On the grid

Partway through my interview with Heather—a nurse, doula, lactation consultant, multilevel marketing essential oils saleswoman, and White mother of three young children—she excused herself for a moment to check on the placenta that she was processing in an electric fruit dehydrator. Dehydrating, grinding up, and then encapsulating placentas into pill form for easier postpartum ingestion is just one of Heather's many side hustles related to natural living. By this point in my interviews with ecologically conscious parents in and around Portland, Oregon, in the Northwestern United States, I had learned to maintain a neutral demeanor when confronted with unusual practices and comments that made me feel uncomfortable or with which I disagreed. But the essential oil diffuser gently misting the air in Heather's immaculately clean home took on a different meaning knowing that a human placenta was cooking in the next room. I felt immediately queasy, but I did my best to act like this was the most normal thing in the world. Great, no problem. I channeled the neutral “brisk nurse” affect I was taught to use as an interviewer for a lesbian health study years earlier but had mostly refrained from using in this study in favor of the warmer affect I hoped would generate good rapport with my eco-conscious informants. As soon as I got back into my car after the interview, I pulled out my phone and googled: “is eating placenta cannibalism?”

Heather told me, “My husband tells me that I can't do it all, and I understand that, but we can make little steps and those will all be helpful. Anything we can make and be away from consumerism and capitalism.” In contrast to her own difficult childhood, Heather has deliberately arranged her life to devote as much time as possible to her children, and she works hard to protect her children from harm. She has been breastfeeding continuously for the past seven years, nursing each of her older children until they were at least four years old. During our interview, she was breastfeeding and bargaining with her youngest child—a two-year-old—to please eat her lunch instead of nursing more. Heather researches health choices for her family extensively, and she is very skeptical of conventional medicine and cleaning products, both of which she generally avoids.