Exploring tentativeness: risk, uncertainty and ambiguity in first time pregnancy
Abstract
This thesis explores fifteen women’s accounts of pregnancy over the course of
gestation. It highlights the fluidity and dynamism of these women’s experiences,
placing these in the context of the breadth of medical interventions they engaged
with. Much existing literature concerning pregnancy focuses on specific instances of
contact with medical professionals or technological interventions. This study
explores the mundane and routine elements of the everyday practice of pregnancy,
including during the first trimester. This is a period rarely addressed in academic
literature.
The thesis draws on data from in-depth interviews with women in Scotland,
experiencing a continuing pregnancy for the first time. These were conducted at
three points over the course of gestation. Interviews aimed to explore women’s
interactions with medical interventions, their conceptualisations of the foetus, and
changing experiences of embodiment. Analysis took place in several stages,
incorporating three ‘readings’ of interviews and the development of a case study for
each participant. This was inspired by the voice centred relational method of
analysis. Themes were then identified and developed within, and between, individual
women’s accounts. Participants’ narratives, particularly in early pregnancy,
resonated with Rothman’s (1988) concept of the ‘tentative pregnancy’, originally
developed to describe pregnancy in the wake of amniocentesis. Tentativeness
emerged as a key theme characterising women’s experiences.
Tentativeness was especially evident during the first trimester, largely due to
women’s understanding that the risk of miscarriage was at its highest during this
period. Women described managing their emotions at this time, in order to balance
excitement about their wanted pregnancy with the possibility that it may end in a
pregnancy loss. One aspect of this emotion work, explored in this thesis, was the
effort made by women to keep their pregnancy a secret from wider family and
friends for the first twelve weeks of gestation.
Medical intervention and its associated technologies played a key role in both
constructing pregnancy as tentative, but paradoxically, also provided a means to
resolve this through reassurance. Women engaged with these interventions flexibly.
In contrast to much existing literature, this thesis highlights that while contact with
prenatal technologies cemented the reality of the pregnancy for some, they also had
the power to add to the ambiguity of participants’ status as a ‘pregnant woman’.
In later pregnancy, women’s shifting embodied experiences contributed to a
reduction in tentativeness. The ability to feel definite foetal movements, coupled
with medical and popular discourses of foetal viability, allowed women to feel less
anxious about the safety of the pregnancy and the foetus. As a result, women
reported changed interactions with health professionals and advice during the final
trimester of pregnancy.
This thesis, engaging with literature from sociology, science and technology studies
(STS) and anthropology, makes theoretical contributions in three areas. First, its
consideration of gestation over time nuances discussions of pregnancy in terms of
risk. Second, this research further contributes to literature regarding pregnant
embodiment, and conceptualisations of the foetus. Third, the thesis demonstrates that
relationships between forms of knowledge mobilised by participants during
pregnancy were complex, shifting over the course of gestation, and reflective of
women’s experiences of pregnancy as tentative.