Discourses of love and loss : the placenta at home

In the homebirth narratives of the women I interviewed for my PhD, I found that participants consumed, buried, or did not separate baby and placenta at all; instead, they allowed the cord to dry and come away naturally-a practice known as lotus birth. The placenta, once disconnected from the baby (or not disconnected, in the cases of those practising lotus birth), is considered by participants as rich with spiritual significance, symbolizing the links between the mother and the child and the loss of the connection forged in utero. I argue here that the placenta rituals are a meaningful way for women to engage with their birth experiences, including previous pregnancies and births, and represent a complex combination of love and loss, which often goes hand in hand with childbirth and mothering more generally. The findings presented in this chapter are derived from my 2010 doctoral research, conducted with fifty-four Australian women who were both pregnant and planning a homebirth, or had had a recent homebirth.