Illness or Identity: Visceral Sense-Making in Pregnancy Loss Narratives

Abstract

This article explores how patients who are not themselves unhealthy assign meaning to experiences of pregnancy loss through storytelling. Pregnancy loss is frequently attributed to sporadic chromosomal abnormalities rather than a medically identifiable abnormality in male or female reproductive functions. While many medical narratives center on a diseased or ill body, pregnancy loss narratives require making sense of a body that is neither of these things. Further, pregnancy loss is often medically understood to be a normal and expected reproductive experience, which deemphasizes the physical and emotional realities accompanying pregnancy loss. Studying narratives shared online to the social media platform Reddit, I track the role and presence of bodies within these narrative accounts. I offer visceral sense-making as a way of accounting for the material and discursive meaning-making that occurs within these stories of pregnancy loss, and the ways these processes are felt and described as deeply within the body.