Customer Reviews

The Tentative Pregnancy

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I bought this book in the middle of some very difficult decisions whether to have an amniocentisis following a positive MSAFP. The premise, that for many women pregnancy is tentative for the first trimester because of fear of miscarriage and for the second trimester because of fear of negative results from the amnio really fits my experience. I was hoping this book would provide some validation and reassurance. It didn't. It is very much a social commentary which subtly criticizes women for wanting to control whether or not to bear a child with a disability or fatal deformity. I was hoping to have some validation of my experience, and instead I felt judged and criticized.

While not exactly what I expected I found this book to be rather eye opening. The premise of the author, while she wrote about 100 or so women she interviewed, was that amniocentesis is a test that, if the results are bad, leads to abortion. In other words, this test gives women the opportunity to selectively abort children who are seen as otherwise imperfect in today's society. Whether or not you support the test, this book gives you much food for thought. A word of caution though, this may not be the right book to read if you are looking for the right answers to an amniocentis you are contemplating right now. It may be better read while you are not pregnant.

This book is the result of a study.
It is about the expierence women had after getting back a flagged test or after getting a routine amniocentesis based on age or history. It is not a book about whether or not you should have an amnio it is about what your choices are and how women dealt with their results.
This books will make you think about the abuse that routine prenatal tests can cause a woman and hopefully it will help you deciede whether or not you want the test done.
I think this is a well writen book.

The Tentative Pregnancy is totally relevant to the relatively new and increasingly common experience of technological pregnancy and birth. I don't believe it was Barbara Katz Rothman's intention to judge women for our responses to the complex choices that technology presents us with, but rather to give us a wider context with which to judge and make those choices ourselves. This book is partially about a paradigm women have long been familiar with: when rights become responsibilities. There's a restructuring of values each time a new option is placed on the table. Ostensibly the new right means increased freedom, but eventually we see that it limits us in a new way, as old options are taken off the table or are made so unpopular that we confront a crossroads. The Tentative Pregnancy left me feeling nostalgic for the good old days before technology had wrung most of the mystery out of motherhood.

The author isn't out to convince women to abstain from testing altogether. She presents a well-researched and thoughtful look at the potential consequences--emotional and physical--of individual tests and leaves it to women to decide how much and under what circumstances they want to let technology shape their experience of motherhood. No one can tell a woman whether or not she should test, but Rothman acts as a knowledgeable and compassionate guide through the decision making process.

Prenatal testing has become so routinely prescribed as to be taken for granted by the medical community. Women need support and information in order to exercise their rights and this book is an invaluable resource. The advantage of being able to test for genetic anomalies has become, in many cases, a requirement to test for abnormalities. As insurance companies compel women to jump through hoops in order to maintain coverage and doctors seek to minimize liability, testing is less and less presented as a choice we have the right to make. Society also lays claim to our choices, since imperfect or differently-abled children are perceived as a common burden.

It's important to understand the limits of testing. We have a false perception that testing can assure us that our babies are healthy. It can't. The best it can do is to tell us they're not. But many women are not adequately warned about the unintended emotional consequences of false positives, which are common. One of the biggest tragedies of prenatal testing is when the results introduce terminal doubt into a healthy pregnancy. Even if a test for Downs Syndrome or other genetic marker turns out later to be a false positive, the anxiety the mother experienced (and might continue to experience through birth and even beyond, as Rothman's research disturbingly shows) has repercussions for her developing baby. Sometimes women choose to abort a healthy baby after a negative test result follows a positive one because they can't shake the suspicion that something is wrong. The message of The Tentative Pregnancy is that testing, by its very nature, changes a woman's relationship with her fetus.

One of the more interesting studies in the book relates how women unconsciously behave differently after finding out the gender of the baby they're carrying. Mothers of daughters tend to feel a greater sense of unity and acceptance toward the fetus, while mothers of sons provide a more stimulating uterine environment, with more movement and noise. Gender stereotyping manifests earlier than it did in pre-technology days and now influences the divergent life experiences of males and females before they are even born. Think of it as behavioral conditioning in the womb. How will this impact sexual equality in the future?

On the other hand, Rothman presents the up-side of testing--those times when the information allows us to lessen or prevent suffering, as in the case of Tay-Sachs babies and other situations when the parents are faced with making the most humane choice possible.

Women need increased support and acceptance before, during, and after pregnancy so they can make decisions which balance their needs and the needs of babies. As Rothman so eloquently points out--in the context of this increasingly anti-child, anti-woman culture which often pits the needs of women and babies against each other--prenatal testing is one more way in which society can judge a woman's willingness to sacrifice herself.

I believe this is a must read for women contemplating pregnancy, particularly those over 35 who are the main targets of misconstrued statistics and fear tactics. It's also a wonderful resource for midwives and childbirth educators (and is required for the Birth Works program, which I'm enrolled in), to help them facilitate exploration of each pregnant woman's personal interpretation of the moral, emotional, and physical consequences of testing, so that each woman can make the best choice for her situation.