The aim of this qualitative-interpretive study is to analyse the construction and effects of normative discourses) regarding pregnancy and birth by analysing labour narratives of Brazilian mothers located in distinct social contexts. In the narrative performances that emerge from three research interviews (conducted both on and offline), we observe how speakers build agency in relation to body/affect. The narratives of these women - from diverse social backgrounds (in terms of race, class, age, private/public health system users) - are analysed focusing on how these stories build intelligibility that governs social life and which can curtail bodies – leading us to reflect on the pervasiveness of medical discourse and its impacts on the experience of mothering and maternity. Our understanding of gender is based on matricentric feminisms and aims at furthering mothers visibility from an intersectional perspective. As part of an emerging tradition of undisciplined, Contemporary Applied Linguistics of Latin America, this study draws on Narrative Analysis, aiming at the further understanding of locally constructed identities and their relationship with the surrounding world. Our analysis examines the building of evaluation - a narrative component which heightens drama, conveying the story s very raison d être - as to consider the discursive dimension of affect. Our examination of the relationship between culture, discourse, body and affect, enables us to identify the way these insidious discourses leave their mark on mothers; either through reprimands, constraints and the erasure of control over their own corporeality or otherwise by prompting autonomy and agency. Medical discourse, as we observe, is a powerful institution which serves as underlying other major overwhelming discourses, such as the patriarchal and the racist. Thus, by building the bridges between the micro and macro dimensions it is possible to realise that what happens in social interactions reveals a lot from a complex broader scenario as much as the major institutions have a great impact on social life. The observation of the discursive scars left makes way to analyse, interpret, rework and reimagine the lived experience of labour.