The Empathy Belly is just one amazing item brought with to our Mother’s Workshops.
The Empathy Belly is a multi-component, weighted garment that will, through medically accurate simulation, enable you to feel over 20 symptoms of pregnancy, including:
- weight gain of over 30 pounds
- baby kicking and stroking movements
- blood pressure, bladder pressure and other changes
It is used in various teaching settings, including teen abstinence education and for fathers to better understand what mothers feel during pregnancy.
Stillbirthday, however, uses this as a unique opportunity to enhance and deepen our shared discussion times together during our workshops. You are not required to use it if you don’t want to, but if you are interested, it is something that can draw you back into those last moments when you were pregnant with your child; perhaps your baby was born before the third trimester and so you didn’t experience what that felt like, or, you have not become pregnant yet, or, you gave birth to a full term baby and, desire to just capture a moment, even simulated, of that time again with your baby.
Our precious sharing circle during our Mothers Workshops is a powerful time of looking at the parts of our feelings that may otherwise stay hidden or silenced. When so much is taken, and so suddenly from us, when you decide to try on the Empathy Belly, you will realize that it is NOT your baby, and there can be a profound experience as you remove the item and have a tangible experience of moving forward.
Similarly, if you are a mother present in our sharing circle and decide that the experience of the Empathy Belly isn’t something you feel you need to try, there is also great empowerment in that decision as well.
Either way, it becomes your decision. And whatever decision you make, can help you move into some of the deep feelings that may otherwise remain more difficult to uncover, and, can help you continue to move forward. It’s not about you wearing it or not, it’s about you being allowed a decision – a healing decision.
Take a look at all of the wonderful things that make up our stillbirthday Mother’s Workshops – and our workshops for professionals too!
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If you are a medical or birth professional in the Kansas City area and are interested in renting the Empathy Belly for teaching purposes, email at heidi.faith@stillbirthday.com.
