My Body, My Baby, and Everything Else: An Autoethnographic Illustrated Portfolio of Intra-Actions in Pregnancy and Childbirth

Abstract

I have been interested for many years in technology and its impact in everyday moments, I had not yet had the chance to critically and systematically find a coherent and self-contained experience to focus on. In March 2021, I bought a digital pregnancy test for the first time, and an autoethnographic journey started. It was the first year of my PhD and I was expecting my third child. In this pictorial, I offer an illustrated and annotated portfolio of my pregnancy, from test to birth, with an emphasis on the technology entangled in the stories. Framed by Agential Realism, I identify the agential cuts in the illustrations. I conclude with an appeal for annotated portfolios of intra-actions, and for other HCI researchers to share their own socio-technical assemblages around fertility, pregnancy, and childbirth. I use my account of this process as a step towards making the intra-actions in pregnancy and childbirth a matter of care for the TEI community.