Ankur Desai

And hours later, tradition is they pose with their newborn on the steps.

But that image of an immaculately presented mother and child is a world away from many women's experience of childbirth.

Our reporter Will Chalk has been finding out about a piece of public art designed to address that imbalance.

She's called Mother Verite.

She's a seven foot tall sculpture made of bronze depicting a woman wearing only a pair of disposable postpartum underwear over a still swollen belly, cradling a newborn child to her breast.

The bodies of more than 40 real new mothers were scanned to create the figure and the very first place she was put on display was here at the Lindo Wing.

Her message isn't lost on the mothers I speak to.

I love to see a real woman because we're not all skinny, flashing back to our own body as soon as we pop the baby out.

So that gives that reality as a comfort blanket that I'm allowed to take my time.

After being unveiled here, the sculpture is touring art fairs before finding a permanent home back in London.

Her creator, Raven Shalia de Clark, told me she wanted to show the beauty in what can sometimes be portrayed as the ugly side of pregnancy and made a conscious effort to include things such as cellulite.

Recognizing how much women's bodies change throughout the postpartum period and throughout pregnancy as well, I think it was important to reframe a lot of the kind of the visible nature of cellulite within this context.

You know, we see it in terms of when we're thinking about how we shame women for their bodies and what that means in terms of, you know, snapback culture.

But for us, it was really about inverting that.

And it's nothing to be ashamed of.

And particularly within this context, you know, it is a moment of beauty.

It's a moment of transformation.

Research in 2021 found only 4% of London's statues are of women.

That's fewer than are of animals.

The vast majority, too, show white people.