Already, Mother Book sounds like something out of the ordinary. But this pregnancy calendar, designed by ad agency Dentsu for Japanese medical services firm Kishokai Medical Corporation, is even more unusual than what’s on the page.

The book is designed to take the forms of the growth of the mother’s torso, week by week as the baby grows and her body changes, intended to connect the two in a way that is often neglected. The idea is for mothers to be able to learn what is happening to them on the outside, with their body, and on the inside, with their baby. Mother Book reconnects the two.

A kind of growing sculpture that takes shape over the course of a pregnancy, Mother Book is more a living craft than document. Over the course of 40 weeks, the pages blossom into a model of the mother’s pregnant torso, embossed onto pages with information about the development of the baby at the many stages of pregnancy. Best of all, there’s space for mum to diarise the pregnancy as she goes along. 

The project won the Grand Prix in the Health and Wellness category at the Cannes Health Lions, earlier this year.