Being Born

Sheila Kitzinger’s Being Born (1986) is a nonfiction book for young readers that answers children’s perennial question, “Where do babies come from?” With sensitive, accessible language, Kitzinger describes the prenatal journey from conception to childbirth. Being Born is illustrated with life-size, full-color photographs of fetal development by Swedish photographer, Lennart Nilsson. Publisher’s Weekly calls Being Born an “awe-inspiring work,” and Booklist awarded the book a starred review.

Kitzinger uses a second-person point of view for most of Being Born, addressing the child-reader as “you.” By using this perspective Kitzinger includes the reader in the story, making the book about the reader’s own birth. In the opening “Note to the Reader Sharing This Book with a Child,” Kitzinger and Nilsson explain that the book is not about the birth of a baby brother or sister, but about the “baby’s experience of birth.” Kitzinger uses sensory text and often poetic language to describe what it is like to be the fetus inside the womb, expressing the things the fetus can feel, hear, see, and do inside the uterus.

Being Born begins with almost fairy-tale-like phrasing, “Once you were in a small, dark place inside your mother’s body…” but Kitzinger does not shy away from presenting accurate biological terminology. She uses precise medical vocabulary throughout Being Born, defining terms like semen, the placenta, and the uterus in simplified but correct language. Kitzinger also utilizes comparisons to the natural world that children can easily relate to, helping the young reader visualize a fetus’s scale and development. For instance, she likens the muscles of the uterus to the muscles of the reader’s arms and legs, which grow hard when they are active. The ovum developing in the uterus is like a seed becoming a flower. Initially, the fetus looks like a “sprouting bean” or a seahorse. Kitzinger compares the weight of the nine-to-ten-week-old fetus to a chicken egg. Emerging fetal arms are like sprouts.



Nilsson’s detailed photographs graphically illustrate each stage of the prenatal journey. Set on black backgrounds, each photograph typically takes an entire page of a two-page spread. Larger photos of the fetus often extend into and across the two pages. Smaller, offset photographs chronicle the fetus’s development at 5 weeks, 11 weeks, 5 months, and 6 months, emphasizing its growth and relative size. Kitzinger’s accompanying text is white against black. The unrelieved dark background eliminates any visual distraction, drawing the eye to the vivid photos and the pop of text.

“At the very beginning,” Kitzinger writes, “there was no you,” there was just your mother’s ovum, ready to make a baby. Kitzinger details how the ovum moves into the uterus, explaining how it is fertilized by your father’s sperm. She describes the act of conception as happening when “your mother and father felt very loving” and candidly specifies how the penis enters the vagina and releases semen. Kitzinger explains how the ovum and sperm join into one cell, which begins to divide into a “shimmering silvery blackberry” of cells that takes root in the uterus. She details what you can do at different stages of your fetal development. At nine or ten weeks, “you” can “make funny faces.” At eleven weeks, you can swim like a fish and move your arms and legs. Gradually, you become aware of your mother and can hear her voice. At seven months, you open your eyes. At eight months, you practice moving your feet and get into the correct position to be born.

On the only two pages with no accompanying photographs, Kitzinger tells the reader that seasons have passed while they grew inside their mother. She relates how your mother’s uterus opens, and you make the journey through the birth canal. Photos show a newborn still attached to the umbilical cord, lying on the mother’s chest. Kitzinger explains how the umbilical cord is cut, and that where it was attached is where your belly button is now located. She narrates your new sensory experiences, like being able to breathe air, see colors, feel the touch of hands, and recognize your mother’s voice. Final photographs show a newborn breastfeeding as Kitzinger concludes, “You sucked and sucked until…You fell asleep.”



Kitzinger is a British author, professor, and social anthropologist specializing in pregnancy and women’s health. She advocates educating and empowering women to take control of their own pregnancies and make their own childbirth choices. She has written more than 20 books, including The Experience of Childbirth and Ourselves as Mothers. She started the Birth Crisis Network in Britain, which offers support to women who experience emotional problems after childbirth. Kitzinger was made a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1982.

Lennart Nilsson, the illustrator of Being Born, has equally prestigious credentials. Nilsson has contributed to National Geographic, Time, and Life magazines and won an Emmy for the NOVA documentary, The Miracle of Life (1982). Nilsson experimented with endoscopic photography to capture the beginnings of life. His micro images of cells and fetuses first appeared in the book, A Child is Born (1965). An acclaimed medical photographer and scientist, Nilsson received an honorary doctorate from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute for his scientific discoveries.