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      Birth, attitudes and placentophagy: a thematic discourse analysis of discussions on UK parenting forums

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          Abstract

          Background

          The post-partum consumption of the placenta by the mother (placentophagy) has been practiced since the 1970s in the global North and is seemingly increasing in popularity. Maternal placentophagy is not known to have been practiced in any other time period or culture, despite being near-ubiquitous in other placental mammals. An in-depth qualitative exploration as to the reasons for the practice, its increasing popularity and how it is narratively incorporated into discourses surrounding “ideal” natural and medical births are given in this paper.

          Methods

          1752 posts from 956 users across 85 threads from the parenting forums Mumsnet and Netmums were identified for inclusion. A thematic discourse analysis was performed using NVivo.

          Results

          Three main themes were identified: women recounted predominantly positive attitudes towards their own experiences of placentophagy, and they were respectful of others’ views and experiences; some had negative views, particularly around the concept of disgust, but again, they were respectful of others’ experiences. By far the most common method of consumption of the placenta was encapsulation.

          Conclusions

          This paper identifies the motivation for placentophagy to almost universally be for medical benefits, most commonly the prevention or treatment of post-natal depression (PND). Whilst disgust is a common reaction, discussion of risks is rare, and positive experiences outweigh negative ones. The increasing popularity of the practice is ascribed in part to the comparative palatability of encapsulation and the use of the internet to share resources and remove barriers. Parenting forums are important spaces to negotiate normative birth practices, including placentophagy, and act to build communities of women who value personal experience over medical evidence and highly value personal choice and bodily autonomy. Placentophagy is discussed in terms of its relation to natural and medical births with arguments being made using both discourses for and against the practice. This paper argues that placentophagy is practiced as a resistance to medicalisation as an assertion of control by the mother, whilst simultaneously being a medicalised phenomenon itself.

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          Most cited references39

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          Making Sense of S&M: A Discourse Analytic Account

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                riley.botelle@kcl.ac.uk , riley.botelle@gmail.com
                Journal
                BMC Pregnancy Childbirth
                BMC Pregnancy Childbirth
                BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth
                BioMed Central (London )
                1471-2393
                6 March 2020
                6 March 2020
                2020
                : 20
                : 134
                Affiliations
                ISNI 0000 0001 2322 6764, GRID grid.13097.3c, King’s College London, ; London, UK
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3052-5698
                Article
                2824
                10.1186/s12884-020-2824-3
                7059278
                32138706
                a58638f3-0f97-444a-abc8-9bd5b1078181
                © The Author(s). 2020

                Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

                History
                : 17 September 2018
                : 19 February 2020
                Categories
                Research Article
                Custom metadata
                © The Author(s) 2020

                Obstetrics & Gynecology
                placentophagy,thematic analysis,discourse analysis,birth,placenta,medicalisation,netnography,pregnancy

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