ABSTRACT
In the medical school where the author did fieldwork in Maastricht, there was a small room filled with intriguing obstetric models designed for the purpose of teaching birth. The knitted uterus the author found in Maastricht was made of coarse red wool, possibly synthetic, which was slightly matted and had started to pile. The knitted uterus is also insightful for all the imaginaries, histories, economics and politics knitted into the materials. There are the ways that objects travel across different professional and non-professional spaces; physiotherapists, midwives, doctors, pregnant women. Unravelling objects like the knitted uterus also teaches something about how doctors learn to make clinical sense in a material world. That learning sensing happens through handling objects, building a library of imaginary examples and layered sensory memories, feeling simulated replicas and translating instructions and analogies into future practices.
