“A woman is not expected to go to Burning Man, have an affair with a married man, and leave her well-tended rose bushes for an inflatable mattress on the floor of a dingy apartment. But this is what Sandra Tsing Loh did.”

Venue: Theatrius

“The new practice of placenta encapsulation has allowed placentophagy to move into semi-medicalized settings where it occupies a liminal space, a melding of biomedical and postmodern health ideals.”

Venue: Pregnancy and Childbirth: History, Medicine, and Anthropology, edited by Costanza Dopfel, Saint Mary’s College.

Birth stories are fascinating from a narrative, psychological, and sociological perspective. I asked members of the Birth Without Fear community to share the things that stopped them from writing their birth stories and the things that helped them. This is what they said.

Venue: Birth Without Fear

“We’ve all heard that ‘all that matters is a healthy baby’. We hear it before we give birth, and we hear it after. We hear it when a mother’s had a cesarean and a subsequent infection, when she has Post-Partum Depression and when she is reeling from trauma. But it’s not true. A healthy baby is not all that matters.”

Venue: Birth Without Fear

“Often you only have minutes to meet the patient before almost immediately being in an emotional and stressful situation. You have to get them to trust you and make a connection as soon as possible.” —Christy Anderson, Obstetrics Nurse, O2012

Venue: Mama to Mama Online

“The shame that cloaks women’s bodies in all their reproductive functions was present in my shock and horror at the amount of milk my body was forcing out of me, and how unfeminine(!) it felt.”

Venue: Birth Without Fear

“Even the fabrics are intimate—we cannot hide from their materiality, their softness and texture, their positioning on the floor. This is so striking because although it seems very much alive, it also serves as a reminder of death, or our own mortality.”

Venue: VAV Gallery Catalogue