

After reading everything I could possibly read about it, then further discussing it with my doctor and my midwife, I decided not only to go ahead and try this, but planned to document the experience so I could share it with others if it worked.

It turns out, placenta encapsulation isn’t actually as rare as it would seem. I quickly found someone in my area whose business is busting at the seams. She is a certified placenta encapsulation specialist, which means she went through a standardized training course from the “oldest, largest, and most recognized placenta encapsulation organization in the world” (for what that’s worth). Her website is full of helpful information and personal experience stories.

For those, like me, wondering exactly how everything works, here’s a general breakdown of the order of events:

Make the decision and sign up while you are still pregnant. I talked to my doctor, contacted the specialist via email, signed some legal paperwork, and paid the fee (which can be as low as $150 or as high as $400 depending on your area).
Bring your placenta home from the hospital and refrigerate it as soon as possible. Yeah. Okay. I know how this sounds. Turns out, this wasn’t as big of a deal as I thought it would be, and here’s why. First, more people ask for their placenta after giving birth than you’d imagine. (God only knows why.) But the fact is, it is normal enough that many hospitals have a protocol for it and some even have a special box for you to take the thing home in. (As it was, mine was double-biohazard-bagged and my husband carried it in a cooler to the beer fridge in our garage.) Second, by doing this, your placenta never leaves your immediate control, and you know that it is definitely the same placenta that came out of you that is being made into pills for you, and not someone else’s. I mean, on the scale of gross, someone else’s placenta is by far even grosser than mine.
Contact your specialist when you go into labor or shortly after delivery and arrange for her to come to your house within three days of being home from the hospital. The entire process* takes places inside your own kitchen over the course of two mornings or afternoons. This is a benefit. Unsurprisingly, there are no governmentally regulated facilities in the US that allow for the preparation of placenta pills, and again, when the process happens in your own home, you get to be there to make sure it is your placenta that is being made into magic pills.
Take the pills over the course of the next six weeks or so, until they are gone. According to Jereka, my placenta specialist, an average sized placenta makes about a hundred pills. Mine made a hundred and fifteen. A “dose” is two pills, and the prescription, if you will, is three doses a day for four days, two doses a day for four days, and then one dose a day until the pills are gone.

*Click here to read all about my placenta’s transformation into magic pills. Warning: pictures included.

Okay. So did it work? I say yes. In the last six weeks or so, I’ve tried to jot down a few notes about how I was feeling.

After Just One Week…

As per Jereka’s suggestion, I went cold-turkey and stopped taking Zoloft and my prescription iron pill as soon as I got home from the hospital, despite my doctor’s warning to stay on both for at least six weeks. I have been notoriously anemic in all my pregnancies and actually experienced severe hemorrhaging with the birth of my son, and a prenatal hemorrhage early in my fourth pregnancy. Because these pills are high in iron, I take my first dose with lunch instead of breakfast, to eliminate the combination of iron and calcium. I take my second dose with dinner and my final dose before bed.

Despite the lack of and irregular sleep that comes with newborns, I do not feel at all like a zombie. I have energy. I have mental clarity. All of my extra grandparent help left several days ago. Even so, I have not had any feelings of being stressed out or overwhelmed even though I am taking care of four kids during the day. Also, I have not cried yet. Not even once, which is weird for me anytime, but especially in the days and weeks after giving birth.

I am breastfeeding this baby and I have an abundance of milk, though, I cannot speak to any kind of change in my milk in the last seven days or any major difference from previous babies. And finally, even at the risk of TMI, I’m going to admit that I have had to poop within an hour of taking my first dose every single day this week. All postpartum mothers know such a feat is amazing.

After Four Weeks…

My husband commented about two weeks ago that I am like a different person this time than any other time I’ve delivered a baby. His exact words were, “I don’t know what it is, but I think those pills are working. You are happy. You are actually pleasant to be around. And I know you are different because you are laughing at my stupid jokes that you would normally not laugh about when your hormones are all messed up.”

I still feel great. Physically, my body has gone through the normal healing process that comes with a vaginal delivery. I have been sore and fatigued, but again, not overwhelmingly so. I seem to have an abundance of patience with my children, which, like the lack of crying, is weird for me. My husband has been super stressed out with work in the last few weeks, and even talking to him, I can’t empathize with his stress. I just keep telling him to chill out and not worry about things. It is like I’m on some weird happy-juice that doesn’t allow me to freak out about anything (and I love it!).

I have only cried once, and it was when I received a list of people who would be preparing dinner for my family every other day for six weeks. Tears of joy hardly seem like a bad thing.

Nothing else has changed in my postpartum routine from this baby to the others. I lost all my pregnancy weight in about two weeks (normal for me) and I’m ravenously hungry from breastfeeding. I’m basically eating anything I can get my hands on, which often includes coffee, donuts, cake, and beer. Baby is only waking up once per night, so though it is broken up, I’m still getting seven hours of sleep a day. I have an afternoon slump at about 2 o’clock every day, but again, I still feel productive and pleasant.

And my bowels are still completely regular. Bonus.

After Six Weeks…

My six-week postpartum check up went well, and I had nothing but good things to report to my ever curious doctor. It might be helpful to note that while I’ve been given the go-ahead for sex and exercise, I can’t say that I am terribly interested in either at this point. Hah. Jereka mentioned that many women speak of their libido returning to normal (or better) within a couple of weeks while on their pills. This has not been my experience.

My blood work revealed my progesterone levels to be completely normal for a lactating woman. That is to say, they are low. My hemoglobin level, however, was up. A normal hemoglobin value for adult women is between 11 and 16 g/dL. With all my pregnancies, mine hovered around 9. While still in the hospital after this birth, mine was as low as 8. Right now, it is at 12.6.

I’m a Believer

I never would have taken the time to sit down and write about this experience if I was not convinced that it was worth everything from the price to the potential social ramifications that come with admitting to consuming one of my own organs.

I am convinced.

And I’m not keeping this a secret.

I know I’m not speaking to the entire population when I talk about postpartum difficulty, but for the mamas who have experienced the kind of rock bottom desperation that I have experienced, I cannot encourage you enough to consider this alternate approach to feeling normal again. I am enjoying my newborn. I am enjoying the rest of my large family, and the adjustments we are all making together. I don’t even hate my husband and haven’t once screamed You did this to me! while covered in poop and holding a screaming baby.

If you have any questions or a personal experience to share, please leave a comment below.

* * * * *

Like this post? Would you like to be among the first to see more? Scroll down to the bottom of the page and enter your email to receive my updates the minute they are published. I promise not to spam you, ever, or sell your information to anyone. Hah. No, seriously.

Avery, Confessions

Newborns.

I’m not apologizing for the lack of posts these days. I’m not apologizing that I have a baby who is now more than a month old and I haven’t taken any pictures of her in over a week. We had cleaning ladies come this week (best gift ever) and my house is still gloriously basking in the aftermath of a top to bottom clean. Everyone’s drawer has at least three pairs of clean underwear right now.

I’m killing it.

Avery is not as easy as Isaiah. (Probably no baby in the universe is as easy as Isaiah was.) And so perhaps I’m functioning in a delusion that things are difficult, when really they are just normal. Some days, it seems like she cries a lot and sleeps very little. One such day resulted in a somewhat desperate moment of handing her to my neighbor, who took her and responded totally genuinely with, “Yeah. But you know babies cry. My best advice is to just try not to stress about it.”

I half-heartedly laughed and maybe cried a little myself when she said that. We are nothing alike, this neighbor and I, when it comes to patience with our children. (She is more like a saint, in that area.)

But she was right.

And I’m hearing her words more often, in moments of frustration, and actually loving that she said them. Because the truth is, I have forgotten and I continue to forget. Despite the fact that I’ve done this three times already. I’m not an expert. I don’t hold the secret to happiness for all children (or myself), and all of this goes away about as quickly as it comes on.

Newborns.

I forgot just exactly how tiny they are. Despite how huge they feel in that last month of pregnancy. Despite how much pain they bring with them when they enter the land of breathing oxygen in the form of air. Every senior citizen on Thursday at Harris Teeter is right. They do grow up too fast. And they are so tiny. And there really is never enough time for holding them.

But tiny and precious and angelically perfect while curled up asleep against my chest does not diminish the evil I had forgotten about, that comes from riding in the carseat. The noise. Oh. Dear God. That noise. That relentless shriek that sounds like nothing but pure, unadulterated, ten pound anger. And it doesn’t end. Those moms who are so anti-cry-it-out have clearly never been stuck in the elementary school carline with a crying infant strapped to a carseat. Fact: crying does not kill babies. Despite how many times I’ve thought it might not be such a bad thing.

There is no limit to the range of emotions that such a noise can bring out of a mom, and my button is always pushed right at the ten-minute mark. The round trip from my garage to the carline back into my garage is a solid forty five minutes. I have envisioned careening off cliffs, hitting an ejector button, soccer-style carseat drop kicks. That noise causes the worst road rage I have ever experienced. Note: if a psycho white woman in a black minivan ever gets directly on your bumper and lays on her horn while you drive 35 on Peace Haven just know it isn’t personal and she probably has a screaming baby in the back seat. Also note: if you are driving only 35 on Peace Haven you don’t deserve a driver’s license.

In addition to the noise torture that likely rivals water-boarding, I also forgot just how much poop can come out of such a tiny body, especially at 3am the minute the wet diaper comes off but just before I’ve fully opened my eyes wide enough to locate a replacement diaper. Like soft serve machines, they are, even though their bottoms are no bigger than average sized plums.

This brings me to the laundry situation, the one I had mostly under control exactly five weeks ago. And it isn’t just baby clothes complicating things. Between the baby and the boobs and the number of wardrobe changes in a day, I might as well be taking care of triplets here.

In preparation for a baby I always buy mostly three-month sized sleepers thinking the newborn size look too small for any human that has ever come from my body. I had forgotten how ridiculously huge is the three month sleeper, and how ridiculously small is the hat that comes with it. Jewish clown outfits, those things.

I had forgotten some gloriously perfect things too. Baby farts. Hiccups. The way they learn how to use their voices for good and not evil for the first time. The way they go cross-eyed when they focus on one thing for too long. The way they recognize mama’s voice (or in my case, the schlep of slippers) from across the room. The first time they smile on purpose (which happened this week and John and I both acted like the child had scored her first soccer goal). The chin quiver that is only outmatched in cuteness by the foot quiver.

I love the way I try so hard to wake her up at 11pm for that final top-off, and then work equally hard to get her to go back to sleep at 4am.

For little more than ten-pound-balls-of-goo, these things sure do operate on nothing but extremes. And in those moments of extreme fatigue, or extreme exasperation, or extremely low patience, I’m trying very hard to let the words of my neighbor ring true and I’m really trying not to stress about it.

Confessions

Because She Should Write a Book But She’ll Never Finish It

Meet Tiffani Price. She’s small town Texas girl, mother (two kids, several chickens, probably some goats and horses, and a countless number of dogs and cats), and wife to a man who spends at least half the year on an oil rig in the Gulf. She’s a crazy Right-Wing conservative and outspoken Evangelical who, I trust, has a direct line to the office of God himself. When it comes to habits of organization, patience with children, and our general approaches to home-management, she and I are probably polar opposites.

Yet. I love her.
When I met her over fifteen years ago, she was Tiffani Wright, and she lived across the hall from me at Baylor University. She was a theater major, and the size of her laugh was only outmatched by the size of her hair on a rainy day in Waco. She left school in September when her little brother was tragically killed in a car accident, sad for many reasons, not the least of which was the fact that her only-child roommate who had never cleaned a macaroni and cheese pot in her entire life sort of adopted me and my roommates to help take care of her (for the next four years). I haven’t seen Tiffani since 2003, but I feel confident that if she moved in next door, we’d pick up like we’d been together every day for the last decade.

She does nothing on a small scale. From her house, to her hair, to her heart. I could try to tell you all about how refreshingly honest she is, or how, despite her sense of humor, how much she actually cares about people, but instead, I’ve simply stolen her words from the last few years of Facebook posts, and today I’m calling her a “guest writer.” This isn’t a best-of list, by any means, because I’ve left too much out. But it is good for a chuckle today.

Enjoy.

I tried on a strapless bra today and I’m pretty sure I heard my boobs laugh at me. Well, the right one did. The left one is usually quiet.
Inferiority complex.

Welllll, my web surfing has taught me another very valuable lesson tonight. In the world of high fashion and even higher priced vacations, there is a new term in swimwear. It’s called the “Brazilian bottom.” Now, I figured with my keen vocabulary and the use of context clues I had that one pegged. Nope. Come to find out it does NOT indeed involve the use of spa grade roadside tar or a new role of duct tape. It DOES, however, revolve wholly around the idea that skinny girls like wedgies and that designers know this and will ask said skinny girls to pay $150+ for a bathing suit bottom that gives them one. This proves to me yet again that the amount of calories you ingest directly affects your I.Q. If these skinny girls would just eat a little something every now and then, they would realize they could buy a regular swimsuit for half the price and their hiney would do the rest of the work.
It’s been working for chubby girls for years.
It’s sad, y’all. Somebody needs to organize an intervention.

Ohhhhhh people of the world, you just don’t even KNOW how hard it was NOT to buy Keith a speedo today while looking for swim trunks for him online.
The look on his face when he pulled that thing out of his luggage. . . I can’t even.
I might still.
OMG- this one has an American flag on it.

You know that day when you realize you’re going to be in a swimsuit in two weeks and you need to lose 40lbs in ten days?
It’s that day.
I heard the body wraps are awesome, but I’m pretttty sure the only way that’s gonna work is if I get her to wrap it around my head so no food can get in.

5 am for an 8-y-o’s softball tournament is really pushing the limits of sanity.

So Izaac’s t-ball practices are scheduled for 7:15 – 8:30 pm.
Am I the only person who thinks that’s an INSANE time for a bunch of 5 & 6-year-olds?

Getting passports for the kids. Because you don’t need jack to get in, but you need your family history, a detailed grocery list and a blood sample to get out.

Well it’s official.
I shaved my legs just in time for Mother Nature to decide to spaz completely out.
What a waste of a roll of weed eater string.

Being a mom is all fun and games until you sit on a wet toilet seat.

The ballet was amazing. Well, it was until the middle of the sugarplum fairy solo, when, in a deathly quiet theater, Bella pooted right on my lap. Oh. My. Gosh… I spent the remainder of the show trying desperately to convince everyone around me it was her. Hard to do without talking – and in the dark.

I just almost died. Seriously. I had Bella thrown over my shoulder while we were playing, and right as I was flipping her back up, she reached both hands down my pajama pants… and grabbed my thong. And held on for dear life. Like she was spelunking. So I pretty much used my three-year-old to dismember myself.
I am going tomorrow to apply for disability.

Saw a three-year-old little boy slap his mama in the face repeatedly today at the elementary school during a fit… apparently the “Butt Whipping Fairy” does not visit his house as often as it does mine.

Cereal stinks. It’s supposed to be the “fast and easy” way to serve breakfast.
By the time I clean up the milk and all of the little fruit loops catapulted across the living room, I could’ve made eggs and bacon.

I am WAY too chubby for 100 degree plus weather. Seriously, my sweat is sweating.

We can send a man to the friggin’ moon, but we can’t create a firework that explodes in the shape of Dora?
Common, NASA, get your priorities straight!

Do you think that C.P.S. can come get me for feeding my three-year-old brownies and Doritios for supper?… not that I DID that, but in the event that something like that were to occur in the future….

Breaking a 3 day water fast at Freebirds World Burrito is a BAD IDEA.
So I hear.

I am missing my husband soooo much tonight.
I know I get all ooey-gooey a lot, but I love him so stinking much. I miss him and I appreciate him more and more every day.
And of course the kids have some weird skin rash and I have no idea where to get my registration sticker renewed and there’s a gecko in my bathroom and he needs to be here for stuff like that. I’ve checked, and I’m only good for elementary craft projects and incidents that somehow include farm animals, crazy glue or unfortunate bowel issues.
Love you, Keith. Thanks for handling the crazy.
Now tell me again how I get a new sticker?

It’s almost that time of year!
You know, that time of year when all of the Crossfit, eat right, “check this out you fatties, I just rode my bike to the moon and back while you were eating a donut” crowd starts complaining about all of the extra people at the gym.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

I am the hamburger helper of housekeepers.

You know that night when you vacuum up a bunch of red glitter in a Dyson, look down as it catches the light and think you’ve caught your vacuum cleaner on fire?
Yeah. It’s that night.

So, apparently I had a handlebar mustache that no one was telling me about.
Either that, or the woman who just waxed my ENTIRE FACE is on a personal crusade to eliminate duck face.
Thank you Yeow Chi, but I’d really like my lip back. And please put it on ice for transport.

Found out today that some company has come out with bacon scented deodorant.
Personally, I’m going to be a very unhappy consumer if the marketing plan for this endeavor does not include the phrase “pork pits.”

The bras at JUSTICE are padded.
Padded.
The bras are padded.
I have lost all faith in humanity.

So, I’ve learned a few interesting things while being at Round Top this year.
One- it always rains, bring Wellies.
Two- it’s hot. Wear linen. (Those people dressed like pirates might actually be smarter than you think.)
And three- when you complain of boob sweat and the older lady you’re with tells you the perfect remedy is corn starch, do NOT confuse that with corn MEAL or you could very easily end up with a muffin in your bra.
Now you know.

Health and Wellness

Placenta Encapsulation: How It Works

What Is Placenta Encapsulation?

//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

Placenta encapsulation is a growing trend in alternative health practices among postpartum women. If you are picturing a serrated knife and a bottle of A-1 Sauce, it might help to know that the ingestion of the placenta following birth is neither as primal nor as gross as it sounds.

In fact, it is about as big of a deal as taking vitamins.

If you are interested in why I decided to encapsulate my placenta in the first place, you can read all about it here. My experience with placenta encapsulation has been so positive that I find myself wanting to admit to doing something I once thought sounded pretty disgusting.

The entire process took place in my kitchen over the course of two mornings, and cost a grand total of $230. I asked my specialist (Jereka Hunt of Wombmart) for permission to take pictures and document the experience, and she was more than willing to let me do so.

The Process

Before everything, you must get your placenta home from the hospital and refrigerate it. My husband brought mine home the night I gave birth, double-bagged in those red biohazard bags, and then carried in a cooler. It stayed in the beer-fridge in our garage for only three days before it was made into pills, but I’ve read about women who freeze their placenta and wait to make the pills a full six weeks after giving birth.

Jereka, my specialist, arrived in my home with all the equipment she would need to cook, dehydrate, and turn my placenta into easy to swallow pills. I’d like to take a moment here to note that this woman was about as down-to-Earth as they come. Her appearance was as casual as her demeanor. She was very easy to talk to, and even admitted herself that there was a time she would have been turned off by the idea of consuming her placenta, but after reading about the benefits she finally tried it. She was so changed by the experience she decided to make a business of it. In short, the woman was cool. She mostly kept to herself while she worked, and she didn’t smell like patchouli.

MY kitchen, cleaned, prepped, and ready.

Also, I want to note that my specialist came with every piece of equipment she used, all the way down to the soap used to clean my sink and counters. All I did was stay out of the way.

First, she steamed the placenta with ginger, which is a warming herb. This is a traditional Chinese medicine technique that aids in returning the body to a warm flowing balance and can also include lemongrass and a spicy green pepper.

At this point, everyone wants to know what does it smell like?? To be completely honest, it doesn’t have a strong smell at all. If I thought about it, I might have told you it smelled like someone was cooking a roast in my kitchen, but without a lot of spices. There was just a very faint and pleasant smell like simmering meat. The smell didn’t linger when the cooking process was complete.

When the placenta was finished steaming and cooked through, she cut it up into small pieces and placed them in a dehydrator. The dehydrator sat on my kitchen counter and ran until one in the morning. During this time, there was no smell at all. In addition to dehydrating the placenta, this specialist dehydrates a small piece of the umbilical cord to be made into a memento. (I’m not actually sure what I will do with that. It is currently still sitting in its little bag in my junk drawer. Maybe I’ll hang it on my Christmas tree.)

Cutting steamed placenta into small pieces for the dehydrator.

Umbilical cord memento on the dehydrator.

Once the dehydrator is running, Jereka cleaned everything up and packed up her stuff. Before leaving for the day, she prepared a small cup of warm broth, which is the ginger water the placenta was steamed with. It sat on my counter with a note that basically said it was up to me what I wanted to do with the broth, but that many women drink it and feel immediate and positive effects. I could drink the broth as is, add it to something else, simply take a few spoonfuls, or dump the entire thing down the sink.

I decided to drink it. I found it tasted like a very mild beef bone broth without any salt. It was warm and soothing and within an hour of drinking it, I had lost the urge to lay down and take a nap.

“Mother’s Broth” – weirdly calming, comforting, and energy-providing.

The next day, Jereka returned to finish the process. She worked so quickly, I almost forgot to take any pictures. Basically, she removed the dried placenta from the dehydrator and ground it up (in a Magic Bullet) into a fine powder.

She then put the powder into this handy little pill making contraption. She said that an average placenta makes about 100 pills. That week, one of her coworkers hit a new record and made 189 pills out of one placenta (lucky woman). Mine made 115 pills.

Dried, ground, placenta, put into vegetable glycerin capsules.

As an added (and free) benefit, my specialist also prepared a placenta tincture for me, which is made from 100 proof vodka and the powder from five pills. This tincture takes six weeks to come to full potency, and can be kept indefinitely if stored in a cool dry place. Once the pills run out, the tincture can be used for future hormone balance. Many women take a few drops one or two days each month to ease or eliminate symptoms of PMS. Other women use it to ease or eliminate side-effects of menopause.

Adding the powder of 5 pills into 100 proof vodka to create a tincture.

After just two mornings, I was left with a small jar of magic pills that are safely stored indefinitely in the refrigerator. I started by taking two pills, three times a day, for four days. Then I cut back to two pills twice a day for four days. I finished out the remainder of the pills taking two pills just one time a day. Again, see the link above to read about my very positive personal experience with this.

If you have personal experience with placenta encapsulation, I’d love to hear all about it. Feel free to post a comment below or ask any questions. I’m now open to sharing my story and my experience because I sincerely hope others can benefit from this in the way that I did.

* * * * *

Avery, Confessions

Avery Wait: August 17, 2014

So I suppose it is time for the Internet revelation that I spent the last nine months growing my fourth (and final) baby. Though Isaiah is only twenty-months old, this was a fully planned event, all the way down to attempting gender specificity (didn’t work) and giving birth in the month of the Leo (nailed it). To all my conservative Christian friends, forgive me. I’ve not gone off the deep end of astrological worship, but in the last seven years, I’ve been taking notes of the alignment of the stars and the personalities of each of my children.

John and Isaiah are both Sagittarians. They are my two favorite men in the world. I am a Leo. A very high percentage of my closest personal female (and male) friends are also Leos. I just thought, if we could help it, why not aim to provide a final child who might have the potential to get along swimmingly with both her brother and her mother?

She was due on August twenty-fourth (tomorrow), which is technically Virgo territory. The babe came, on her own, a week early.

I love her for that.

I’m not big on telling birth stories. This is mostly due to the fact that I don’t personally find those of others terribly interesting, and so I assume the same about other people listening to mine. (If you’ve ever torn your ACL, you understand exactly what I’m talking about.)

That said, it might be helpful one day when all the hormones and sleep deprivation wear off, if I have a small record of how things went. After all, when you ask me how big each of my kids were and what day of the week they were born on, I have to dig out the hospital paperwork I never scrapbooked to remember.

I’ll try to keep things short and sweet.

Since last November, I haven’t been posting pregnant selfies or giving weekly updates, so here is everything you missed: pregnancy sucks. Always. Every minute of it. All four of mine were about the same for misery-inducing side effects, though this one was by far the worst for general day-to-day discomfort. In addition to the usual sixteen weeks of morning sickness, six months of acid reflux, and hip and back pain requiring bi-weekly chiropractor appointments just to be able to walk, this pregnancy came with a few extras.

I narrowly survived three (3) stomach viruses which left me exactly seven pounds lighter each time. I experienced a subchorionic hemorrhage (on Eliott’s birthday) in the middle of the grocery store parking lot and thought I was having a miscarriage. I was diagnosed very early on with prenatal depression and put on a low dose of Zoloft, which comes with its own awesome side effects including headaches and restless leg syndrome. My iron was so low at one point I began to experience ocular migraines once or twice a day.

Self induced complications of course include the full time care for three (3) other children, buying a new house and moving, sending (allowing) my husband on an eight day vacation, and living in another state from any and all family members.

That’s the bad.

The good is this. We are a ridiculously spoiled and blessed family, most of which I should probably blame on my husband and how much people seem to like him. It seems that in the worst of things, every time, one friend or another arrived out of nowhere to take our children to Chuck E. Cheese, provide a hot meal on a random Tuesday night, or come over and think nothing of exposure to Noro virus (and say nothing about my DSS disaster of a house) to feed, change, and put my toddler down for a nap while I was passed out on a couch moaning for my mother. Oh yes, and that one also made me toast.

Did I mention spoiled? And blessed?

Last Sunday morning I woke up, showered, and actually got dressed for coffee-duty at church. Nine out of ten people commented that morning about “it” still “being there” and how much longer did I have. (I guess when it appears you’ve shoved a basketball under your dress and are walking around like it’s normal, it is difficult not to comment on the thing.) To almost everyone I replied, “Technically another week, but probably tonight,” just to be sassy.

In all my previous pregnancies I’ve never experienced normal contractions. My water has broken, but I have no idea how contractions outside of the hospital work because I’ve always been put on Pitocin to induce them. At 2:00pm I was having the kind of pains that I’ve read about, but had to text two friends and ask, “How do you know when contractions are real?”

I laid down on my right side for an hour, and when they persisted (coming very slowly and weakly) I packed a bag and told John, “I think we might be going to the hospital soon. The Internet says this is called pre-labor and it could last a week or it could last a couple hours. I’m not going to call my parents just yet, but I’ll text Linda (the one ready to watch our other kids) and tell her to be on alert.”

Then I went out and watered the garden, started some laundry, and came back inside and sat on an exercise ball.

Within ten minutes, the little cramps that had been coming (mildly) about twice an hour suddenly started to come with full force and about every five minutes.

I called my parents. I texted Linda. I ordered pizza. I braced myself against the wall, and told John there was no difference between Pitocin contractions and “normal” ones, and we got in the car and went to the hospital.

Before even giving the nurse my name I ordered an epidural. (I know how these things work and if you don’t get on that ice-cream man’s list good and early it could take a full two hours to get him in your room.)

Epidural kicked in just enough to take the edge off so naturally I turned on Food Network and chilled out a bit. My doctor showed up and broke my water at about seven-thirty, and then the epidural sort of wore off. To men, they say contractions (or giving birth) feels like pulling your lower lip over your head or something dumb like that.

I’ll tell you what it actually feels like. It feels like a steam roller is crushing you from the bottom of your ribs to the top of your knees. It is like the worst bowel movement cramps you’ve ever had times fifty, but instead of just going, and relieving them, they last a minute to two minutes at a time and they keep coming.

For a moment I became the screaming and cursing woman I had just made fun of an hour earlier.

Then suddenly it was time to push.

“No. No pushing,” I said. “I need more drugs. Trust me. I can feel this. I shouldn’t be feeling this. I’m an American.”

The nurse ignored me. It was time to push.

I did so exactly once. She came out at 8:30 (or so).

8 pounds. 5 ounces. Head full of hair. Dark skin like Eliott, super long skinny body like Carter, and after two short shrieks, just as silent and pensive as Isaiah.

Because of my bleeding complications in post-birth with Isaiah and possible scar-tissue as a result, it was actually harder to get the placenta out than the baby. That was another forty-five minutes of pure hell, during which I once again vowed that in the moment I arrive in Heaven my first order of business will be punching Eve right in the face.

(All this for a -pardon the appropriate use of the expletive- God-damned apple?)

But now she’s home. We are home.

And we’re thriving.

Like the rest of my kids, she eats a lot and sleeps a lot and is proving to fall right into her place in line. Each baby was easier than the one who came before it, and so far Avery is no exception.

For the girls, a new baby is very much like getting a new puppy they can’t pet as often as they want, but both are being extremely helpful and motherly. Isaiah is completely smitten and I can already tell he’s going to continue to prove himself as the most-perfect boy who ever existed in my life.

Spoiled. Blessed.

Confessions

Medical Insurance Update – Remember This?

So you might remember almost a year ago when I was going through this:
I Am An Obamacare Statistic

Well. The story ended with pretty good and pretty reasonably priced insurance for John and me, and an erroneous Medicaid flag on each of my children. I can’t remember the exact number, but I believe John and I pay $250 a month for a plan that has a $1000 deductible, an 80/20 split after deductible, and max out of pocket is $4000. A new benefit I’ve taken advantage of this year is covered chiropractor visits, where I only pay a $30 co-pay. So far, I’m not unhappy with this.

My children are a different story. Instead of going through the Government Healthcare Appeal process, I submitted an application for Medicaid. In the meantime, we extended our children’s wellness plan from 2012. Eliott and Carter’s insurance costs something like $84 (each) a month, and Isaiah is closer to $120 a month. They get all their wellness visits covered at 100%, but everything else must be paid in full until we hit a $2500 deductible, which, let’s be honest, isn’t happening. Thankfully, we’ve not encountered any major medical emergencies ever, and our family doctor does stitches and casts for a much lower cost than the emergency room.

Also – no free dental coverage. So we pay for cleanings out of pocket.

Well. Guess what came in the mail last week?

My Medicaid application has only just now been processed. Were we approved? Well, we’re not quite there yet. Nope. This wasn’t an approval or a rejection letter. This was a “request for more information” letter.

I submitted that application last November.

Now they are asking for proof of residency, proof of income, and a couple of signed waivers.

What a freaking joke.

By the time I get the insurance debacle sorted out it will be time to spend 117 minutes on the phone again re-applying for next year’s Obamacare.

Shoot me.

Confessions

Lake Weekend

Forgive me (if you follow me on any other social media) for the picture overload. I’m not usually one to snap daily selfies of me doing the same things everyone else with kids is probably doing. But this weekend was different.

Winding down the summer we finally made it out to my parent’s house on Watt’s Bar Lake. And this year, no rain. School starts in t-minus nine days and I cannot believe it. I’m almost not ready for summer to end. Who am I kidding. I can’t wait. But it has been a very quick and very full summer and one that I can honestly say I’ve mostly enjoyed, despite the fact that John’s stress level has been at an all time high and he and I have almost been apart more than we’ve been together over the past twelve weeks.

Traveling with children is always a little difficult, especially without John (or for him, without me). My sister and brother-in-law do a really good job of attention-spoiling my kids, which is great, and I am completely thankful for the full time kitchen service and a fridge full of ice cream (which has been missing from our dairy-free diet for the last year). So don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining.

But it isn’t like my parents have a completely kid-friendly house. I’ve been working for seven years to establish an abode that provides me the laziest approach to parenting possible. So traveling means a lot more chasing and checking up on small hands that like to touch everything and small feet that aren’t quite experts at stairs yet.

Otherwise, it was a much needed retreat to a land of sun and silliness and I soaked up my share of both. I also got to catch up on some Project Runway without commercials, which was lovely.

Eliott learned how to water-ski, which is actually amazing. This is my overly-cautious about everything kid who almost wouldn’t ride on the tube last year but only went because her daddy went with her. This year she was standing up, riding backwards, and generally showing off her new sense of comfort with the water. It was pretty funny. The best part though, was her motivation for getting up on skis. “I have to get up today so I can beat Uncle Chase.”

And we thought we’d given birth to another Paulus – where the physical/mental athleticism ratio stands at about 98:2. Perhaps she’s got a sense of competition in her yet.

Meanwhile, Carter, who is typically the one to try anything (especially if it trumps what her sister has done) played the fear card and tried to sit out until the last day. We finally lied to her to get her on the tube and she naturally overcame her trepidation within minutes (a feat I previously unsuccessfully performed on Eliott with a loose tooth).

The peer-pressure was apparently at an all time high, because my sixty-something mother even ventured onto the tube at one point, something I’ve not seen her do, maybe ever in my life. Certainly not in the last two decades. It was exactly as funny and awesome as we all expected it to be. I’m only sorry no one managed to get a camera on the boat that afternoon. You’ll just have to take my word for it that it happened.

Isaiah was just content to call for and follow around Pop Pop all weekend. The kid is truly a boy’s boy. Don’t tell me kids aren’t born with a sense of gender identity and gender-ambiguous toys is the only way foster their ability to decide who they want to be. This kid came out with absolutely no attraction to anything pink, at all, and the first time he saw a ball and a toy with wheels, he instinctively knew it was for him. And so, he pretty much only wants to hang out with the men… until he gets hurt (the only time he seems to need me these days). Nature beats nurture.

I have a picture of all three kids in this exact same place at about this age – but Isaiah has been the only one who seemed to know how exactly what to do with the steering wheel.

So with a full summer behind us and the tans to prove it, I’m now frantically scheduling back to school physicals and dental appointments, and scrambling to get the rest of our school supplies. I will once again likely forgo back-to-school open house, and show up at supply drop off as the one and only parent in the entire place who didn’t come the night before. I would say tell me I’m not the only one who does this, but I happen to know that I am because my child is the only one with an information packet left on her desk when we show up first at “meet the teacher” hour.

Alas.

Working hard here.

Books

Summer Reading 2014

I had high hopes this summer for my newly-literate 7 year old, and all the summer reading rewards programs she’d be accomplishing.

It isn’t that she’s not reading.

I’m just not keeping track with all of it. And I’ve sort of stopped caring. The truth is, for everything I complain about when it comes to Eliott, I should probably consider myself pretty lucky that she enjoys school, works independently, and with the exception of handwriting, is probably above average on the relative intelligence scale. I hope she hasn’t spoiled me so much that when it comes to her siblings and homework, I have no will to fight. (Oh please oh please oh please, let me have given birth to only dorky little teacher’s pets like myself.)

Meanwhile, I’ve also taken this summer to check off a few books that have long been on my to-read list. For me, summer reading is mostly about entertainment. Obviously I don’t want to do much thinking, and I also want to feel a sense of accomplishment. More often than not, this means creating a list of library holds on the books that popular movies have come from. And, more often than not, most of these books include the kind of young-adult fiction that carry undercurrents of mind-numbing teenage romance to what might otherwise be perfectly acceptable story lines.

Okay, I admit it. The romance helps.

Book #1: The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky

This book was a little weird, but definitely held my interest. Honestly, I think if I had read it in high school or college I would have felt like I was secretly holding the key to the world in my naive and sheltered little hands. Subjects ranged from popular music, to whiskey, to drugs, and sexual orientation, and because it was all told through the first person perspective of a socially awkward (and way too good with words for his age) narrator, it definitely had a tone of pseudo-intelligence.

A few of my former students chimed in when I posted it on Instagram raging about this books “greatness” and how it changed their lives (and continues to). And I can see where that might be true if I were also still a virgin.

I give this one a my classic “entertaining” stamp. It wasn’t a waste of time, but it certainly didn’t change my life.

Book #2: Running with Scissors, by Augusten Burroughs

I’ve picked up and attempted to read the book more than once, but this time I finally got into it and through it. It took about three days. It was a quick read, and so completely strange, I couldn’t put it down. When I say strange, I actually mean straight twisted. Half of me was thinking, “There’s no way this is true,” while the other half argued with, “There’s no way someone could make this up.”

It was a lot like picking a mildly painful scab. I continued reading, knowing that it wasn’t really going to get better, but not being able to stop. And to be honest, I didn’t hate it. It is a memoir, and I didn’t hate the author/main character. In fact, as easy as it should have been to hate some of the characters, I liked all of them.

It is difficult to recommend this book, however, because it goes down some dark roads and some takes some seriously sexually explicit turns. To recommend this book is a risk in offending someone or opening myself up to a series of judgmental questions. So whatever. Read it if you want to. Just don’t make a personal character judgement on me after you read it if you hate it.

Personally, I liked it.

Book #3: Divergent, by Veronica Roth

Oh man. This one is hard to review. I want to say I liked it. The beginning definitely sucked me in and most of it held my captive interest. It was certainly a new idea (very much in the same vein as The Hunger Games, obviously) and one that was different enough to make me think.

But I just didn’t love the characters. And when I don’t love the narrator, it is hard to say I love the story. And parts of it were tedious and bothersome, though because I’ve been away from a classroom for going on four years, I can’t state specifically how. I think the climax resulting from a conflict not even introduced until the final third of the book might be one place to start. And then, just a ton of rabbit holes for characters who ultimately end up not even making it until the end of the book. Why suck me in to a potential story line only to kill it a few chapters later?

Again. “Entertaining.” Not life changing. I’m a little annoyed that it is an entire trilogy because I certainly don’t have high hopes for the next two getting better as time goes on. This author gives me the sense that the bang! idea she started with was pretty much all she had in her. But I do desperately want to see the movie (and actually think it might be better than the book).

Book #4: Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, by Jenny Lawson

Yes. Let’s.

Oh Lord. I got through about twenty pages of this book and I just had to be done. I had forgotten why/when I put it on my list. It is written by a blogger who calls herself “The Bloggess” and though I don’t actually follow her regularly, I’m guessing there must have been a time when I was finding one or two of her posts relatively entertaining and funny.

To me, this book was like having a person in the room at a gathering who will. not. shut. up. That person who is generally making very little sense, except to assert the obvious desire that everyone be listening to her all the time, no matter what drivel is coming out of her mouth, and no one has the ability nor the courage to cut her off so everyone just sort of shudders every time she interrupts the conversation again. (I actually consciously try to make sure I’m not this girl anymore. I fear there was probably a time when I was.) The book even reads like she was aware she’d be losing her audience and so, mid-sentence or mid-paragraph, she actually types the kind of conversational insecurity that is so common to teenagers and older women who I try to avoid.

Just. Too high on the word count, and way too low on the intelligence/entertainment scale. I rarely put books down that I know I will never pick up again. This is one of those books. Sorry Jenny. I really did want to support you and promote you, but I just can’t. (Oh, and fire your editor.)

Book #5: The Shack, by William P. Young

This is the current choice for my church women’s group summer reading. We very often do book studies. I very often reluctantly plug through them, and try very hard to have something positive to say during the discussion that I admittedly only attended for the fellowship and the food.

I’m not actually finished reading this book and I’m wondering if I will make it through. It isn’t a terrible book. It really isn’t. It is just terrible for me.

First, I hate allegories. I’m not sure if there is such a thing as a non-Christian allegory (I’ve never read one), but I especially hate Christian allegories. I mean, the very purpose of an allegory from what I recall of 9th grade English (as a student not a teacher – I’d never teach an allegory) is to put a complex or an abstract subject into a tangible and visible form so that it is easier to understand. I guess maybe my problem is that I don’t, and never really have, struggled with the ambiguities of the Christian faith, the unanswered questions about God, or the ability to just accept something for what it is without molding it into a play-doh shape that I can display on my window sill.

I’m okay with going through life asking the difficult questions and never fully answering them.

Apparently, from the looks of the best-seller list, I’m a minority in this thinking. C’est la vie. I’ll chug through it and I’ll keep an open-mind during discussions. After all, I do so enjoy the company and the dessert.

This post may contain affiliate links. Read my full disclosure here.

Books, Confessions, Eliott

Summer Reading

I had high hopes this summer for my newly-literate 7 year old, and all the summer reading rewards programs she’d be accomplishing.

It isn’t that she’s not reading.

Okay, I admit it. The romance helps.

Book #1:

I give this one a my classic “entertaining” stamp. It wasn’t a waste of time, but it certainly didn’t change my life.

Book #2:

I saw this movie several years ago. I remember nothing about it, except the scene where Augusten and Natalie decide to bust a sky-light into the kitchen ceiling. I think maybe that was the only similarity between the movie and the book.

Personally, I liked it.

Book #3:

Book #4:

Yes. Let’s.

Book #5:

I’m not actually finished reading this book and I’m wondering if I will make it through. It isn’t a terrible book. It really isn’t. It is just terrible for me.

I’m okay with going through life asking the difficult questions and never fully answering them.