Content Warning: This episode includes mentions of miscarriage, pregnancy loss, pregnancy complications, traumatic birth experiences, and other potentially disturbing topics related to childbirth, pregnancy, and the postpartum period.
With this and the next three episodes, we’re delivering a four-part series on pregnancy, trimester by trimester. We start our series with a tour through the history of the pregnancy test: how and when did these sticks with the two blue lines become the everyday at-home medical device they are today? How has their introduction changed the knowledge that women have about their bodies and who has access to that knowledge? Then we explore the biology of what happens at the very beginning of pregnancy with some light embryology, exploring the earliest steps of implantation, placentation, and what could happen if this process doesn’t go as expected.
Check out the full video for this episode on YouTube!
| History | Biology |
| Olszynko-Gryn, Jesse. A Woman’s Right to Know: Pregnancy Testing in Twentieth-Century Britain. MIT Press, 2024. | Jones, RE and Lopez, KH. 2013. Human Reproductive Biology (4th ed). Academic Press. *fair warning this book has a lot of good information but is absolutely outdated and has some incorrect information with regards to pregnancy and its complications. |
| Weingarten, Karen. Pregnancy Test. Bloomsbury Publishing. 2023 | Quenby, S., Gallos, I.D., Dhillon-Smith, R.K., Podesek, M., Stephenson, M.D., Fisher, J., Brosens, J.J., Brewin, J., Ramhorst, R., Lucas, E.S. and McCoy, R.C., 2021. Miscarriage matters: the epidemiological, physical, psychological, and economic costs of early pregnancy loss. The Lancet, 397(10285), pp.1658-1667. |
| Braunstein, Glenn D. “The long gestation of the modern home pregnancy test.” Clinical chemistry 60.1 (2014): 18-21. | Burton, G.J. and Jauniaux, E., 2023. The human placenta: new perspectives on its formation and function during early pregnancy. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 290(1997), p.20230191. |
| Haarburger, David, and Tahir S. Pillay. “Historical perspectives in diagnostic clinical pathology: development of the pregnancy test.” Journal of clinical pathology 64.6 (2011): 546-548. | Cindrova-Davies, T. and Sferruzzi-Perri, A.N., 2022, November. Human placental development and function. In Seminars in cell & developmental biology (Vol. 131, pp. 66-77). Academic Press. |
| Leavitt, Sarah Abigail. “” A private little revolution”: The home pregnancy test in American culture.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 80.2 (2006): 317-345. | Macklon, N.S., Geraedts, J.P. and Fauser, B.C., 2002. Conception to ongoing pregnancy: the ‘black box’of early pregnancy loss. Human reproduction update, 8(4), pp.333-343. |
| WEISMAN, ABNER I., and CHRISTOPHER W. COATES. “THE FROG TEST (XEHOPUS LAEVIS), AS A RAPID DIAGNOSTIC TEST FOR EARLY PREGNANCY.” Endocrinology 28.1 (1941): 141-142. | Pontius, E. and Vieth, J.T., 2019. Complications in early pregnancy. Emergency Medicine Clinics, 37(2), pp.219-237. |
| Weldon, Ché, et al. “Origin of the amphibian chytrid fungus.” Emerging infectious diseases 10.12 (2004): 2100. | Mullany, K., Minneci, M., Monjazeb, R. and C. Coiado, O., 2023. Overview of ectopic pregnancy diagnosis, management, and innovation. Women’s Health, 19, p.17455057231160349. |
| Dimitriadis, E., Menkhorst, E., Saito, S., Kutteh, W.H. and Brosens, J.J., 2020. Recurrent pregnancy loss. Nature reviews disease primers, 6(1), p.98. | |
| Muter, J., Lynch, V.J., McCoy, R.C. and Brosens, J.J., 2023. Human embryo implantation. Development, 150(10), p.dev201507. |
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3 thoughts on “Episode 168 Pregnancy: Act 1”
Thank you for this super fascinating topic. I do have a working uterus but I never had the desire to experience a pregnancy, let alone birth (I’m still looking forward to that episode). Still, I find the human body fascinating and it’s incredible that it is capable of growing a tiny human.
Ectopic pregnancy: A bit of history for you – I had an ectopic pregnancy in 1983. Ultrasound was available, but not very sophisticated and not much used as a diagnostic tool. I was trying to get pregnant and had some idea that I was pregnant, (I did not know about home pregnancy tests) but then my belly button turned black and blue. I asked a nurse friend and she sent me to my ob/gyn right away. He got very excited! He said this was a “text book sign of an ectopic pregnancy” and he ran to his car to get his camera (before digital cameras) take a photo! I was admitted to the hospital for emergency surgery, but was made to wait overnight for the operation because the Doctor had a formal event to attend that night. Now I know how dangerous that was – but I survived, he operated and saved my tube and I went on to a successful pregnancy the next year.
Just wanted to say this was a great episode (as they all are), and yes ma’ams abortion is absolutely healthcare. Love you two.
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