Pregnancy starts with a literacy event: Pregnancy and antenatal care as textually mediated experiences

As a literacy researcher my academic attention is usually focused on how other people use reading and writing in their everyday lives. In this article, for the first time I turn my researcher's gaze onto myself. I present a portion of my autoethnography which aimed to document my becoming a mother as a 'textually mediated' experience. I discuss three aspects of this experience: 1) the role of the 'Green Notes', a personal maternity record, as an example of how the literacy practices of pregnancy and antenatal care are shaped by institutional norms and procedures; 2) the significance of my own reading and writing activities in the process of 'making sense'; and 3) the role of reading and writing in what I have called 'difficult moments'. The article concludes with a reflection on the potential of autoethnography for social sciences generally and literacy studies more particularly.