Until Caterine Milinaire became pregnant with her first child in 1970, she hadn’t put much thought into the childbirth process. As a bohemian photographer and fashion journalist, Milinaire (who I wrote about previously here) realised that having a heavily medicalized birth in a bustling New York City hospital wasn’t right for her nor her equally bohemian partner, the painter Mati Klarwein (best known for the album cover art of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew). They moved to Santa Fe for the last three months of the pregnancy, leaning into a fully countercultural approach to “natural” birth1—giving birth at home, surrounded by many friends.
For Milinaire, childbirth was an intensely transformative, spiritual experience. Writing about it in Vogue (January 1972), Milinaire called it “good, crazy, shaky, incredible,” and went on to explain that it was “time more than ever to be fully conscious of every phase of childing: conception in total ecstasy… pregnancy fully wished by both parents and carried through with thoughtful health care… and the climax: birth as the greatest feast of joy to be shared with anyone who wishes to participate.” At the time of the publication of that essay, Caterine was already working on a book—a new kind of pregnancy and baby book, one that straddled the worlds between more conventional, medical pregnancies/births and the nascent “natural” birth belief system then emerging from the back-to-the-land counterculture and hippie movement.
Birth was published in August 1974 in the United States. It includes chapters on the care of the body during and after pregnancy, different methods of delivery and various interventions, infant care, and the role of fathers in birthgiving. The book was reviewed for medical accuracy by Dr. Joseph Berger, M.D. Reading it now, some of it is very prescient while other parts appear antiquated or incorrect (as is to be expected with any medical-scientific information fifty years old).
The book’s design is a high point—if you’ve ever looked through an old copy of The Whole Earth Catalog or a 1960s alternative press paper, you will recognize the design aesthetic—one created through the use of pre-made fonts (usually dry transfers) and clip art in a paste-up, creating an almost collage effect. Before digital, clip art was physically cut out of pre-printed books and sheets sold by stock art companies and then pasted onto boards for phototypesetting. Stephanie Tevonian, Birth’s designer (and now a professor at FIT), incorporated different fonts, stock borders, and clip art alongside paintings, photographs, illustrations, and collages. Compared to any pregnancy or birth book today (no matter if hypnobirthing or science-led), Birth’s design language appears raw and jumbled—somehow much more appropriate for the complexity that is pregnancy and birth. The lack of a constrained design language is charming, as you can see in the assortment of scans included below.
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