Understanding Baby Loss

Understanding baby loss offers an extraordinary ethnographic exploration of the sensitive subject of baby loss and post-mortem. The book combines an in-depth sociological analysis of clinical and technological aspects of the post-mortem process with detailed understandings of parent and professional feelings, emotions and care practices. Throughout the book, the authors show that post-mortem is not just a scientific or clinical examination but, rather, forms a key part of the bereavement process. The book offers a comprehensive and thoughtful account of how parents experience different forms of baby loss, and subsequently make decisions about post-mortem examination. It also analyses some of the challenges professionals face when working in this highly sensitive field of medicine. The book shows that post-mortem can play a crucial role in establishing cause of death and assist parents with emotional and diagnostic closure. By shedding light on this hidden and taboo aspect of healthcare, Understanding baby loss offers a valuable contribution to the sociology of emotions, medical sociology, sociology of work, death and dying studies and science and technology studies.