This presentation focuses on a little talked about, and often stigmatised aspect of women’s reproductive bodies: the production and donation of breast milk after infant death. Lactation support and milk donation programs for mothers of living infants are evident. These stand in stark contrast to the lack of lactation education, policy and milk donation services for bereaved mothers. These have been found to be repeatedly overlooked as meaningful components of care in women’s reproductive health. In this presentation I aim to highlight this gap in health service delivery through an open and frank discussion of the meaning bereaved mothers’ place on their lactation and subsequent milk donation experiences after infant loss. In addition, I turn to the voices of health professionals who detail their experiences of caring for bereaved mothers’ lactation in the broader context of time-pressured, high-technology healthcare in which lactation and breast milk often take a backseat. This research is structured by an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that provides a positively oriented scholarship to healthcare, patient safety and bereavement research.

 

Dr. Katherine Carroll is a Research Fellow in the School of Sociology, CASS. She examines the socio-cultural aspects of the donation and banking of eggs and milk from an interdisciplinary feminist perspective. She has recently been awarded (with Professor Catherine Waldby, RSSS) an ARC Discovery Grant, Lactation After Loss: Breastmilk suppression, expression and donation in contemporary motherhood and health service delivery. Prior to her appointment at the ANU, she held a position as Assistant Professor in the Mayo Clinic Medical School in the USA for two years where she established a Qualitative Research Services team to undertake qualitative and sociological research in and with medicine.