ABSTRACT
Mullin and MacLean (2005) note that pregnancy is crafted and socially proscribed as private, and therefore somewhat embarrassing to women, which encourages the dismissal of that lived experience as inappropriate for public discourse. While it may be appropriate to narrate the experiences of women medically, those narrations are limited to breast cancer experience and survival, loss of a child, loss of a pregnancy or issues with conception. Often recountings of birth experiences are available to readers, noting here that birth is created as less private due to the witnessing of birthing itself in medical facilities, and even this is a dramatic shift in the last 30 years. Early feminist writing chastising the medical establishment for their medicalization of birth led to vibrant and public discussions of the role of doctors (often versus midwives) in childbirth. Yet these discussions do not touch on the experiences of the 40 weeks leading up to birth, pregnancy. Mullin and MacLean (2005) note that women’s stories and experiences of pregnancy have more recently entered the public arena in books for pregnant women and in academic studies, but this research limits itself to looking at the medical experiences and emotional stressors, and not at women’s seeking of information in what is often considered the world’s largest library, the Internet.
