Unbinding Time: Pregnancy, Loss, and Narrative Time

Abstract

I have been pregnant twice; one resulted in a birth, the other did not. Both times I felt, heavily, the push and pull of temporality upon my body. Pregnant bodies are poignant examples of the arbitrary nature of time because of the visceral and embodied nature of such an experience. I offer this autoethnography of my own experience with early pregnancy loss as an invitation to retrieve birth stories as meaningful while also exposing the many inconsistencies placed upon pregnant bodies through rigid constructions of time. To accomplish this, I rely on feminist phenomenology and narrative frameworks.

Keywords:

• Narrative
• temporality
• autoethnography
• narrative theory
• pregnancy loss

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kristen E. Okamoto

Dr. Kristen E. Okamoto is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Clemson University where she studies and teaches health and organizational communication. Through her research Dr. Okamoto seeks to answer questions related to female embodied experiences within the contexts of food consumption rituals and fitness habits. She has published multiple peer-reviewed articles in outlets such as Health Communication, Journal of Applied Communication Research, and Departures in Critical Qualitative Research. Dr. Okamoto wishes to thank the reviewers of this manuscript for their feedback, as well as Dr. James Gilmore and Dr. Jillian Tullis for their thoughtful reading and input throughout the process of preparing this article.