Two Placentas in the Freezer

So if you were to open our freezer this minute, you might wonder this thing: why do they have two placentas in there? Well, I will tell you.

We are as granola as the next family here in our little corner of the Pacific Northwest. Here, when you have a baby, often as not you are likely to birth it at home. Here, you "wear" your baby. You co-sleep. And you bury the placenta. Often as not, you accompany the burial with ritual chanting and the planting of something symbolic in the hallowed ground.

But when Owen was born, in the winter of 2006, we had some other projects going on, so upon our return home from our emergency caesarean, we hastily shoved the bag containing his placenta in the back of the freezer, figuring we'd get to it, whenever.

It went like this: we had two additions, the big Addition (Owen) and the little addition (the one we were building on to our house). We couldn't bury the Addition's placenta till the addition was complete. We were just too busy and overwhelmed. Before the Addition was born, the thousands of us were existing in our tiny nine hundred square foot cottage. By "we," I mean my husband Giles, our nine-year-old Jayce, me, and all my fertile eggs. The additional nine hundred square feet was built and "dried in" but it was not yet "finished," as they say in the construction world. That is to say, we had walls, windows, and doors, but nothing else interiorly. No insulation. No drywall. Nothing but sub-floor.

We had work parties during the first six months of Owen's life; we were frantically trying to complete the project on our own. By "we," I mean Giles. These work parties little resembled the parties marking the heyday of my mid-twenties. "Where is the wine?" I wondered as I sat on the couch nursing my caesarean scar, hoping the baby wouldn't wake in the commotion, and thanking my friends profusely as they filed past me in coveralls carrying cordless screwdrivers, bales of insulation, planes of drywall, saws, eye protection. "Where are the chips?" "Where is my friend Denise's drunk English cousin mooning my neighbors off the balcony?" These parties were nothing like those.

The placenta sat in the freezer through all this work, waiting, and wondering, I'm sure, when its day would come. Nestled in a little brown bag labeled "Owen's Placenta," in the hand of our dear friend Elizabeth (who was the only person at the hospital with the wherewithal to grab it before the nurses could desecrate it by throwing it in the trash, which I think is what they do there for the non-granola patients' placentas), it waited. It waited through the work parties, it waited as we installed floors and painted, painted, painted. Painted during Owen's morning and afternoon naps... painted the primer, painted the ceilings, painted the walls, debating over colors... It waited as we made lists of the things we still needed to do... the trim, the window sills, the upstairs bathroom. We figured sooner or later we would get around to burying the placenta, just as sooner or later, we'd get to all those other projects.

But those projects also ended up having to wait, because somewhere in the middle of all this, the rest of life sort of kept happening (school and soccer, work, cooking dinner, walking the dog, cleaning the house). The daily grind wormed its way back into our life, and the projects got further and further back burnered. As for the placenta, we sort of forgot it was there. Shoved behind the pizzas and ice cube trays, boo boo buddies and ice cream, it continued to wait.

Also, to bury a placenta, you need a spot to do it, and something to plant. Don't get me wrong, we've got plenty of space here; a huge double lot, a whole half of it vacant (more or less, except for the weeds). But frankly, it has become quite overgrown since the Addition and the addition, and all the projects that came along with them. I haven't touched a shovel since tha very first work party, way back when Owen was just a tiny shrimp wriggling around inside me, when we cleared the back garden in preparation for the big groundbreaking for the addition. As I type this, I couldn't even tell you where my shovel is, let alone muster the strength to wield it in any sort of constructive project.

You'd think, though, that between then and now, two years later, we'd have had a moment to remember, to add it to the list of things-to-do, and to just get to it already and just bury the darn thing. Find the shovel, clear the space, choose the plant, dig the hole, and do it! You'd think. But you'd be wrong. Because, see, since then, among all the other stuff mentioned above, between then and now, we sort of built a second addition, er, placenta. Er, we had another baby.

Imagine being in my almost-40 year old, sleep deprived brain when, on Christmas morning 2007, I pulled my head out of my denial and went ahead and admitted out loud the funny feeling that I might just have become... well, pregnant. Again. Driving through town with my heart in my mouth to the three stores I tried before I found one open on Christmas day, Owen's placenta, hanging out in the back of my freezer, was the last thing on my mind. I was more concerned with the one that might be (and in fact, was) currently embedding itself in my tired old uterus that very minute. I couldn't tell you exactly what I was thinking at that moment, but I assure you it wasn't that the day would soon come when I'd have to shove that placenta aside to make room for a second one!

By the way, anyone in Olympia who finds herself wondering if she's pregnant on Christmas day, I will tell you right now don't even bother going to Ralph's or Target. Go straight to Albertson's on Pacific. They'll hook you up. Just a little tip from me to you.

Chloe's placenta now shares space back there, nestled beside her brother's, next to the freezer meals I so proudly prepare for my family of five. And no, there is no danger of mistaking the placentas for my meals (insert snide SNL "Placenta Helper" jokes here). As I mentioned earlier, we clearly label the placentas in this house. But that is not the moral of this story. No sir. Actually, I don't quite know what the moral is... it may be that parties majorly change as you get older. It may be that you should finish one project before you start another. It may be that things that are important should just get done. We should just do it; get out there in this unseasonably cold winter of 2008-09 and just bury the darned things.

Because that hallowed ground inside me, the place they held, and the work they did, created two of the most precious, light-filled beings ever to grace my life, if not the planet. Those placentas deserve a marker on this earth just as precious, something perennially lovely, a commemoration to bring their work full circle.

And that ain't my freezer. Now if I can just find my shovel.

Addendum: We finally buried the placentas under a plum tree, gifted to us by a friend, years later. It bears fruit each and every summer.