title: "Seeing the baby": pleasures and dilemmas of ultrasound technologies for primiparous Australian women.
abstract: The practice of obstetric ultrasound scans has undergone significant expansion in the last two decades and is now a standard part of many women's antenatal care in Australia as elsewhere. This article reviews recent evidence about the value of obstetric ultrasound, summarizing debates and contradictions in research literature and practitioner guidelines. Pregnant women's interpretations of the significance of ultrasound are examined through multiple interviews with 34 study participants. We find that ultrasound has become an integral part of women's embodied experience of pregnancy, with its own pleasures and dilemmas. The increasing use of the technology has augmented the role of scientific biomedicine in the government of pregnancy. This must be understood in the light of trends toward individualized risk management in which the pregnant woman increasingly takes responsibility for the successful outcome of the pregnancy, in a context where pregnancy is discursively constructed as a risky domain of gendered experience in contemporary Australian society.
authors.affiliation: School of Social Sciences, University of Newcastle.
authors.forename: Gillian
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Harris
authors.forename: Linda
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Connor
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Bisits
authors.forename: Nick
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Higginbotham
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D003955:Diagnostic Tests, Routine / Q000379:methods / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D009517:New South Wales; D010298:Parity; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care / Q000523:psychology*; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D011247:Pregnancy; D037841:Pregnant People / Q000523:psychology*; D016216:Ultrasonography, Prenatal / Q000523:psychology* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data