Mosie on display in Gates Foundation Museum

First patented syringe designed for home insemination on display in the Designing Motherhood exhibition at The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Discovery Center.

The Mosie Baby at-Home Insemination Kit, the first device patented and designed for at-home intravaginal insemination, will be on display in theDesigning Motherhood exhibition at The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Discovery Center. The critically acclaimed exhibition explores the arc of human reproduction through design and art.

“The objects in the exhibition tell complex, rich, and important stories that impact each one of us,” said Sarah Bloom, the Gates Foundation Discovery Center’s curator of exhibitions. 

This exhibition feature is exciting for Mosie Baby, the developer and inventor of the kit, as it aligns with the company’s mission to destigmatize home insemination and empower all people to build families on their own terms, with dignity. “In many ways this is a win for all the bold, industrious people who have had to find alternative ways to complete their family. While we are incredibly proud that the Mosie Baby Kit is a part of this exhibition, we are thrilled that home insemination is getting the recognition it deserves as a path to pregnancy.” says Co-founder and CEO Maureen Brown.

Designing Motherhood: Things That Make and Break Our Births, will open on February 16, 2023 and be on view through December 31, 2023. Organized by design historians, birth advocates, and medical and midwifery history experts, Designing Motherhood explores the arc of human reproduction through the lens of design and art from the 19th century to the present day. Aiming to examine traditionally gendered narratives of parenthood, as well as racial and socio-economic disparities in access to care, Designing Motherhood features over 200 objects and centers experiences of (in)fertility, pregnancy, postpartum, and parenthood.

The text accompanying the Mosie Kit in the exhibition, the Discovery Center shares insightful background about the journey to conceive and why this kit was included in the exhibition:

“Fertility challenges affect about one out of eight people. The best-known (and often wildly expensive) option to address infertility is in vitro fertilization, in which eggs are retrieved in a medical procedure, fertilized in a lab, and implanted in the uterus. A less expensive option, intrauterine insemination inserts sperm past the cervix and into the uterus just before ovulation. A third option, intravaginal insemination can be performed at home using a syringe or even a turkey baster. Most syringes, however, have a tip that can be painful to the user and can also trap sperm. As part of their own fertility journey, Maureen and Marc Brown developed a new syringe with a rounded nub to ease at-home insemination. They launched a company, Mosie, and their son Francis (Frank) became the first Mosie baby. This patented design has helped single, surrogate, straight, and LGBTQ+ parents successfully conceive.”

The exhibition also demonstrates the evolution of rights and societal norms pertaining to con(tra)ception, pregnancy, birth, and postpartum experiences over the last 150 years, highlighting that birth—and the material culture that surrounds it—impacts every living person.

“This project examines one of the most fundamental experiences in life—being born. We started the Designing Motherhood project in 2017 to confront the large gap around this topic in the collections and classrooms where we work, as well as in culture more broadly,” said the Designing Motherhood curatorial team. “Motherhood is not just a ‘women’s issue.’ This exhibition is for everyone because we’re all born and thus all shaped by these things that ‘make and break our births.’”

“We are excited to bring this exhibition to the Gates Foundation Discovery Center and to our region,” said Charlotte Beall, Deputy Director for the Discovery Center. “I am looking forward to expanding the conversation beyond the US with the inclusion of global objects, innovations, stories, and programming that reflect the Gates Foundation’s strategic focus on maternal, newborn, and child health and gender equality.”

The Designing Motherhood book, a 344-page volume published by the MIT Press in 2021, accompanies the exhibition. 

About Mosie Baby

Mosie Baby is the developer and inventor of The Mosie Baby Kit for at-Home Insemination, a groundbreaking at-home insemination kit featuring the patented Mosie syringe. Mosie is the first syringe designed specifically for at-home insemination that’s accessible, simple, and easy to use. In 2015, Mosie Baby founders Maureen and Marc Brown used their own kit to conceive the first Mosie Baby, who is now a healthy six year old.

Mosie Baby is on a mission to empower people with the tools they need to grow their family on their own terms and to celebrate the many definitions of what it means to be a Mosie Family. Their vision is to democratize access to family building and eliminate stigma associated with insemination.

Mosie Baby has helped more than 100,000 people on their path to parenthood and is the winner of the 2021 SXSW and Austin Chamber of Commerce’s “Best Emerging Business” Award.

To learn more about Mosie Baby, please visit mosiebaby.com or follow them onInstagram,Facebook, Twitter, and onTikTok @mosiebaby. Learn more atmosiebaby.com.