Kiva Woman with Womb Labyrinth

Inspired by Birthing from Within, of course.

Rosalita

Look what my lovely husband got me for my birthday this past weekend! I love her. She has such a sassy attitude and a personality. Make sure to visit the store on Etsy where he bought her!

Editing to add a P.S. that I am NOT pregnant or currently planning to be pregnant. I just love pregnancy and birth art and have a collection of jewelry going. Since I am a childbirth educator, I think having pregnant women pendants is similar to anyone else collecting items that are symbolic of their profession (like someone with a flower shop having paintings of flowers around or something!). I've been joking that I will confuse my poor body by wearing this kind of jewelry--it will think they are fertility charms and try to oblige! ;-)

Happy Mother

L just drew this picture for me tonight. He was supposed to be drawing a happy birthday picture for his grandpa, but he brought this to me and said first he had drawn a picture for me! I love this one--he said it is a mama sitting on the couch. She has a big smile because "she is happy to be having her baby." The placenta is in a bowl on the floor. Note the baby has an umbilical cord too. He then drew another one with just the baby's head showing and said, "there's no placenta in this one, because the baby isn't all the way out yet."

More Art from 4 Year Old!

My four year old prolific artist son drew the following two pictures for me on Valentine's Day (no prompting, he just occasionally draws birth pictures). The first is just a standard pregnant woman. The second he said was me giving birth to him with "Daddy watching." He couldn't explain what the shape underneath was supposed to be really. I said, "tell me about that part of the drawing" and he was kind of blank acting and then said, "oh, its the moon." I like how in that picture the baby is coming out. I think that is a neat touch. I asked why I had so many eyes and he said the second row is my mouth (teeth maybe?).

Paper Critter

My husband made this for me on New Year's Eve at papercritters.com (my family plays Bunko together as a family on New Year's Eve and we made paper critters for each member of the family as one of the Bunko prizes).

Birth Art by Four Year Old

A couple of weeks ago, my four year old son surprised me with these two cute drawings! I am intrigued by how the baby and mother match in each case—in the first drawing the mother has colored in eyes and so does her baby and in the other the mother has big white eyes and so does the baby and they’re looking the same direction.

Gaia Statue

I had long admired this gorgeous statue, but felt like it was too expensive and so never expected to actually have one. My lovely husband totally surprised me on Mother's Day 2007 by getting her for me. I am rarely totally surprised by a gift and this was such an unexpected one. I LOVE this sculpture. She has incredible detail.

Venus of Willendorf

A gift from my husband this holiday season. She is about two inches tall. Not sure what kind of stone she is carved from. I LOVE her!

Discovering Birth Art

I discovered birth art in 2003 during my pregnancy with my first son. I read the beautiful and inspiring book Birthing from Within by Pam England and was intrigued by the use of art to explore pregnancy and birth. After some time searching for the proper medium and form, I began creating needle felted birth art sculptures like the one shown here.

I created this blog primarily to share images of birth art in my collection--either created by me or given to me by someone else. I decided to start the blog because I noticed that I got a lot of hits on my other blog for "pregnancy art," because I had written posts there about workshops I presented about Celebrating Pregnancy Through Art. However, there isn't really much information there about birth art and it is all mixed together with my other posts, so I thought I'd create a dedicated blog for the subject instead!