quotations about childbirth
Did you ever see a cowboy film, where someone has been caught by the Indians and tied between two wild stallions, each pulling in opposite directions ... that's a bit what giving birth is like.
MARIAN KEYES
Under the Duvet
You do have control over some elements of childbirth, and the plans made leading up to birth are important. The process of thinking through your options and making plans can help you make better choices and set yourself up for success--whatever that means for you.
MEGAN DAVIDSON
Your Birth Plan: A Guide to Navigating All of Your Choices in Childbirth
I have personally come to believe that childbirth is a blessing to women sent straight from God. I mean, in its purest form, birth is the most fantastic orgasm married with a miracle! What more heavenly gift could there be?
LAURIE ANNIS MORGAN
The Power of Pleasurable Childbirth
Childbirth is unpredictable, it's true. But much of what people are warning against is actually quite predictable. If your doctor has the highest Cesarean birthrate in town and you don't want a Cesarean birth, this is a great opportunity to consider the plans you've made and the choices you have. That said, if you are planning a Cesarean birth, this same doctor might be an excellent match.
MEGAN DAVIDSON
Your Birth Plan: A Guide to Navigating All of Your Choices in Childbirth
Nobody ever talked about what a struggle this all was. I could see why women used to die in childbirth. They didn't catch some kind of microbe, or even hemorrhage. They just gave up. They knew that if they didn't die, they'd be going through it again the next year, and the next. I couldn't understand how a woman might just stop trying, like a tired swimmer, let her head go under, the water fill her lungs. I slowly massaged Yvonne's neck, her shoulders, I wouldn't let her go under.
JANET FITCH
White Oleander
The man roared like a bull when a splinter was in his finger, and the woman muffled the moans of childbirth, lest she disturb him.
MARGARET MITCHELL
Gone with the Wind
The wisdom and compassion a woman can intuitively experience in childbirth can make her a source of healing and understanding for other women.
INA MAY GASKIN
Spiritual Midwifery
This was my first baby. I thought I knew what to expect. I thought I could handle the pain without drugs. I thought giving birth was comparative to running a marathon. I thought a lot of things that ended up being wrong. First, childbirth was nothing like running a marathon. The fatigue was similar, but I'd never felt like my stomach was being turned inside out while running. Even the combination of every side stitch I'd ever had while running didn't compare to the pain of one single contraction.
BRIANA N. RENSHAW
"A Laboring Question"
Men die in battle; women die in childbirth.
PHILIPPA GREGORY
The Red Queen
Childbirth was probably easier for most women in early cultures, especially in hunter-gatherer societies, where everyone was accustomed to physical labor and supple and fit from daily activity.
SUZANNE ARMS
Immaculate Deception II
She had neither the soul nor the romanticism to consider childbirth magical or emotionally transporting. So far as she could gather it mostly involved pain indignity and mess.
GAIL CARRIGER
Heartless
"They call me Baelon the Brave," the prince told his wife at her bedside, "but I would sooner fight a dozen battles than do what you've just done."
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
Fire & Blood
Birth is, without a doubt, one of the greatest self-expressive and creative processes we can embark upon in womanhood.
MAHA AL MUSA
Dance of the Womb
She is emerging (she has no choice)
into a place
like sex or childbirth,
one thing to the observer
something very different to the participant
KATHLEEN OSSIP
The Do-Over
The dew of thy birth is of the womb of the morning.
BIBLE
Psalm 110:3
I had no idea how we were going to figure this out, but women had been having babies since the beginning of time without doctors. Couldn't be that hard, right? I sort of wanted to punch myself in the face after that though. Childbirth scared the crap out of me.
JENNIFER L. ARMENTROUT
Origin
Birth can be painful. Sometimes women die from giving birth. However, when the baby is born, all that pain (that was endured) vanishes in an instant. Love for that tiny baby makes one forget the pain, the fear. And as I've said before, love between mother and child is the highest experience, the closest to divine love.
HOPE BRADFORD
Oracle of Compassion
For a variety of reasons, a lot of women have also come to believe that nature made a serious mistake with their bodies. This belief has become so strong in many that they give in to pharmaceutical or surgical treatments when patience and recognition of the normality and harmlessness of the situation would make for better health for them and their babies and less surgery and technological intervention in birth. Most women need encouragement and companionship more than they need drugs.
INA MAY GASKIN
Ina May's Guide to Childbirth
As some divinely gifted man,
Whose life in low estate began,
And on a simple village green;
Who breaks his birth's invidious bar.
ALFRED TENNYSON
In Memoriam A.H.H.
Lying on my side dressed in a thin cotton gown, staring intently at the logo on the hospital bed, contraction after contraction wracked my body. As my stomach clenched, I finally understood why all the media and literature stressed breathing during childbirth. The pain of my contractions was so incredible, my entire body froze tight, including my lungs. So I gripped the bedrails tightly and focused on breathing.
BRIANA N. RENSHAW
"A Laboring Question"