Provisionally pregnant: uncertainty and interpretive work in accounts of home pregnancy testing

Abstract

Upon their availability for purchase in the 1970s, home pregnancy testing devices were hailed as a 'revolution' for women's reproductive rights. Some authors, however, have described these technologies as further enabling the medicalisation of pregnancy and as contributing to the devaluing of women's embodied knowledge. The home pregnancy test is one of many technological devices encountered by women experiencing pregnancy in the United Kingdom today. Existing literature has described how engagement with medical technologies during pregnancy might address uncertainties experienced at this time, providing women with reassurance and alleviating anxieties. Drawing on interviews with women living in Scotland, this article explores accounts of testing for a first pregnancy, and women's descriptions of the impacts of home pregnancy testing upon experiences of early gestation. Participants engaged with pregnancy tests in varying ways, with uses shaping and shaped by their experiences of early pregnancy more broadly. Particular technical characteristics of the home pregnancy test led many participants to question their interpretation of a positive result, as well as the accuracy of the test itself. Rather than addressing the unknowns of early gestation by confirming a suspected pregnancy, a positive result could thus exacerbate uncertainty. Through participants' accounts, this article shows how uncertainty is lived out by users of mundane techno-medical artefacts and sheds new light on women's experiences of the first trimester of pregnancy.

Self-testing for pregnancy: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…Overall, 18 studies were included in the values and preferences review 7 18–21 23–35 Table 3. provides descriptive data and key findings of these studies.…”

Gestating bodies: sensing foetal movement in first‐time pregnancy

“…Women described a distinction between the early ambiguous movements sensed at the time of our second interview, Existing literature has demonstrated how early pregnancy may be experienced as a time of liminality - (Nash, 2012). During early pregnancy, women may experience a discord between being labelled as pregnant according to a home or physician administered pregnancy test, and their embodied experiences and physical appearance, which for the first several months of pregnancy may not be visible to others (Ross, 2018 Uncertain initial movements, experienced by many of the participants in this research at the time of our second interview, could be described by some as contributing to the uncertainties and related anxieties of (early) pregnancy. As such, several women movements because of the reassurance of foetal wellbeing that these were expected to provide.…”

Adjusting the analytical aperture: propositions for an integrated approach to the social study of reproductive technologies

“…Ambivalence and uncertainty have been acutely articulated in work around selective reproductive technologies and responses to disability and genetic disease including Rayna Rapp’s formative description of women undergoing amniocentesis as ‘moral pioneers’ (Rapp 1999 ; Gammeltoft 2014 ), in the experience of infertility and assisted conception (Bharadwaj 2006 ; 2016 ) and in attempts to model pregnancy intention (Higgins et al 2012 ; Jones 2017 ; Aiken et al 2016 ). Uncertainty accompanies even the humblest of technologies, for example Ross ( 2018 ) describes how home pregnancy test results are filtered through emotional and sociocultural contexts and rather than addressing the unknowns of a possible early pregnancy, positive results exacerbate them. Reading across technologies, we see that there is an optimistic assumption that biomedical technologies are positioned to ‘emancipate’ people from uncertainty in the reproductive process among practitioners and patients.…”

“…These technologies are near invisible, “unremarked upon because they have been perceived as unremarkable” ( 2013 , p. 14), yet these unremarkable technologies are still culturally situated and profoundly shape women’s, and men’s, experiences (Han 2013 ). RTs may well move from ‘novelty to norm’ (Leavitt 2006 ), but earlier generations of RTs are no less engineered nor less significant in people’s lived experiences (see also Sanabria 2016 ; Ross 2018 ).…”