This study aims to contribute towards the conceptual discussion on care from an ethnographic approach among pregnant women and babies in a low-income district of Salvador who were attended within the Family Healthcare Program. We conducted interviews and participant observation. Based on analysis of two situations - discovery of pregnancy with the decision to take it further, and breastfeeding - we compared the professionals' and users' perspectives. We argue that for both, care involves continuing construction of projects of the person. While professionals focus their interventions on the women, seeking to give guidance and apply planned routines, users make reference to spontaneous behavior that responds to practical demands and in which embodied experience is central. The differences between professionals and users relate not only to subjective characteristics but also to the social positions that they occupy.
Care; Family Healthcare Program