While bringing your baby into the world is a beautiful experience, it can also be overwhelming. Amidst the focus on your newborn, your own health and well-being often take a backseat.

The postpartum hormonal shift is the most significant your body will ever experience. Supporting your recovery during this time is essential, and placenta encapsulation offers a natural way to replenish your body with the very hormones, vitamins, and minerals it needs.

Like many new mothers, I was unprepared for the intensity of my own fourth trimester. In our modern culture, we’re often expected to navigate early motherhood alone, with little communal support. But everybody knows it takes a village—so why have we moved so far away from those traditions?

“It’s time to change our ways, to pick up the threads of knowledge that we forgot and weave them into a new kind of fabric to hold the mother. We must do it for ourselves and for our children, because the way women become mothers profoundly affects the way their children awaken to this world.”

– Heng Ou

Placenta encapsulation is just one way we can reshape postpartum care for mothers. My own journey toward holistic healing began long before I became a mother. I spent years working in palliative care and disability support, always drawn to nurturing others. But after giving birth to my beautiful daughter Marley in 2021, I experienced firsthand the emotional and physical toll of postpartum recovery. I told myself to push through each day, believing it would get easier. What if postpartum didn’t have to be about just surviving each day, but instead truly thriving?

During my pregnancy, I researched placentophagy extensively and was eager to experience its benefits. But I was disappointed to learn that no one in Canberra offered the service.

Meanwhile, friends up north swore by their experiences with placenta encapsulation—especially those who hadn’t encapsulated for their first babies but did for subsequent ones. Hearing their stories, I knew I wanted to make this accessible for mothers in my community. That’s when I became a certified Placenta Encapsulation Specialist and founded Fourth Trimester Placenta Services—to help make postpartum recovery as smooth, supported, and nourishing as possible.

Then in 2023, I gave birth to my son, Rex. This time, I encapsulated my own placenta—and the difference between my two postpartum experiences was undeniable. With my placenta capsules, I felt stronger, more balanced, and better equipped to handle the demands of newborn life. I could feel the support my body had been missing the first time around. It was this firsthand experience that deepened my passion for providing this service to other mothers.

In 2025, I renamed my business from Fourth Trimester Placenta Services to Canberra Placenta Services to better reflect my growing commitment to serving mothers in our local community. While my mission remains the same, I wanted the name to feel more rooted in the place where I support so many incredible women on their postpartum journeys.

Placentophagy isn’t just a trend. While its resurgence in the last 30 years reflects a growing return to holistic wellness, its history spans over 1,400 years as one of the oldest postpartum remedies. The wisdom of our ancestors reminds us:

YOU are the remedy. You are the medicine.

With love,

Ash