I pulled up to the Rembis house a little after 6 PM with a bagful of camera gear and a bottle of Amarone. Surprisingly, the clerk at a local liquor store had no idea what wine would go well with placenta. I went with an Italian red. Claire’s husband, William, had previously narrowed my menu choices down to “placenta fajitas with hatch pepper and cilantro rice” or “placenta osso buco with sides.” Considering my ethnic background, I opted for cannibale italiano.
Seconds after chef William ushered me into their ranch-style home in a quiet suburban neighborhood, I was literally hit by a wall of children—touching my hair and shoulders (“soft” and “higher than Dad’s,” respectively), asking me if I had an iPhone 6 (“Yes”), asking if they could hold my iPhone 6 (“Maybe later.”).
I flashed back to a scene in one of my favorite films, Raising Arizona, as Nick Cage’s character describes his first encounter with the Arizona Quintuplets to his wife, played by Holly Hunter. “They started crying and they were all over me. It was kind of horrifying, honey.”
For a few seconds I actually thought about bolting.
Noticing my rather obvious distress, William Rembis, an amiable, 40-something-ish longhair, broke out his own bottle of wine and handed me a Dixie cup. I quickly gulped down the contents.
As the bell sounded for Round 2, most of the Rembis kids now had something to show me (“Look how far I can stretch my ear”), tell me (“We’re going to watch Babe now”), or ask me (“Are you going to eat my mom’s placenta?”). Unlike the fictional Arizona quints, the Rembis children came in a variety of sizes—from a pea-pod infant up to a husky 15-year-old boy. There seemed to be about a half dozen cute little girls including a pair of 8-year-old twins. Two of the kids were named Cinderella and Belle.43
Soon enough, I met Claire Rembis, who hadn’t been feeling well that day. She had a shy smile, which she flashed only rarely. Almost immediately Claire sent William scurrying off to Wal-Mart for some placenta prep supplies: disposable diaper changing pads, paper towels, and fresh garlic.
I decided to interview Claire on her front lawn and she politely told her kids to remain inside, the older ones charged with keeping the little guys occupied with something other than their mom. They did so without complaint (or nearly so).
Once we were outside and talking one-on-one, Claire seemed to relax. Throughout the interview, she answered carefully, once or twice asking me to repeat or clarify a specific question.
“What was it that got you interested in consuming your own placenta?” I asked her.
“Hearing about the experiences of other moms from the homebirth midwives that I began working with when I had child number seven. My midwife, who’s been practicing since the seventies, explained to me that the placenta was one of things she uses to help moms with problems like post-birth hemorrhaging. Since [midwives] can’t prescribe medicines like a doctor, they can only use natural remedies to help moms when they have issues at home. So it was with her encouragement that I decided to try it myself.”
I then asked Claire what specific health benefits she thought she was getting from consuming placenta. She responded by first telling me that she’d initiated her own research study, to investigate just such questions. So far Claire had interviewed more than 200 moms, but chose to speak about only those benefits that she herself had experienced. She also said that because she hadn’t started consuming her placentas until after child number seven, she clearly felt that she’d established a baseline against which to compare her own placenta-related experiences. Claire explained that after each of her first six births she’d gone through “the baby blues,” which she attributed to the “hormonal drop” caused by the loss of her placenta.
“The first thing I noticed after taking placenta products [capsules] after baby number seven [not her real name] was the energy. I felt very energetic. The most significant thing, though, was not feeling like I was on an emotional yo-yo—one minute crying, the next minute happy. Any mom knows exactly what I’m talking about, and it was the thing I dreaded most about having children. Consuming my placenta made me feel a little bit more normal—like I did when I was pregnant, but before giving birth.”
Claire went on to tell me that what really convinced her that there were benefits was the fact that she’d get “emotional and out of sorts, and weepy and cranky, when it was time for another pill.” When she took one, she said, those emotions leveled out.