It has become increasingly common to travel and stay away from your native country/place because of education, work, marriage, financial reasons and so on. So it is not surprising that a lot of women go through their pregnancies in a foreign country. Being pregnant and giving birth in an unfamiliar country can be a frightening and overwhelming experience, especially if it is the first time. This project explores the challenges faced by these women and propose a solution to help them cope up with the problems.
After the initial study about the journey & various aspects of pregnancy and interview with few Indian women who went through their pregnancy in a foreign country, I arrived on the following insights.
1) Bonding with their mother - For most women the biggest concern was being away from parents, especially their mother, when they are going through this new emotional and physical experience. Being in a foreign country, their spouses are their biggest support system. But they wish to trust and confide about their needs and worries with someone who have also gone through the experience of pregnancy themselves. Sometimes it is a close friend or colleague who has also gone through pregnancy. But usually it is their mother. During this time a lot of women grow a bond or re-bond with their mother. Though they communicate with their mom through calls and video calls, they miss their physical presence.
2) Pregnancy as a culture- In Indian culture, pregnancy is a celebration, a rite of passage into womanhood. It's a common practice for the girl to stay in parent's house during pregnancy and she's treated with a lots of healthy diet and rest. There is a celebration-of-sorts where the mom-to-be is surrounded by relatives & friends and showered with gifts. It is called by different names across India - Godh Bharai, Valakappu, Seemandham, Dohale Jevan or Swad. It's a ethnokinship culture, where pregnancy is seen as a social experience, where the primary focus is on social & family network to help in her physical wellness and emotional stability. In the western parts of the world, it's technocentric culture, where the focus is on the technological advancement to monitor the general well being. Pregnancy is seen as an individual experience, laying a lot of responsibility on the mom-to-be. On one side they get a good environment, personal space and medical advancement, but on the other end they crave for social support. The women face a tough time negotiating between their old and new cultural identities.
3) Fears and anxieties - The women go through a series emotional changes across the trimesters. During the first trimester the physical discomforts like morning sickness and nausea does not let them feel the joy as expected. Some women also experience body image issues when the physical changes start appearing. They also start getting anxious about the health of the baby as they are bombarded with all the tests and scans during second trimester. Also the physical changes make it difficult to carry out even mundane everyday tasks. As the due date approaches they develop the fear about the childbirth and the responsibilities lying ahead. Internet, pregnancy apps and self monitoring devices provide the basic information needed. But they also tend to overwhelm with too much information and encouraget constant self-surveillance and vigilance. This in turn adds more anxiety.
The idea is to have a device which has an abstract form of a bird whose wings can rotate along the central axis. Both the mom-to-be each have one device and can communicate with each other by just tapping the wing of the bird. When the wing of one bird is tapped the other one flaps automatically moves and produces chirping sounds.
When the daughter misses her mother or wants to convey that she's grateful to her mom, she just needs to tap the wings.
By just a tap the mom in India can tell her daughter in Melbourne that she is thinking of her in a delightful way.
The wings of both the birds move few angles every day till in it completely hidden inside the birds body on the due date. This maintains a subtle visual reminder to keep track of the journey as opposed to a standard timelines in other apps and websites. This also helps the mom to visually see how far along her daughter is.
Bibliography
Childbearing traditions of Indian women at home and abroad: An integrative literature review, Young-Oak Wells a,*, Elaine Dietsch
Picturing mothers: A photovoice study of body image in pregnancy , Meredith Nash, Health Sociology Review, Volume 23, 2014
Playing Pregnancy: The Ludification and Gamification of Expectant Motherhood in Smartphone AppsDeborah Lupton, Gareth M Thomas