Soft advocacy: Using Textile Art to Enhance Lactation Care After Infant Loss

This chapter maps the production and use of the Lactation after Loss Commemorative Quilt, a ‘soft advocate’ for improving the delivery of lactation care following infant death. Tronto’s five phases of care gives our chapter and collaborative methodology a framework through which we show how our care-based approach is a form of resistance to institutional pressures. Our collaboration resulted in a two-sided cot-sized quilt, which carried breast milk, plant dye and the printed words of bereaved parents. In designing the quilt as a pedagogical tool, we draw from Karan Barad's approach to knowledge creation, where we follow 'intra-actions' between humans and matter in the quilt's production and during workshops with healthcare professionals. In doing so, we show how the quilt shifted attention from the ‘expert’ researcher and their findings, to instead focus on discourse between the healthcare professionals, their experiences of working with bereaved families, and the ways in which they could improve delivery of lactation care after infant loss in their institutional setting. Soft advocacy equates to making time and space for careful, collaborative activism, where parent choices and experiences come together in dialogue with cloth, milk and the front-line workers, creating the best chance for positive change.