Amanda Hess on Pregnancy, Technology, and Digital Motherhood

The Digital Pregnancy Experience

• 💡 Amanda Hess, author of "Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age," discusses her ambivalent relationship with technology, particularly during pregnancy.
• 📱 She recounts an experience during a sonogram where her immediate instinct was to Google her concerns, highlighting a deep reliance on her phone for reassurance.
• 🤰 Apps like Flo, initially used for period tracking, became intensely engaging during pregnancy, fostering a constant, simulated conversation about her body and the baby.
• 💻 This digital immersion habituated her to an outside authority monitoring her body and performance, creating a sense of external validation for her pregnancy.

Technology's Role in Motherhood

• 📊 Hess explores how pregnancy apps and online communities provide a simulated back-and-forth, offering comfort and a sense of normalcy.
• 📈 The constant availability of pregnancy apps, unlike books, allowed for continuous checking and fostered an intimate, almost fused relationship with the technology.
• 🎯 The internet's rapid targeting of her pregnancy through ads revealed the fluid and automatic nature of ad tech systems, leading to a personal understanding of their potentially horrific implications.
• 🎭 The performance of motherhood online is multifaceted, with "tradwives" embodying an idealized, hyper-modern illusion of managing a household and income simultaneously.

Eugenics and Prenatal Testing

• 🔬 Hess delves into the historical and present-day intertwining of eugenics with the pregnancy and birth apparatus.
• ⚠️ She expresses concern that the rapid development of prenatal testing, outpacing societal accommodation for disabled people, suggests a goal of eliminating disability.
• ✅ While acknowledging the benefits of prenatal testing for medical preparation, like her son's Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome diagnosis, she grapples with the ethical complexities.
• 🌍 The Earth app, created for women of color, serves as a counterbalance to mainstream pregnancy apps by highlighting systemic issues rather than individual responsibility.

Navigating Medical Experiences Online

• 💬 Hess found it easier to articulate her son's medical experiences, like Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, in semi-private online support groups rather than in person.
• 💖 She views sharing her son's diagnosis online as a selfish choice for self-understanding and becoming a better parent, rather than solely for awareness.
• 🏥 The contrast between a highly medicalized pregnancy and the concept of free birth reveals shared undercurrents, including an acceptance of infant mortality as a form of natural selection.
• 👶 With her second child, Hess found technology less seductive, realizing that understanding a child's needs comes from direct interaction rather than surveillance.