Products of Conception: Imaging and Imagining Maternal-Fetal Relationships

When my pregnancies ended in silence in an ultrasound suite, I was left with many questions that my medical training did not help me to answer. To investigate what an ultrasonically imaged embryo might represent in obstetric and maternal contexts, I turned to novels and memoirs, where I discovered that new traditions of writing about miscarriage and ultrasound are being crafted. In this paper, I consider the ghostly motifs in depictions of obstetric ultrasound in three contemporary works: Queenie (2019) by Candice Carty-Williams; Hilary Mantel's memoir, Giving up the Ghost (2013); and Maggie O'Farrell's personal essay "Baby and Bloodstream," from I am, I am, I am: Seventeen Brushes with Death (2017). In each text, the ultrasound is a contested site where obstetric and maternal miscarriage narratives collide.