The Basics The Educated Birth creates teaching tools for pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum health education that are effective, accessible, inclusive and high-quality. Our content is created specifically for reproductive health professionals (ie. birthworkers, doulas, childbirth educators, public health workers, midwives, OBGYNS, etc.) to help them more confidently, comprehensively, and equitably support a wide range of parents and parents-to-be.

Our primary suite of print and digital materials includes infosheets, activity sheets, anatomy graphics, planners, checklists, illustrations, and more. We also publish educational and storytelling content for parents and professionals through Everyday Birth Magazine and Life's Work documentary.

The Issue + Our Approach Inequity in reproductive healthcare is a complex issue that needs to be confronted from many angles. Since 2016, The Educated Birth has done so by developing and refining a suite of teaching materials for reproductive health professionals that represents and celebrates the many identities and presentations of people in our communities (before, during, after, and excluding pregnancy*), with inclusive language written and designed to be easy to read and to teach with, and strategically structured to help professionals personalize their support to each parent, and to help parents make informed decisions on each step of their journey.

Today, The Educated Birth has created hundreds of illustrations and infographics featuring pregnant people, parents, and support people of different races, sexual orientations, body shapes and sizes, hair textures and styles, disabilities, and more. Our team has published 12 issues of Everyday Birth Magazine, a biannual print and digital magazine focusing on photography, home, hospital, and birth center birth stories, and educational articles. We've created an interactive online photo-audio-documentary called Life's Work, featuring Roots Community Birth Center, a Black woman-owned birth center in Minnesota. Through these platforms, we have invited parents and professionals (especially those from communities often left out of the "mainstream") to share their knowledge and stories.

How We Started When founder Cheyenne Varner became a birth worker in 2016, she couldn't find imagery of Black pregnant women online. When she googled combinations of "Black," "woman," and "pregnant" much of what she found felt insulting — more images of upset Black women looking at pregnancy tests, and pregnant white women wearing black than of healthy, happy, Black pregnant women. This was her catalyst — she realized she'd stumbled into a deep, vast, wide gap — and that an incredible number of people across a spectrum of identities and experiences have not been able to see themselves when learning about their bodies and navigating some of our most intimate experiences and decisions.

Where We Are + Where We're Going The Educated Birth has been recognized by influential organizations including Doula Trainings International, Birthing Advocacy Doula Training, Ancient Art Midwifery, Common Sense Childbirth, Inc (founded by the acclaimed Black midwife, Jennie Joseph), Hypnobabies, and SisterSong (the largest national Reproductive Justice collective).

Our materials have become known and are used internationally — with customers in Canada, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, and most recently South Korea — among other countries. We currently translate and publish materials in Spanish, reaching a wider multilingual audience.


Our ambition and conviction to provide more intersectional reproductive health education grows and grows! And we’re growing too! If you believe in what we’re doing, consider supporting our work.

*Why include “excluding pregnancy?” Because not everyone who can become pregnant desires to become pregnant— and not everyone can become pregnant either. This is another group of people who often become stigmatized and/or left out in reproductive health discourse.