ABSTRACT
Human pregnancy is a powerful and strange time. A human being is developing inside a human being. It is a place of transformation for both the woman and the unborn baby. It is a place, too, of the transformation ultimately into a family, with a change in community and society. Developing understanding of the mother-baby dyad is complex. The presence of another being alive inside the mother is referred to as a 'mysterious union'. In personhood terms a woman can exist without a baby. Defining spirituality has provided challenge to many researchers. For a woman, the personhood of the baby is powerfully linked with her beliefs of when life is thought to begin. These beliefs will have impacted on her reproductive choices relating to contraception, termination of pregnancy and screening tests offered during the pregnancy, her choices for her health behaviours in pregnancy as well as her choice of place of birth and relief for pain in labour.
