Akademik

n.

Art that depicts or celebrates pregnancy or childbirth.

Susquehanna Birth Network will host an open house on Saturday from 3 to 5 p.m., at the Marietta Community House. Parents expecting a baby are invited to experience doula services, receive a sample massage and join in birth art exercises.

—"Childbirth group hosts open house," Intelligencer Journal, May 15, 2001

I have named my business The Art of Birth partially because I collect birth art and seek out birth images wherever I go but also because I truly feel that birth is an art!

—Michelle Cormack, "New Canadian Regional Director," Special Delivery, January 1, 1997

I had a tough time trying to figure out an earliest usage for today's phrase. (This is the place where you give thanks to your favorite powers-that-be that I didn't use any of the umpteen "labor" puns that danced through my head while writing this.) Was it the art exhibit titled "Birth Art: Miracle and Mystery," which opened on June 12, 1993 in New York? Or was it the following citation:

Many, many books come to us at Midwifery Today, both for potential review and for our new Birth Art and Bookstore.

— Jan Tritten, "To Learn to Grow," Midwifery Today, January 31, 1992

Neither one is definitive because I can't be certain that they're talking about the same sense of the phrase that I am. So I settled on the one above.

Oh, and just in case you didn't know (I didn't), a doula (see the first citation, above) is a woman who is trained to provide assistance before, during, and after childbirth. It's a Greek word that is translated variously as "woman servant," or "woman helping woman."