Telling Stories About SIDS - Mothers' Accounts of Loss

This chapter explores the way in which mothers talk about their infants and their experience of grief following the loss of an infant in Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Mothers tell stories about their infant and in defining their relationship to the dead infant they maintain their own status as mothers. They recount their experiences of loss following SIDS which indicate the way they felt about themselves as mothers. They describe the ways in which they maintain a mothering role following the death of the infant. Mothers include a variety of objects, people, words and sites in a network that facilitates the telling of particular stories about the infant. Accounts of the infant and subsequent sudden death in turn become part of the story of the ‘self’ as mother. This chapter addresses the importance of remembering the dead in everyday conversation and how the unique characteristics of SIDS influence the formation of particular maternal narratives

Making and re-making motherhood : maternal grief following sudden infant death syndrome

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