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Women's experience of the Abdominal Palpation in pregnancy: A glimpse into the philosophical and midwifery literature

Abstract:

This paper describes a literature review which was undertaken following a personal narrative in which abdominal palpation during pregnancy was experienced. When a midwife touches a woman’s abdomen, the woman is both touched, and touches; perhaps for a moment at least, their worlds are intertwined. The aim of this paper is to try to come a little closer to understanding women’s experience of abdominal palpation in pregnancy. The literature reviewed has been drawn from midwifery, philosophy, sociology, and critical feminism. The opening vignette is one woman’s experience of abdominal palpation. It is her story of recounting experience, and unpacking the meaning of that experience, that steers and drives this work. Some literature explicitly addressed the experience of touch for the pregnant woman; much of the reviewed work did so only obliquely, by inference, or by chance. This gave the opportunity to divide the literature into three clusters or categories: Touching at a Distance, Touching the Edges and Exploring Touch.

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Abdominal Palpation, Pregnancy, Touch