Lactation after infant death: an analysis of Australian healthcare agencies’ online health information

ABSTRACT

Lactation is a potent signifier of maternal love and care commonly associated with early motherhood and infant survival. It is common, however, for bereaved mothers who have recently undergone miscarriage, stillbirth or infant death to produce breastmilk. Drawing on a critical feminist lens that seeks to understand how maternal subjectivities and lactation norms are constructed through public and reproductive health information, this article tests whether lactation management options after stillbirth and infant death are comprehensively covered in Australia’s health organisations’ online information. A qualitative directed content analysis was conducted to critique the information provided on 21 Australian websites. Information extracted from websites was compared to a ‘best-practice’ Lactation After Infant Death (AID) Framework developed by the research team for the review. We found a notable absence of comprehensive lactation management information targeted directly to bereaved mothers. Moreover, the most common lactation option presented for women without a living infant was lactation suppression. This dearth of appropriate and comprehensive lactation information curtails maternal subjectivies and diverse lactation practices and further isolates women dealing with the painful contradictions of lactation after loss.

KEYWORDS:

• Australia
• breast milk
• critical public health
• health information
• infant death
• women’s health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Katherine Carroll http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9110-1354

Debbie Noble-Carr http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1992-0299

Catherine Waldby http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5989-9917

Notes

1 The websites did not necessarily represent 21 different health organisations. Some of the websites were subsidiaries of others on the list. For example, Red Nose Grief and Loss could be accessed directly from the Red Nose website, and Pregnancy, Birth and Baby was a branch of Health Direct.

2 Synonyms used for infant death included: ‘bereavement’; loss’; ‘baby loss’; ‘pregnancy loss’; ‘miscarriage’; ‘stillbirth’; ‘still birth’; ‘neonatal death’; ‘neonatal loss’; ‘infant loss’; ‘loss of baby’; ‘death of baby’. Terms used for lactation included: ‘lactation after loss’; ‘lactation after infant death’; ‘milk production after death’; ‘milk production after loss’; ‘breastmilk’. The terms ‘milk bank’ and ‘milk banking’ were used in addition to ‘milk donation’ to search the included websites.

3 See, for example, Mothers Milk Bank of Austin (www.milkbank.org); Mothers Milk Bank of the Western Great Lakes (www.milkbankwgl.org/donate-milk); Rocky Mountain Children's Health Foundation (www.rmchildren.org/mothers-milk-bank/ourhistory).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project [grant number DP180100517].