ABSTRACT

This chapter draws on open-ended, qualitative interview data from retired and practising Flemish gynaecologists, midwives and pastors in small-scale hospital environments to illustrate how hiding the dead babies' bodies was an act of performing different meanings of death and grief, in a corporal and sensory way. It illustrates the performative work of hiding babies. The experience of losing a child at birth has received much attention primarily from psychological and action-oriented scholars who focus on the individual griever rather than the social and cultural contexts which include professionals' practices and beliefs. It provides a multifaceted topic for the anthropological history of reproduction and endings, the body and emotions, identity and personhood. The medical discourse is one in which life and death, the latter considered a technical challenge, are dichotomised. Birth professionals and many other social actors outside the hospital would often avoid openly acknowledging parents' relationship with the baby and thus socially accept their loss.