Expecting: Birth, Belief and Protection – new exhibition shows pregnancy has always been shaped by faith and fear
Expecting: Birth, Belief and Protection at London’s Wellcome Collection is a small but quietly powerful exhibition. Spanning five centuries, it explores how the experience of bringing life into the world has been shaped as much by hope and uncertainty as by medicine. Medieval objects sit alongside contemporary artworks, revealing how ideas about reproduction – and the need to safeguard it – have evolved over time.
On entering the exhibition, visitors are immersed in the world of the late medieval birthing chamber. The first exhibit is an exquisitely painted wooden panel dated to the 15th or 16th century. The scene it shows is intimate, both in scale and nature. Within the sumptuously decorated bedchamber of a wealthy Italian home, a new mother sits upright in a canopied bed. Around her, women tend to her and her baby. Each of the nine female attendants has a specialised role, their outstretched arms and gesturing fingers signalling their productivity and authority within the space.
One woman, sleeves rolled up, tests the water being prepared for the baby’s bath. Close by, another cradles the child in her arms. Two others attempt to dry linen by a blazing fire. The space is one of women’s collaboration and knowledge.
The exhibition label draws attention to two women in particular: a horoscope reader, seated by the mother’s bedside and a nun, standing nearby. We are told that their presence demonstrates “the use of both astrological and religious guidance around childbirth”.
The next exhibit is an advice manual on pregnancy and childbirth titled “the birth of mankynde: otherwyse named the womans booke”. Originally printed in German, it was first translated into English in the 16th century and enjoyed considerable commercial success. The book is displayed open at a page with three images: a birthing chair and two visualisations of the foetus in the womb, one head-down and the other in the breech position. The text in the margin of the facing page reads “of byrth nat naturall” (of birth not natural). This language reveals the underlying expectations and anxieties surrounding childbirth, and women’s bodies, at that time.
In the next room, a pocket-sized collection of medical recipes from 15th-century Worcestershire contains a list of remedies for a variety of ailments, from dog bites and gout to sore breasts. Nestled among them is a drawing of a tiny, swaddled baby in a rocking cradle.
Beyond the medieval birthing chamber
The exhibition’s more modern exhibits focus on women’s personal reproductive journeys. Sengalese ceramicist Seyni Awa Camara’s totemic sculpture from 2014 explores the themes of ancestry and maternity.
Just as many hands make up the space of the medieval birthing chamber, so too is her sculpture’s form made up of lots of tiny hands. From them, a female figure emerges. She stands tall, a child in each arm, both clinging to her bare breasts.
The sculpture is one of two by Camara in the exhibition. The other depicts a couple rather than a single figure.
Rising from a base of sculpted animals and figures, the man and woman cradle a child who raises an instinctive hand to the father’s beard. As the exhibition label explains, Camara’s sculptures, built with clay “from the belly of the earth” anchor “her own experiences [of child loss] in ancient spiritual traditions”.
Next to Camara’s second piece are a pair of artworks by contemporary artist, Tabitha Moses. Taken from her 2014 series Investment, they capture the emotional and physical aspects of a woman named Melanie’s journey with IVF.
In a moving photograph, taken by Moses’ collaborator, Jon Barraclough, Melanie stands by a hospital bed in an embroidered surgical gown. She looks towards the light, her anguish, vulnerability and hope palpable as she cradles her hands beneath her belly. Melanie is pictured alone, in marked contrast to the busy, domestic space of the medieval birthing chamber at the exhibition’s start.
Alongside the photograph is the gown Melanie wears in the image. The cycle of imagery embroidered on it is personal to her IVF journey: blood and tears are woven alongside pregnancy tests, medical vials and embryos. The label nearby issues an urgent call for conversations around reproductive health, referencing the continued inequalities in reproductive healthcare and the stark reality that one in four pregnancies still end in miscarriage today.
Themes of loss, fear, faith and hope unite in the exhibition’s main exhibit, a medieval birth scroll, or girdle, from around AD1500.
Birth scrolls were talismanic objects designed to provide spiritual protection and comfort to their users during dangerous and stressful situations, including childbirth. Often made of parchment and inscribed with religious imagery, prayers and charms, they were intended to be held close to or wrapped around the abdomen. The proximity of their words and images to the user’s body was thought to maximise their protective powers. In elite homes, they would have been part of the broader material culture of the birthing chamber.
The Wellcome birth scroll is one of just a handful of surviving examples from medieval England. Visitors to the British Library’s 2025 Medieval Women Exhibition will have encountered another, which was presented on a specially made curved mount to emulate the shape of a pregnant belly.
The Wellcome birth scroll is three metres in length. In the exhibition, it is displayed partially unfurled in a long case at the centre of the main room. Written on it are English and Latin prayers for the protection of its users in dangerous situations, which, in this case includes battle and the plague alongside childbirth. Its imagery includes the Arma Christi, or the instruments of Christ’s Passion. Such visceral imagery was designed to encourage the user to identify with Christ’s pain and suffering during their own.
The birth scroll shows active signs of use during labour. Not only are parts smudged or rubbed; scientific analysis has confirmed the presence of cervicovaginal fluids, along with milk, honey, cereals and legumes. Three further scrolls from 18th-19th century Ethiopia, displayed nearby, include blessings for love, fertility and pregnancy.
Visitors can handle replicas of the medieval birth scroll and explore it digitally through a touch screen and video. They are also invited to spend time reflecting on their own protective rituals. For the expectant visitor, this exhibition delivers.
Expecting: Birth, Belief and Protection is at the Wellcome Collection until April 19.
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Rachel Delman has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust.