Involuntary childlessness online revolves around two primary (often) interrelated themes: problems conceiving and miscarriages. Involuntary childlessness often awakes deeply existential questions of purpose and meaning, but also about limits of existence. Lagerkvist (2016) has used the concept of ‘implied bodies’ in her work on memory online, where individuals once alive are ‘kept alive’ online through sites of remembrance. Digital spaces dedicated to childlessness on the other hand present another form of implied bodies, but tap in to the same questions of how and where we exist and how and when we cease to exist?

Fora and blogs focused on childlessness are digital spaces for the loss and grief of women (most often) who deal with the fact that they are not able to become parents. I explore blog posts and posts on fora through content analysis, and experiences of bloggers and participants in online discussion groups through interviews. Family planning and pregnancy are to some degree surrounded by a normative silence. The pregnancy is often expected to remain a secret until it is most likely going to last full term and result in a child. In digital spaces dedicated to involuntary childlessness on the other hand, children that are never born into the physical world are ‘born’ digitally.

An area of interest is the experience of sharing descriptions of physical changes and experiences concerning pregnancy or the lack of pregnancy with unfamiliar others. The female body, and the menstrual cycle in particular, represents both hope and despair, and organizes the digital space through themes. Texts often describe explicit and deeply personal issues such as possible symptoms of pregnancy, before pregnancy is testable, as well as other physical symptoms and variations linked to the female body and its reproductive parts. Texture of vaginal bleeding and discharge are often times discussed in great detail as to figure out what they might indicate in relation to a desired pregnancy and in comparison to other’s experiences. The body is turned “inside out” and aspects normally hidden under clothes and in the privacy of bathrooms are described and shared with others.