Main description:

Therapeutic Arts in Pregnancy, Birth and New Parenthood explores the use of arts in relation to infertility, pregnancy, childbirth and new parenthood. It is the first book to bring all these subjects together into one accessible volume with an international perspective.

The book looks at the role of the arts in health with respect to the pregnancy journey, from conception to new parenthood. It introduces readers to the ways in which art is being used with women who are experiencing different stages of childbearing - who may be unable to conceive and are struggling with infertility treatment, or who experience miscarriage and loss, a traumatic birth, or grief over the loss of a baby. It also elucidates how art-making offers a means for women to express and understand their changed sense of self-identity and sexuality as a result of pregnancy and motherhood.

The book has an international compass and is essential reading for arts therapy trainees and arts in health courses and will also be of interest to other health professionals and artists.

Contents:

1. Arts in health: pregnancy, birth and new parenthood; 2. Metaphorically maternal: finding potential space through the experience of grief and loss associated with infertility; 3. Art Therapy and pregnancy loss: a secret grief; 4. Overcoming severe fear in late pregnancy. The use of Art Therapy in maternal healthcare, in the south of Sweden; 5. Lost and found: locating meaning within the landscape of perinatal loss; 6. Reframing motherhood: photography as a creative application to re-image mother; 7. Representations of motherhood: normative and transgressive constructions; 8. Recovery stories: transitional identities and the ambivalence of the maternal experience; 9. Where can we make our home? In-utero images and thinking in the running of a small therapeutic group for mothers and their young children affected by domestic abuse; 10. 'Myself as a Tree': the enabling power of an Art Therapy intervention in clinical work with postnatally distressed women-mothers; 11. Obstetric violence: silenced issues; 12. Artful trans-itions and the queering of pregnancy, birth and (m)othering; 13. Mothering mothers: an exploration of self-referred, self-funded, six-week Art Therapy groups for new mothers; 14. Mechanisms of change within a dyadic model of Art Therapy for parents and their infants; 15. And if the bough breaks: the use of individual Art Therapy within a perinatal mental health service; 16: Cases on the border: perinatal parent-infant work involving migrants, video analysis and art psychotherapy; 17. Art Therapy for motherhood and families as a way to support positive parenting.