THE SOCIAL METAPHOR OF THE HUMAN BODY: Belly-stories. Feminine Stories About Body, Pregnancy and Childbirth

Pregnancy is a biographically episodic time when the belly becomes the centre of thefeminine world. This time is characterized by the ambivalence of attitudes and moodswhich are not only hormonally-based but result from the very act of experiencing bodilytransition and duplicating subjectivity, which leads to perturbations connected with thedistinction between the me-body and the me-mothering body (Lewis 2013). In this articlewe analyse selected narrations by women about their bodies, pregnancy, childbirth andmaternity. We focus the analytical process on the somatic motif of the belly, which constitutesthe symbolic centre of perception of a woman’s own body during this time, its transformationsand social interactions dominating the world of the woman expecting a baby.