Representations and narratives during pregnancy

In this paper, we explore how maternal representations, and in particular their contents, are structured during pregnancy. Twenty-three primiparous women were recruited for participation in a longitudinal study about mothers' thoughts and feelings about their infants. A semistructured interview was conducted with each of the subjects in the third trimester of pregnancy. During the interview, subjects were also given five adjective lists based on the semantic differential model. Results from this sample indicate similarities in the content-free aspects of representations of self and baby, but differences in the content of these presentations. Implications of these results are discussed with regard to the construction of an internal representation of the child in the third trimester of pregnancy.