Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
if the baby actually was ill, than actually feeling happy about the baby.
I didn't. But I thought much more about it, both emotionally, how I
would cope, and practically, how is it done, pain relief, going through
labour, will I be able to look at the baby? Practical things, my thoughts
were more focused on that (Interview 2).
Mette talks about how she thinks about her baby as defi nitely ill or disabled
after the risk information. She also comments on her way of thinking, how
her thoughts move from worries about the baby towards 'practical' issues
concerning a possible abortion. She also comments that she knows that these
thoughts are irrational, but argues that still, in 'her head', the baby is ill,
and she sees the 'irrational thoughts' as dealing with the crisis ahead of her.
Interestingly, she still thinks that her own body feels normal, 'like a normal
pregnancy'. Even in the last interview, after her healthy baby is born, Mette
talks about how during the pregnancy she saw the baby as 'just a swelling or
something' that she just wanted to get 'over and done with'. She didn't think
of it so much as a baby, or an individual. 'No, this pregnancy has just been
long and diffi cult and I haven't been well, so I think I didn't feel so much
worries for him being ill, I just wanted the pregnancy to come to an end'.
Trying not to think at all
Other women argue that they try to
not
think at all. In the following example,
Ann, aged 30, risk score 1:208, talks about how, if everything had been fi ne,
she would have looked a lot at the videotape from the fi rst scan. After the
risk information, she did not watch it at all because that would make her
think about the baby, which she did not want to do:
ANN:
If there hadn't been anything not quite right, I am sure I would have
watched that fi lm (the video from the ultrasound examination) at least
25 times by now, just because it would have been such fun to show
everybody who visited, but now we haven't, not even once, it is just
laying there on the shelf where we put it when we came home, and ever
since we haven't looked at it because it would feel so strange to look at
it now, I think, we just lost track and it is somehow, it is not so awful but
it still feels as if, okay, maybe it is going to be a baby, maybe not, and I
am fairly prepared for that, and that is the reason why I don't want to
watch that fi lm, it would just be a strange feeling
INTERVIEWER:
In what way would it be a strange feeling?
ANN:
Well, because then I would think even more, is there going to be a
baby or maybe not, or, now he is laying there kicking and in a couple of
months maybe he will not (Interview 1).
To Ann, it would be 'a strange feeling' to look at the video of the baby,
as this would make her think even more about the baby as healthy or not.
