Info: Placenta Burial

Here in Indonesia we believe that the placenta is the baby’s “twin”, that shared the mother’s body for 40 weeks and will continue to be the “guardian angel” throughout the baby’s life. After the birth we honor the placenta by a cleaning ritual and bury it where we want the baby to someday return to when he/she is all grown up. Some bury the placenta in the backyard, some in the church. Hubby and I are both members of Kapal Selam Dive Club, and as well were all sea lovers we have this club tradition of burying the placenta in the ocean. We hope Jojo will grow up to love the ocean and become a scuba diver someday.

Week 40 – The Arrival of JoJo

On 4 May, one day before the due date, hubby and I went back to the ob-gyn for the weekly check-up. The ultrasound indicated a HUGE baby, 4.3kg, which gave us quite a shock but the doctor said there could be round 300gr deviation from the estimated weight. Also, the amniotic fluid was showing signs of decreasing quality – a lot of tiny white substance as detected, which could be particles released from the baby’s skin. Considering these two factors, the doctor recommended not to keep the baby inside for too long and offered a low dosage induction. We decided to wait for one day and if nothing happened we’d do the induction the day after.

Nothing happened on due date, so on 6 May we checked in at the maternity hospital for the induction. After an uncomfortable examination by the nurse I was given induction (1/8 of a dose) orally, then sent to my room to wait. About two hours later I felt my stomach getting tight for about a minute, then relaxed again. I could actually see my big belly getting a weird square shape before going back to its usual round. This happened every once in a while. The induction was repeated twice more every 6 hours, with the same effect. There wasn’t any pain, I was relaxing in the room, even had time to have manicure and pedicure. The midwife and the ob-gyn came in to check the afternoon and confirmed that the tightness was the beginning of contractions, everything was in order and we only needed to wait. I thought, if this was contractions, there wasn’t really nothing to it, no pain, easy-peasy!