‘Childbirth’ depicts a naked woman, drawn with fluidity, floating in an indeterminate space, animated by curvilinear lines and several star-shaped motifs. The background is mainly grey, the body is drawn in black and white, and the right hand and shoulder are highlighted in bright red. The highest star is also red.

The mid-1950s were a fertile period for Masson, during which he felt free from any dominant thematic or technical constraints and drew inspiration from his own past practices while exploring new directions. During his stay in the United States during the war, Masson had discovered Chinese painting for the first time, and its impact, along with his intensive study of Zen, had a profound influence on his work.

According to Carolyn Lanchner: "One of the great attractions of Zen for Masson was its emphasis on immediate mystical experience as a means of accessing ultimate truth... At first glance, this seems identical to the early Surrealist preoccupation with automatism..."

Procreation is not a theme that can be easily or progressively delineated throughout Masson's work, although alongside war, death and sex, it is a recurring source of imagery, often symbolic or allegorical, from the early 1920s until his death. However, the artist rarely treated this theme as explicitly as in the drawing and title of “Childbirth”.

The appearance of stars in L'Enfantement is remarkable. Cosmic allusions are very evident in Masson's work from the mid to late 1920s, in his drawings and sand paintings. The star motif continues to appear in Masson's work, often as a decorative and gestural dot at the end of a line or, with cosmic connotations, as shooting stars.