Laughter, the Best Medicine :-D

The Joy of Placenta

Okay, this may be a squeamish topic for some... But there ARE people out there who DO keep their placenta after giving birth to their children... Some bury them, some keep them in the freezer (and dunno do what), some make art printworks out of them, some cook them and eat them!

i'm not one of the brave ones who dare to make spaghetti sauce out of placenta meat and eat it with pasta(!!!), but i was very intrigued by the rumoured nutritional qualities of placenta and hey, it is said that all mammals eat their own placenta, right? After experiencing a terribly long and tiring recovery period for my first birth, i decided that i would try and harness the nutritional qualities of my second placenta to aid in my recovery from my second birth...

Thanks to the internet and a friend that i made from Asiaparents Forum who shared with me her experience with preparing placenta, this is what i learnt to do with it:

First, you have to freeze or chill the placenta as soon as possible after delivery :-) As my second child was born at home, i really wanted to chuck it into the freezer right after it popped out but... my doctor indicated that he wanted to examine the placenta at the hospital so my doula put it into a freezer bag with ice packs (which she had prepared in advance) and took it to the hospital for us. (She later took it home to freeze it for us and then sent it back to my place after my discharge from hospital)

Next, you have to clean it really well. (If chilled, prepare the placenta as soon as possible so it is "fresh". If frozen, of course must thaw first lah...) My confinement nanny graciously helped me to do this. We weren't really sure if there was a "proper" method of washing the placenta so we just rinsed it several times until the water ran clear (i.e. slightly pink instead of dark red). There was a huge blood clot/bloody tissue which my nanny threw away but in retrospect, i wasn't sure if we were supposed to keep that piece of blood thing :-b

This is what a cleaned placenta looks like

Now, some people find the smell of placenta a little urrgh, so the nice folks at Eu Yan Sang (actually somebody called Mr Ang who is quite knowledgeable about placenta preparation) gave me a small packet of herbs to use with it:

After squeezing half a lemon over the placenta and adding a capful of DOM (if you like), throw the herbs over the placenta together with a few slices of ginger (all these will help to dispel the unpleasant smell):

Squeezing the lemon in

What it looks like just before steaming

The next thing to do is to steam it over low heat for 20 minutes on each side (i.e. you steam it for 20 minutes, then turn the placenta over and steam again for another 20 minutes):

After the first 20 minutes

After steaming is completed on both sides - the placenta shrinks quite a bit!

Now what you need to do is to wait for it to cool down a bit and then slice it into thin pieces - as thin as you can - sort of like making beef jerky:

It really should be thinner than this - would make the drying process much easier!

Place the placenta strips on wax paper or a metal tray to dry out in the sun (best method), in an air-conditioned room (okay but watch out for dust and ants) or in a food dehydrator/oven on lowest setting.

This is how much one placenta yields - doesn't look like alot huh?

Drying the placenta strips on a metal tray under a light

You have to make sure that the strips are completely dry (feeling brittle to the touch) before pounding them into powder for consumption. Some people choose to eat this powder by, e.g. adding it to soup while cooking. i preferred to have it sent to Eu Yan Sang where they powdered the dried strips for me and then encapsulated the powder together with some ginseng for my consumption:

The final product!

Tip: Try encapsulating the placenta powder together with some ginseng (pao sheng) or cordyceps if you don't want the smell of placenta to be too overpowering.....

Beauty Sleep

Gack. i have 2 HUGE eye bags under my eyes. BIG and DARK. i need to sleep more.....

2 Great Women

From the impoverished mining town of Kampar, Perak, came two women.

Born in the same year, 1961, they went to the same local primary school and shared the same teachers, shared the same dreams.

One was an orphan who lived with somebody she called "grandmother"; at the age of 15 she left for Singapore where she supported herself through school and eventually graduated with a Chemistry degree from NUS.

After working 3 years for a major pharmaceutical company, she started her own company using money raised from selling her own car and condominium. After much hard work, her company eventually became listed on SESDAQ and is now worth more than S$1 billion. And she is the only woman to have made it to Forbes' Southeast Asia Rich List. Yes, she is Olivia Lum...

The other woman, on the other hand, got married, moved to Ipoh and became a stay-at-home mum to 4 children. After they grew up and went to college, she went out to work as a confinement nanny.

Yes, she is my confinement nanny. For the past 7 weeks, I have seen how hardworking these Kampar women are; she wakes up at 6 am to prepare herbs, make breakfast, bathe the baby, babysit for me so I can sleep in a little; starts preparing lunch at 10 am, washes up after I've eaten at 12; does the laundry, sweep and mop the floor, cleans the toilet if it's dirty; takes a short nap when the baby is asleep, sends SMSes to her children on her handphone; gets up at 4.30 to help me when my son reaches home from school; starts preparing dinner at 5 pm; makes milk and food for my son when he's hungry; serves hubby and me before rushing off to take a shower as she's in a complete sweat; comes back to clean up, wash up and then have her own dinner; carries the baby into the room (but not before changing her nappy - for the 5th or 6th time), helps to burp her after her milk feeds, rocks her to sleep whenever she wakes up, changes her clothes whenever they get wet or dirty, wakes up in the middle of the night whenever baby cries and carries her into my room (and back again after each feed), the list goes on.... Oh, and did I ever tell you she makes the yummiest char siew I have ever tasted?

As a stay-home-mum myself who often feel left out by government policies (which always seem to favour and esteem working women over SAHMs), I pondered upon these 2 very different women who display very similar qualities. Both are extremely hardworking. Both are dedicated to their work. Both know how to stay focused in order to achieve their goals. But one is a childless, high-achieving career woman while the other is a mother of 4 with no academic track record or corporate credentials on her resume.

Which type of woman does our Singapore government esteem more? They do seem to regard the first one as having an intrinsic economic value whereas the second one does not. After all, how do you put a monetary value on the work that a stay-home-mum does at home? Salary.com may have given us some clues, but it is difficult to arrive at an exact figure when formulating policies in this area. However, it would be great if our government could take that first step towards recognising stay-home-mums first, and the intrinsic economic value that they, too, contribute to the country. After all, we are nation-building too. :-)