In 2024 I was grateful to be awarded one of TASA’s Career Development Grants. The grant enabled me to design and conduct a pilot project, which sought to explore a topical research question around pregnant embodiment and antenatal care. The aim was to identify a research agenda around this topic and develop this into a central focus for further career development via publications, collaboration, non-traditional research outputs and funding grants.

The project built upon research questions inspired by earlier work, which has explored themes of pregnant embodiment, perinatal care, environmental exposures and placentas. In this small pilot project, I was interested in exploring how the placenta as a vital, if temporary, organ figures in pregnant people’s experiences of pregnancy, birth and postnatal recovery. Specifically, I focused on speaking to parents who had chosen to request the placenta after birth to engage in ‘placenta rituals’ such as placenta burial, encapsulation or other forms of commemoration. The aims of the pilot project were to:

Review existing literature and research in the field;
Conduct a small number of interviews with parents who had used public ‘mainstream’ antenatal services and engaged in post-partum placenta practices as well as with professionals to identify emergent themes;
Gauge the prevalence of placental requests post birth, and the kinds of rituals/practices parents found meaningful;
Explore opportunities for expanding the project, building research collaborations and pursuing additional funding opportunities.

Background

While there is a small body of scholarship examining the contemporary and historical context of postpartum placenta practices and their meanings (e.g. Krolokke, 2018; Krolokke et al, 2018l Santoro, 2011), the project was motivated by a relative lack of social research on postpartum placenta practices in Australia. Burns (2014) excellent discussion of the shift towards placenta rituals among home-birthing women in Australia suggested a discursive shift that counters medicolegal definitions of the placenta as biomedical waste, but explores this in a cohort of parents who have opted for private home births. Another study considered the significance of ‘placenta gardens’ and post-partum placenta burial for First Nations women in Australia (McMullen et al, 2024); part of scholarship that explores widespread indigenous postpartum placenta practices in both historical and contemporary healthcare contexts (e.g. Bardwell-Jones, 2018; Simmonds, 2017).

The broader context in which placentas are made meaningful in medical research, regenerative medicine and the cosmetics industry also informed this study. Against a backdrop of biomedicalised approaches to birth that renders the placenta as ‘biomedical waste’ after birth, there is an emerging ‘placenta economy’ (Krolokke et al, 2016; Krolokke, 2022) which frames placentas as ‘treasured’ bioproducts to be utilised as pills, extracts and medical supplements by parents and placenta preparers, as rejuvenating extracts in the cosmetics industry, and as materials for analysis in medical and epigenetic research (Lappe and Hein, 2023). Placental tissue and blood are also valued through emerging public and private biobanks, based on (often speculative) research into placentas and umbilical cord blood for future innovations in regenerative medicine (Waldby, 2006). These multiple forms of valuing placentas are partly enabled by birthing parents’ disinterest in the placenta after the third stage of birth, and its biomedical and cultural designation as waste. An ongoing goal of this project is map some of the emerging meanings that parents themselves are ascribing to placentas. It explores how the framing of placentas as detachable, impersonal tissue (Waldby, 2002) is being resisted or reframed, and the organ is instead being integrated into alternative narratives of birthing, intercorporeality and healing the postpartum body, and taken up as a material symbol of a major lifestage transition.

Study summary

The present study sought to capture a snapshot of what meanings are ascribed to postpartum placenta practices amongst a small group of people using mainstream antenatal services in the ACT and surrounding NSW areas. The project was approved by the ANU Human Ethics Committee. I interviewed six private birth and postnatal support workers (including doulas, private midwives and people offering encapsulation/preparation services) in the ACT. I also conducted ten interviews with people who had given birth in the last two years and had requested to take home their placenta. All of the parents I spoke to had given birth in mainstream antenatal care facilities in the ACT or NSW. Seeking ethical approval to speak to antenatal professionals working in public health services was outside of the scope of this pilot project; but it is hoped that this research could be developed at a later stage.

Professionals were recruited through existing personal contacts and snowballing. Parents were recruited by distributing study information to postnatal support groups (e.g. postnatal yoga) facilitated by some of the professional participants, via local parenting Facebook and Whatsapp groups (with group administrator approval), and through word of mouth. Interviews with parents ranged from 30 minutes to an hour. Seven interviews were conducted in person and the remaining nine interviews were conducted via online video conferencing. The grant enabled me to reimburse all participants with a $30 gift voucher and have the interviews transcribed. I am currently in the process of analysing the interview transcripts.

Initial findings

Much of the interview data is rich, and interviewees were keen to share their reflections, perceptions and stories. The interviews were invaluable for understanding often very different experiences of requesting the placenta from health services, understanding how and why placenta rituals are made meaningful as part of the pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period, and the specific language women use to talk about it. The main forms of placenta practices were placenta burial or ‘planting’, and encapsulation and ingestion. The former were more common amongst the small group interviewed. For all the parents, commemorating the placenta was a highly significant part – or closure – of the pregnancy and birthing process, particularly in the context of difficult conception, birthing and postpartum experiences. From a practical perspective, parents also spoke about different and often inconsistent experiences at the hospital regarding the information they received about requesting the placenta, recording consent, storage and handing over the placenta.

Motivations for placenta practices included: spiritual and cultural references about returning the placenta to the earth and symbolising cycles of regeneration, nurture, growth and home; honouring an agentive organ that symbolises in a material way the connection between (and joint labour of) mother and baby; reclaiming a sense of control and autonomy after a traumatic birth, and more medical ideas about nutrient value and postpartum healing in the context of parents engaging in placenta encapsulation and ingestion. Discussing post-partum placenta practices with interviewees also raised interesting themes related to pregnant embodiment and bodily autonomy, transition to motherhood (or ‘matrescence’), and ecosocial ideas about reproduction and identity.

Outputs

I will be seeking to publish the findings of the study in the following venues:

a conference paper at the 2025 TASA Conference
a seminar paper at the School of Sociology, ANU
an academic journal article
a piece in The Conversation

Project development

I have been liaising with Women, Youth and Children researchers at Canberra Health Services and will be collaborating with Associate Professor Katherine Carroll (Sociology, Australian National University) to develop ‘Phase 2’ of the project focused on quantitative data collection and document analysis. In this research phase, we seek to:

- collaborate with Canberra Health Services and seek ACT Health ethics approval to conduct a data audit on the number of parents requesting placentas at ACT hospitals.

- With the appropriate permissions, conduct a review of current hospital procedures and protocols guiding post-partum placenta management. We have recruited a third-year Sociology research student at the Australian National University to assist with the document analysis work package.

As a result of both activities, we hope to collaboratively develop guidelines or recommendations to assist in better data capture and improving antenatal information on options to request the placenta postpartum.
We aim to develop and expand the project to study postpartum placenta practices in a broader geographical context and across different models of care, with the view to seeking further funding and dissemination opportunities. We hope to develop further collaborations with pregnancy health services, ideally co-designing aspects of the research and the ensuing outcomes with healthcare practitioners to make parent-driven changes in this area.

Conclusion

I am very grateful to TASA for the grant and the opportunity to pursue additional research activities and collaborations as part of my career development. I hope to build on this research theme, contribute to sociological understandings of pregnant embodiment, and explore the potential for positively impacting on pregnancy and postnatal care provision.

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