An unconscious alchemy of the womb: How (Muslim) women’s experiences and feelings regarding menstruation and birth affect their attachment relationship with their child.

The topic of study is concerned with exploring Muslim women’s’ experiences and feelings of menstruation and birth and how they perceive this affects their attachment to their child. The objectives of which included giving a voice to Muslim women, providing a space where taboo issues could be discussed and discourse could be facilitated. This thesis explores how the realities of Muslim women’s experiences are shaped by social, psychological, cultural, political, religious/spiritual and patriarchal constructions. The underpinning research philosophy is one of Critical theory, peppered with feminist ontology. The findings are based on semi structured in depth interviews with two Muslim women and presented as two cases. This is a small scale sample aware of its limitations and lack of generalisability. The findings are presented in a descriptive framework utilising the initial stages of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) in order to capture the essential themes arising from the accounts of the participants. The main emergent themes are summarised as: the need for a voice and to be heard, disconnected, unsupported relationships and lack of autonomy, secrecy, birth trauma, grief and loss, anxiety for children or future family, the role of culture and religion, judgement and expectations from others and self. The potency of ‘self’ and ‘others’ as over arching superordinate themes were quite striking in both cases. The superordinate themes of ‘self’ and ‘other’ evolved from the split between the needs of the participants and expectations of others. The discussion elaborates on these findings in relation to the literature review. Further research needs to be conducted in order to determine the wider phenomenon. For change to take effect, it is increasingly important to create a platform for discussion and education on menstruation and birth with an understanding of socio-cultural, psychological, religious and intergenerational dynamics