"I got thinking about that and thought that is such a good idea. The reasons why make so much sense. I realised there weren't many options for that and decided I needed to look into it. I found a course online and took about six months to complete it and it's taken off from there."
Since Cassie encapsulated the first placenta in mid 2013, she's encapsulated more than 200 - 80 of those between April and December last year.
Rather than showing how to encapsulate, the course demonstrated the benefits encapsulating has. Some of the benefits mothers have told Cassie they've experienced include replenished iron and vitamin levels depleted during pregnancy, reduced 'baby blues', increased energy, increased breast milk supply and reduced postpartum bleeding.
She said the placenta is a rich source of nutrients, hormones and biochemical substances.
"By the time the placenta is at full gestation it contain six times the amount of hormones that it had when it began functioning during pregnancy," said Cassie.
"So once that placenta is outside your body, goodbye hormones. By putting it back into your body, initially in quite high doses to start with for a few days then dropping it off, it puts those hormones back into your body."
So what special equipment does Cassie use to encapsulate the placenta?
"Well, special equipment being a Nutribullet and a dehydrator and a steaming unit. We set up a special area that I do this."
And Cassie only deals with one placenta at a time to ensure there is no mix ups between placentas.
"I won't even go and pick up another placenta until we've got the other one out of the house because it's nice to keep that piece of mind that you've got one person's organ here that you're dealing with."
While there's not said to be an aftertaste, Cassie processes the placentas with ginger and myrrh to mask any potential aftertaste.
Once the capsules are complete, they look just like any other supplement.
Cassie tries to get the capsules back to the mother within 24 hours.
Emily Holdaway, who has blogged about her experience at emalitza.com, first got in touch with Cassie about birth photography. When they met with Cassie she asked them what they planned to do with the placenta.
"My partner is Maori so we already had plans for the placenta to bury it in a special place up north where all of his family's placentas are buried so that was what was going to happen to Ziggy Jay's," said Emily.
"Cassie started talking about placenta encapsulation and we were at the stage in our pregnancy where we wanted to know everything.
"I'm from a farm so I've seen horses eat it, cows eat it, the dogs and the cats. The more we thought about it, the more we thought 'why not?'. But there was still that worry that we wouldn't have anything to bury.
"But there is more than just the placenta. There's the umbilical cord and the amniotic sac and so Cassie said those would come back to us, it's just the placenta she uses. So we could encapsulate and we could bury ... and Ziggy would still have that connection to the land."
Emily had Ziggy at 4.30am and Cassie had the capsules back to her that night.
"I started taking them that evening and by the following evening my milk had come in and I've been a milk machine. I've had two surgeries and antibiotics and I haven't stopped producing milk."
Emily said her post-partum bleeding had reduced to spotting within about three days.
"I was so energised ... for a first-time mum with no sleep. I remember my partner saying to me 'this isn't actually that hard. We're two months in and we haven't lost our minds'."
Baby Ziggy gained weight in first week; newborns usually lose a bit in first week.
"And that was with a tongue tie and a lip tie undiagnosed. I was a dairy cow!," she laughs. "And I never had the post baby blues."
She said some people had looked at her oddly when she told them what she was planning to do with Ziggy's placenta.
"We don't bat an eyelid at donating blood or taking organs from someone who's died to save someone else but we freak out about eating a placenta.
"I don't watch the Kardashians so I didn't know two of the sisters had done that but it seems to make it a bit more normal."
While the Kardashians are anything but normal, placenta encapsulation is becoming more normal and accepted practise in the Western world.
