Title Kai "tavo kūnas tiesiog išprotėja": įkūnytas nėštumo patyrimas /
Translation of Title ”Your Body Just Goes Bananas”: Embodied Experience of Pregnancy.
Authors Matulaitė, Agnė
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Pages 192
Keywords [eng] Embodiment ; pregnancy ; body experience ; interpretative phenomenological analysis
Abstract [eng] Psychological research into women’s embodied experience in pregnancy and the first year after birth is contradictory and mainly quantitative in nature. In response to these inconsistencies and the paucity of qualitative research in this area, this study investigated the embodied experience of women during pregnancy and the postpartum year. The study was conducted in Lithuania and the UK, using semi-structured interviews and drawings; the data were analysed using the qualitative methodology of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. Six women participated, all primigravidae, aged 26-35. Each woman was seen five times; thrice during pregnancy and twice after her baby was born. A rich description of the women’s embodied experience emerged from the accounts, supporting the notion of bodily experience in pregnancy being dynamic, complex and firmly embedded in their life-world. Due to limitations of size with regard to the PhD thesis, only the results of one consecutive case and four superordinate themes which emerged from the interviews with all of the women in the second trimester of pregnancy viz: the uncontrollable body, the body as my teacher, uncertainty about inner and outer boundaries and embodied identity in the making, were presented and discussed. The study provides insights into this lived experience that may be useful in psychological theory and in practice when working with women at this important transitional life stage.
Type Doctoral thesis
Language Lithuanian
Publication date 2013