One of my APPA colleagues, Jennifer Mayer interviewed by New York Daily News!
http://m.nydailynews.com/life-style/ate-placenta-kim-kardashian-article-1.2466658?cid=bitly
December 15, 2015
March 9, 2011
Breech doesn’t have to mean cesarian.
Here is some amazing information including pictures and videos of vaginal breech births. It can be done! Sadly residents are not learning how to support vaginal breech births, so they in turn do not practice it in their practice. Its nice to know the art is still being practiced and passed on.
October 26, 2010
October 24, 2010
Placenta Prints!
I realize this is not for everyone, but some of you have been requesting it, so… I am also offering placenta prints upon request at no additional fee! I will be using thick acid free paper, so as not to affect the process of the capsules and tincture.
October 14, 2010
Interview with Good Food on KCRW
Rene Redzepi of Noma; Eating Afterbirth; Le Fooding; Grapes – Good Food on KCRW.
Take a listen to my interview on Good Food! Click the link and go to the download option where you can listen to last Saturday’s show. If you’re not interested in the whole show, you can skip to my interview toward the end.
July 8, 2010
Now Offering Placenta Tinctures!
In addition to turning your placenta into capsules, I am also offering placenta tinctures at no additional fee!
Placenta tincture is an added bonus in that it can be used in addition to and long after the capsules are gone. By tincturing a small piece of the placenta in a high grade alcohol, you can increase the length and benefits of your placenta for both mother and child. The tincture can be used in any time of trauma, transition, emotional distress and for mother later in life during menopause and even turned into a homeopathic remedy!
It is recommended to allow the placenta to steep for at least six weeks before use. The tincture is very shelf-stable if kept in a cool dark place such as a cupboard, and will last for many, many years.
If you are interested in having enough placenta tincture to last the lifetime of mother and child, you can continue to add 80 or 100 proof high grade alcohol (vodka) to the bottle as the tincture is used, never allowing it to get below half full, or even better, 3/4 full.
Dosage instructions:
– 7 drops of tincture can be put in a glass of water and drunk by the mother during times of transition, trauma, hormonal fluctuations, etc. after her placenta pills are gone. Some women have reported using this placenta tincture to successfully treat the symptoms of postpartum depression, PMS and menopause.
– 3 – 5 drops can be given in water to the child when they are sick, getting sick or in a time of physical or emotional transition. It can be given to a sibling as well but ideally, each child would have their own placenta tincture.
To make into a homeopathic remedy, take the sample of the strained placenta tincture to your Naturopathic Doctor or Homeopath and ask them to make it into at least 6C potency remedy for you or follow the directions found here to make the remedy yourself. I have also recently found a homeopathic lab in England who will make individual placenta remedies for people. If you are interested in that, I can send you their contact info and some general prices.
Once the tincture is diluted down to a homeopathic potency, it will be a constitutional remedy for the baby throughout her/his life. It could be used for many/any constitutional or unusual ailments except when a specific remedy is more appropriate (example: arnica is specific for bruising). The placenta contains all one’s strengths and weakness so treating the child with this remedy will provide balance when there is imbalance. It is like their personal reset button.
The 6C remedy could be used to promote general health, boost immunity, strengthen and balance the child. It may be given twice a day for a child who looks run down, pale, or their appetite needs a boost. It can be given four times a day if the child seems to be coming down with something, has a runny nose or cough, etc. It can also be taken as needed for times of transition or stress like colic, teething, weaning, separation anxiety, 1st day of school, etc.
For more chronic conditions such as autism, cancer or significant injury, a higher potency like 40C or even up to an M dilution would be necessary. This would need to be done with the help and oversight of the child’s naturopath.
Disclaimer
The information on this page has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. The services I offer are not clinical, pharmaceutical, or intended to diagnose or treat any condition. Families who choose to utilize the services on this page take full responsibility for researching and using the remedies.
May 14, 2010
New York midwives lose right to deliver babies at home
Closure of hospital leaves practitioners without backing or insurance, driving home births underground
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- Ed Pilkington in New York
- guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 May 2010 18.51 BST
- Article history
A midwife tests a newborn baby’s reflexes after a home birth. Photograph: Maartje Blijdenstein/AFP/Getty Images
As residents of the world’s consumer capital, New Yorkers can have anything delivered to their door at any time. They can have their hair cut in the living room, have champagne and caviar rushed to them on a whim, enjoy a shiatsu massage in their own bed or invite a clairvoyant to predict their future from Tarot cards laid out on the kitchen table.
But there is one thing that is currently unavailable for delivery to those who live in this most can-do of metropolises. Women can not legally give birth at home in the presence of a trained and experienced midwife.
This city of more than 8 million people, with its reputation for being at the cutting-edge of modern urban living, now lacks a single midwife legally permitted to help women have a baby in their own homes. “It’s pretty shocking that in a city where you can get anything any hour of the day a person cannot give birth at home with a trained practitioner,” said Elan McAllister, president of the New York-based Choices in Childbirth.
The collapse of New York’s legal home birth midwifery services has come as a result of the closure two weeks ago of one of the most progressive hospitals in the city, St Vincent’s in Manhattan. When the bankrupt hospital shut its doors on 30 April the midwives suddenly found themselves without any backing or support.
There are 13 midwives who practise home births in New York, and under a system introduced in 1992 they are all obliged under state law to be approved by a hospital or obstetrician, on top of their professional training.
St Vincent’s was prepared to underwrite their services, but most other doctors and institutions are not, and they now find themselves without the paperwork they need to work lawfully.
Miriam Schwarzschild, one of the 13, is now in the invidious position of either abandoning her clients or operating illegally. “Apparently by taking a woman’s blood pressure I am committing an illegal act,” she said. She has no doubts about what she will do: she will stand by the six to eight women she helps in labour every month, law be damned. She said she intends to “fly under the radar”, but is anxious about what would happen should she be reported to the state authorities. “At any time a nurse or doctor could report me, and once that happens they could go after my licence and shut me down.”
Jitters are spreading among the tiny community of home birth midwives. The rumour has circulated that one of them has already been shopped to the authorities by an obstetrician at a hospital where she transferred one of her clients in need of medical attention.
The crisis of home birth in New York city is an extreme example of a pattern found across America. Fewer than 1% of babies are born at home in the US, and in New York that figure is as low as 0.48% — about 600 babies every year out of 125,000. That compares with a rate of about 30% in the Netherlands.
In much of Europe, midwives play the lead role in assisting most low-risk and healthy women to give birth, handing over to a specialist doctor or surgeon only when conditions demand. In the US, that relationship is reversed.
Obstetricians, who are trained to focus on interventionist methods and often have never even witnessed a natural birth, are in charge of about 92% of all cases. As a body, they are fiercely resistant both to midwives – who under the private medical system in America are their competitors – and to women choosing to remain at home.
In 2008 the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists put out a statement effectively instructing its members to have nothing to do with the “trendy” fashion towards home births. Yet despite Acog’s stance, and despite the fact that the US spends more money on pregnancy and childbirth-related hospital costs than any other type of hospital care ($86bn a year), the country has the unfortunate distinction of having one of the highest rates of maternal mortality in the industrialised world. Its rate stands at 16.7 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with 7.6% in the Netherlands and 3.9% in Italy. Britain’s rate is 8.2%.
On top of that, about one in three pregnancies in the US end in a caesarean section — a product, critics say, of the highly interventionist approach that includes frequent induced labours and epidurals. Amnesty International recently dubbed the US record on childbirth as a whole a “human rights crisis”.
Knowledge of these statistics, and of what is now happening to New York midwives, makes Julie Jacobowitz-Kelly see red. She is one of Schwarzschild’s clients and is preparing to give birth to her first child, a boy she and her partner have already named Benjamin, whose due date fell today.
She said the current illegal status of the home birth midwives was “a travesty, it’s absolutely ridiculous. It angers me that experienced midwives like Miriam are in jeopardy.”
That is a view shared by some senior New York politicians, including Scott Stringer, Manhattan borough president. “There are 600 women who are going to give birth in the next year who want midwives with them at home, and to take away their rights and choices is so backwards it’s embarrassing,” he said.
Midwifery organisations are scrambling to persuade other hospitals to take over St Vincent’s role by signing the so-called “written practice agreements” the midwives need to be legal. So far 75 hospitals have been approached; not one has replied.
Meanwhile, a bill is sitting before the New York state assembly that would scrap the system of practice agreements and allow the midwives to offer their services free of the control of obstetricians. But the bill may not be put to a vote at all this year.
“At the end of the day, hospitals are for sick people, and I’m not sick,” said Jacobowitz-Kelly. “I’m going through one of the most natural processes women can go through, so why do it anywhere other than the most natural setting — my home.”
June 16, 2009
Placenta produces hormones?
The placenta is an endocrine organ, meaning it is a hormone producing organ. The placenta begins producing hormones at 6-8 weeks gestation to help sustain pregnancy. These hormonal levels continually increase during pregnancy, and by the third trimester there are 3 times the normal level of hormones in an expectant mother’s system. By 4-5 days postpartum, these hormone levels will drop to below normal. This is a huge fluctuation going from 3 times the normal level to below normal hormonal level, and this is where the healing properties of the placenta come into play.
Here are just a few of the scientifically known hormones and their functions that are produced by that placenta and are still viable and intact after delivery.
- Prolactin: promotes lactation
- Oxytocin: for pain and bonding; also known as the “love” hormone.
- Interferon: stimulates the immune system to protect against infection
- Thyroid Stimulating Hormone: boosts energy and helps recover from stressful events
- Cortisone: combats stress and unlocks stores of energy
- Hemoglobin: replenishes iron deficiency and anemia
- Gammaglobulin: immune booster that helps protect against postpartum infections
- Urokinase Inhibiting Factor & Factor XIII: stops bleeding and enhances wound healing
These are just a few of the powerful healing hormones that the placenta produces, so doesn’t it make sense to safely welcome these hormones back into your system as well as your baby’s through your breast milk?
Read more about Placenta Encapsulation.
January 23, 2009
National Geographic on Placenta
Granted, they are speaking of cats, but listen to what they stated on the show ‘In the Womb:Cats’ regarding the mother’s ingestion of the placenta.
“Instinctively, the mother eats the placenta, which contains high levels of oxytocin. As this powerful hormone surges through the mother’s blood, it helps her produce milk, but its effects are more than just physical, it has a strong psychological impact. In all mammals, oxytocin stimulates feelings of trust and affection, and it helps the mother bond with her offspring. Without the extra dose, she might reject them.”
I am not trying to say here that if a human mother does not ingest her placenta that she will reject her baby, but its good to know that scientists are acknowledging more and more not only the physical effects of a mother ingesting her placenta, but also the psychological effects. Thanks Nat Geo!
November 28, 2008
The Beautiful Truth
I highly, highly recommend going to see this movie. Whether you or someone you know are suffering from cancer or any other dis-ease, whether you’re looking for prevention, or whether you just want to keep yourself informed with accurate, truthful information. There is a question and answer tonight (Friday) with Charlotte Gerson at the 5pm show, or with her son at the 7:20pm show. It is important that people go to see this before Sunday, the better it does her in Los Angeles, the more theatres across the states will pick it up. It is playing until this Thursday, but please try to see it by Sunday. The information offered in this movie is priceless, it is so informative and shocking. Again, I HIGHLY recommend ‘The Beautiful Truth’.
Mommy Feel Good 
