Bird Birth Attendants

I gave birth at the beginning of the pandemic in my 13th floor apartment far away from family. Because of the pandemic I knew that I wasn’t going to have the birth or postpartum support that I had been planning on. I painted these bird birth attendants as a meditation on how I might find support 13 floors up at the beginning of a strange new reality for so many people.

Each image features a laboring person in a different birth position. Each person is accompanied by a bird.

Olivia 2020