by Melissa Willets posted in Pregnancy

Australia-based artist Suzie Blake doesn't think her collection of women's birth sheets should be as controversial as it is. She doesn't see why birth secretions are being perceived as gross. In fact, the project is meant to elevate women and fight against the notion that anything having to do with birth should be revolting to anyone. It's also intended to be a beautiful new way to capture childbirth.
?Birth. We?ve all experienced it, and yet, owing to infantile amnesia; we cannot remember it. For most of us our concept of birth is derived from cinema or the reminiscences of our parents," Suzie writes on her website about birth sheets.
She continues, "Hospital and television are careful to protect us from the messy nature of childbirth -- clinical cloths clean up bloody remains, The Male Gaze hovers over a blue-gowned woman as she screams. It is this glaring omission of the gore of childbirth that serves to perpetuate one of the many myths of motherhood." Those "myths" she speaks of are shattered when we give birth, right" We are suddenly, and sometimes shockingly, introduced to the realities of childbirth, and how messy, and drippy, and bloody it is.
But it's real.
And unavoidable.

Yet as Suzie told BabyCenter about the reaction to her project, "Going by some of the online commentary, blood and amniotic fluid on a sheet is pretty shocking to some people. I do feel a bit upset when people respon...