i planted olive's placenta in the ground yesterday beneath the lilac bush. it was oddly more emotional than i had anticipated. during the last stage of delivery i had lost a few cups of blood and was pretty woozy so i never had the opportunity of looking at it when it was first out. maggie did and apparently it is a very interesting spectacle (i never really wanted to when i had auggie, but i had planned to go over it with our midwife kathy after olive was born.) so it has been in our deep freezer all these months and was now a condensed cold version of it's former life-filled self. my mom helped me dig the hole but then let me have the rest of the experience to myself. when i took the placenta out of the bag i was shocked at what i held in my hands; it looked exactly like a human heart! (i do not feel this was merely by chance of course) how perfect this little miraculous organ nourished and grew my little (now big(ger)) daughter for so long - faithfully giving itself without expectation of any reciprocation except maintenance. well this was my way of paying it back, by giving it another little life to help grow bigger and stronger. so i dug my hands in the earth, i just didn't feel like wearing gloves. for a task such as this i really wanted to feel the dirt mooshed into every crevasse of my hands. that just felt right.
my plan is to now take a photo of olive and i with the bush every year to document all of our growth.
3 comments:
did you plant it in your house now?
we planted all our placentas - except zrg's because it was retained not much was left.
but we planted them all and waited a full year before planting a bush or seedlings on it. we were told that the nourishment was too much and could over nourish a bush/plant - here is a pic of the twins about two feet in the ground.
i cried like a baby the day i put it back in the earth.
http://www.tinypix.com/MyAlbums/PrivateRequest.asp?Rand=7601220&Attachment=0&AlbumID=11816&URL=%2FPhotos%2F200x200%2F1%2Ejpg
i planted it at my parents house. that way we can enjoy it for years and years and years to come.
how did they deal with the retained placenta by the way?
it looked like chopped liver jenny - i had to have a d&c - thus my baby couldn't be with me right after.
but even tho brae was weeks early i demanded his placenta and afterbirth (the teaching hospital wanted it for research).
i'm glad you planted it where it can be with you - braeden's is fertilizing someone's dogwood tree for years to come (we didn't know the twins were coming - so we didn't think we needed a bigger home!)
next year: something exotic will go over the twins! :)
glad to see other people embracing our placentas as the gifts, miracles and magic! they can be.
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