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Childbirth Fotosets Review

Lina Clerke is a talented photographer and a childbirth educator of considerable experience. She is also now a direct entry student midwife in Melbourne. Her particular skills have produced a set of exceptional photographs of all subjects needed in education around birth.

The pictures are A3 size and laminated, so they can be either held by a teacher or passed around a group. They come in four sets, each with brief teaching notes which serve as prompts to make the maximum use of each picture. The complete set comes in as sturdy carrying case.

Set A (52 photos) covers the first stage of labour. The first few are double sided, show the same woman at the peak of a contraction and relaxing after a contraction, a contrast which women find very reassuring. They show comfort aids, supportive partners, positions, teenage labour, arranging environments to support active birth, natural ways of easing pain and more.

Set B (34 photos) covers second stage showing many positions, the hard work of pushing, water birth, crowning, fathers receiving babies, immediate reactions and contact with the baby.

Set C (40 photos)covers third stage, showing the first moments after birth, ecstatic new parents, physiological third stage, breastfeeding, newborn babies, postpartum procedures including suction, children at births and more.

Set D (34 photos) covers interventions, showing active birth with technology, breech birth, monitors, drips, epidurals, twins and caesarean birth.

These pictures are brilliant for showing what labour and birth and the things associated with birth look like. I have found they provide the right, contextualised answer to questions such as "what is a show?" or "what is meconium". They are excellent, unposed photos of ordinary women. They show what happens and what is possible and women identify with them. These pictures convey what many words cannot and they stay in the visual memory.

My set has been borrowed by lecturers for teaching student midwives and medical students, by antenatal teachers working with groups and by clinical midwives for use with individual women. All are enthusiastic about their educational power.

They are the best teaching resource I have ever used as a midwife.

Mavis Kirkham
Professor of Midwifery
University of Sheffield

This review appeared in MIDIRS Midwifery Digest 14:2 2004