Vignettes from Art and Life: 1. The Fourth Stage of Labour 

I think about the numbness I did/ did not feel in the lower half of my body. The moment my husband wrapped his arms around me so that I could smell his neck to calm down the incessant shivering that was put down to stress, and later turned out to be a serious infection. The hospital bed with a motorised back that allows you to get up by yourself, but that you can never actually rest in. 

In simple terms, my son’s birth was horrible. As is the case with many first babies, it left a lasting mark on the people closest to me, my own mind and the lower part of my stomach. Everything was fine in the end but the dreaded trauma lingers and taints the very idea of childbearing in life and art.

Sophie New’s sculptural piece The Fourth Stage of Labour (2022), exhibited at the Williamson Art Gallery’s exhibition Broken Grey Wires: Who Wants Flowers When They Are Dead? is made up of a tower of perfect, varnished pieces of toast leaning precariously over its plinth, covered in a colourful crochet blanket. It seems sweet, funny and sentimental.

The catalogue text might have said something about everyone going through labour being united in their experience of the perfect hospital toast after the baby’s arrival, or perhaps I’m misremembering now having read it with eyes full of tears.

I see the golden slices of bread and clench my fists. My neck prickles with sweat and I want to kick it, to throw the bread all over the gallery and leave it in crumbs. The hospital toast I remember was cold and soggy, forced with shaking hands because I “had to eat something”. 

The cheek! The audacity of assuming that we can be united in anything other than the uncertainty of birth and the trauma that follows! My logical mind knows that artworks are diary pages, subjective and often unintentionally uncaring for the viewer’s response. Rightly so too, you can only use what you know. Those of us who remember birth as a difficult but overall empowering experience carry this into the future, and perhaps into birthing more babies. I remember it as a literal fever-dream.

After a moment of standing in front of it on the verge of sobbing, I realise where I am - Broken Grey Wires: Who Wants Flowers When They Are Dead? is an exhibition about loss and grief. It dawns on me that I was too quick to interpret the toast tower as a monument to post-birth bliss. My own experience blinded me to the experience of others - a kind of grim, full-circle moment.

Perhaps The Fourth Stage of Labour actually represents the softness of aftercare, or the potential for it, fabled and whispered but not always realised. A mythical life raft made of yarn and bread.

After having my son, we stayed in the hospital for a week because we both had to receive an intensive course of antibiotics and our recovery was closely monitored. The staff were dedicated and mostly kind, and I remain forever grateful for the doctors who pulled my baby from my stomach and for the nurse who made me laugh immediately before it happened. 

After we came home, we settled into the baby bubble which included visits from a truly empathetic Health Visitor. After checking the baby’s weight, positioning at the breast and sleeping arrangements, she enquired about our mental wellbeing. I was honest, mentioned  the difficult birth and suggested that if there is a chance to talk to someone about it, I’d love to take it so that I could process the experience and stop it from turning into a dark alley in the future. My referral to the support service was declined because “I wasn’t traumatised enough”: I didn’t struggle to bond with my son, have panic attacks or suicidal thoughts.

At the time, my attitude was neutral - I accepted this because I was busy and, actually quite content, taking care of a 2-week old baby, with all of the milk-production, laundry and sleeplessness that it comes with. Seeing this tower of perfectly toasted bread two years later made it all come flooding back and I felt the frustration of never really having talked about this experience to anybody professionally prepared to deal with it. 

Perhaps it was not Sophie New’s intention to stir up emotional burdens - perhaps she just wanted to express her own - but the fact that it did, made it one of the most valuable pieces in the exhibition. We inevitably imbue the art we encounter with our patchworked selves - memories, stories and tastes, dreams unrealised and traumas lived. Any artwork that can tap into this cerebral and emotional reservoir, even if only for one person, has done its job well.