Childbirth Quotes

• The wisdom and compassion a woman can intuitively experience in childbirth can make her a source of healing and understanding for other women.

  Stephen Gaskin

  Inspiring, Pregnancy, Healing

  87 Copy quote

• Not alone is the child born through the mother, but the mother also is born through the child.

  Gertrud von Le Fort

  Mother, Children, Born

  11 Copy quote

• Birth is not an emergency. It is simply an emergence.

  Jeannine Parvati Baker

  Yoga, Emergencies, Birth

  54 Copy quote

• Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never!

  Edna Ferber

  Writing, Climbing, Interesting

  Edna Ferber (1939). “A Peculiar Treasure”

  63 Copy quote

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  Birth is about making mothers... strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength

  Barbara Katz Rothman

  Mother, Strong, Pregnancy

  Barbara Katz Rothman (2016). “A Bun in the Oven: How the Food and Birth Movements Resist Industrialization”, p.48, NYU Press

  61 Copy quote

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• There is no other organ quite like the uterus. If men had such an organ they would brag about it. So should we

  Ina May Gaskin

  Men, Uterus, Birth

  67 Copy quote

• For far too many, pregnancy and birth is still something that happens to them rather than something they set out consciously and joyfully to do themselves

  Sheila Kitzinger

  Pregnancy, Birth, Joyful

  Sheila Kitzinger (1990). “The Experience of Childbirth”, Viking Press

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• Death, taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them.

  Margaret Mitchell

  Birthday, Death, Time

  Gone with theWind pt. 4, ch. 38 (1936) See Benjamin Franklin 41; Proverbs 63

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• We in the West do not refrain from childbirth because we are concerned about the population explosion or because we feel we cannot afford children, but because we do not like children.

  Germaine Greer

  Children, West, Population

  Germaine Greer (1985). “Sex and destiny: the politics of human fertility”

  14 Copy quote

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• However much we know about birth in general, we know nothing about a particular birth. We must let it unfold with its own uniqueness.

  Elizabeth Noble

  Inspiring, Pregnancy, Thought Provoking

  14 Copy quote

• It is not only that we want to bring about an easy labor, without risking injury to the mother or the child; we must go further. We must understand that childbirth is fundamentally a spiritual, as well as a physical, achievement. . . The birth of a child is the ultimate perfection of human love.

  Grantly Dick-Read

  Mother, Spiritual, Children

  53 Copy quote

• A baby is like the beginning of all things: wonder, hope a dream of possibilities. In a world that is cutting down its trees to build highways, losing its earth to concrete, babies are almost the only remaining link in nature, with the natural world of living things from which we spring.

  Eda LeShan

  Inspiring, Dream, Baby

  Eda J. LeShan (1967). “The Conspiracy Against Childhood”, New York : Atheneum

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• Childbirth is more admirable than conquest, more amazing than self-defense, and as courageous as either one.

  Gloria Steinem

  Pregnancy, Self, Defense

  Gloria Steinem (2017). “Passion, Politics, and Everyday Activism: Collected Essays: Moving Beyond Words; Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions; and Revolution from Within”, p.815, Open Road Media

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• Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers.

  Barbara Katz Rothman

  Mother, Baby, Pregnancy

  Barbara Katz Rothman (2016). “A Bun in the Oven: How the Food and Birth Movements Resist Industrialization”, p.48, NYU Press

  44 Copy quote

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• At the moment of childbirth, every woman has the same aura of isolation, as though she were abandoned, alone.

  Boris Pasternak

  Auras, Isolation, Moments

  Doctor Zhivago Ch. 9, Sect. 3

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• Many women have described their experiences of childbirth as being associated with a spiritual uplifting, the power of which they have never previously been aware. To such a woman, childbirth is a monument of joy within her memory. She turns to it in thought to seek again an ecstasy which passed too soon.

  Grantly Dick-Read

  Uplifting, Spiritual, Memories

  30 Copy quote

• The pains of childbirth were altogether different from the enveloping effects of other kinds of pain. These were pains one could follow with one's mind.

  Margaret Mead

  Family, Pain, Mind

  Margaret Mead (1972). “Blkberry Winter”

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• When enough women realize that birth is a time of great opportunity to get in touch with their true power, and when they are willing to assume responsibility for this, we will reclaim the power of birth and help move technology where it belongs-in the service of birthing women, not their master.

  Christiane Northrup

  Inspiring, Pregnancy, Moving

  16 Copy quote

• ...one cannot actively help a woman to give birth. The goal is to avoid disturbing her unnecsessarily.

  Michel Odent

  Women, Giving, Goal

  1017 Copy quote

• If we want to find safe alternatives to obstetrics, we must rediscover midwifery. To rediscover midwifery is the same as giving back childbirth to women. And imagine the future if surgical teams were at the service of the midwives and the women instead of controlling them.

  Michel Odent

  Inspiring, Children, Team

  1103 Copy quote

• Publication is to thinking as childbirth is to the first kiss.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Kissing, Thinking, First Kiss

  "Athenaeum" magazine, #62 (B&S), 1798.

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• I like trying to get pregnant. I'm not so sure about childbirth.

  George Eliot

  Pregnancy, Trying, Literature

  10 Copy quote

• Postpartum depression is a very real and very serious problem for many mothers. It can happen to a first time mom or a veteran mother. It can occur a few days... or a few months after childbirth.

  Richard Codey

  Inspiring, Mothers Day, Mom

  88 Copy quote

• As often as I have witnessed the miracle [birth], held the perfect creature with its tiny hands and feet, each time I have felt as though I were entering a cathedral with prayer in my heart.

  Margaret Sanger

  Prayer, Heart, Feet

  Margaret Sanger (2012). “The Autobiography of Margaret Sanger”, p.55, Courier Corporation

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• The instant of birth is exquisite. Pain and joy are one at this moment. Ever after, the dim recollection is so sweet that we speak to our children with a gratitude they never understand.

  Madeline Tiger Bass

  Inspiring, Gratitude, Sweet

  8 Copy quote