Quotes

Birth

“We can make a woman have contractions, but we don’t always succeed in forcing her body to release the baby and give birth. If we start a labor with chemicals, we may very well have to finish it with a surgeon’s scalpel.” – Gail Hart, Midwife

 "There is power that comes to women when they give birth. They don't ask for it, it simply invades them. Accumulates like clouds on the horizon and passes through, carrying the child with it." - Sheryl Feldman 


Giving birth should be your greatest achievement not your greatest fear.
- Jane Weideman 


“Giving birth is a transformation and it doesn’t matter whether you’ve had eight babies before. It’s still a transformation the next time you have another baby, because you are no longer the same woman you were before you had that baby.” – Penny Handford

“We must attempt to tell the whole truth about birth, the truth that includes the transformation, mastery, satisfaction, personal power and the difference between pain and suffering.” – Cheri van Hoover

“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

“Birth should not be a time in a woman’s life when she has to FIGHT for anything.” -Carla Hartley

 
 "We have a secret in our culture, and it's not that birth is painful. It's that women are strong." - Laura Stavoe Harm   


We’ve put birth in the same category with illness and disease and it’s never belonged here. Birth is naturally safe, but we’ve allowed it to be taken over by the medical community.
~ Carla Hartley, founder of Trust Birth and the Ancient Art Midwifery Institute


Attending births is like growing roses. You have to marvel at the ones that just open up and bloom at the first kiss of the sun but you wouldn’t dream of pulling open the petals of the tightly closed buds and forcing them to blossom to your time line.
~ Gloria Lemay


If you lay down, the baby will never come out!
~ Native American saying

Birthing is the most profound initiation to spirituality a woman can have.
~ Robin Lim

Women’s bodies have their own wisdom, and a system of birth refined over 100,000 generations is not so easily overpowered.
~ Sarah Buckley

“…birth is the pinnacle where women discover the courage to become mothers…” –Anita Diamant

No other natural bodily function is painful and childbirth should not be an exception.
~ Grantley Dick-Read

A healthy woman who delivers spontaneously performs a job that cannot be improved upon.
~ Aidan MacFarlane author of The Psychology of Childbirth (1977)

 

“Our body-wisdom knows how to birth a baby. What is required of the woman who births naturally is for her to surrender to this body-wisdom. You can’t think your way through a birth, and you can’t fake it.” –Leslie McIntyre

“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.” - Madline Tiger

“A woman in birth is at once her most powerful, and most vulnerable. But any woman who has birthed unhindered understands that we are stronger than we know.” – Marcie Macari

“Keeping active during labour and adopting natural, upright or crouching birth positions is the safest, most enjoyable, most economical and sensible way for the majority of women to give birth.” – Janet Balaskas

“The knowledge about how to give birth is born within every woman: women do not need to be taught how to give birth but rather to have more trust and faith in their own body knowledge.” – BirthWorks 

"Childbirth is an experience in a woman's life that holds the power to transform her forever.  Passing through these powerful gates - in her own way - remembering all the generations of women who walk with her... She is never alone." - Suzanne Arms 



Midwifery

"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, MD

“Midwifery calls upon you to be the best you can be: the best advocate, guide, healer, counselor, mother, comrade, and confidant of the women seeking your care.” — Anne Frye

You are a midwife, assisting at someone else’s birth. Do good without show or fuss. Facilitate what is happening rather than what you think ought to be happening. If you must take the lead, lead so that the mother is helped, yet still free and in charge. When the baby is born, the mother will rightly say: “We did it ourselves!”
~ from The Tao Te Ching

“…Respecting the woman as an important and valuable human being and making certain that the woman’s experience while giving birth is fulfilling and empowering is not just a nice extra, it is absolutely essential as it makes the woman strong and therefore makes society strong. ” - Marsden Wagner  


Women’s strongest feelings [in terms of their birthings], positive and negative, focus on the way they were treated by their caregivers.
~ Annie Kennedy & Penny Simkin


All over the world there exists in every society a small group of women who feel themselves strongly attracted to giving care to other women during pregnancy and childbirth. Failure to make use of this group of highly motivated people is regrettable and a sin against the principle of subsidiary.
~ Dr. Kloosterman, Chief of OB/GYN, Univ. of Amsterdam, Holland

“You can only become truly accomplished at something you love. Don’t make money your goal. Instead pursue the things you love doing and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off of you.”
― Maya Angelou 
 
“I would say in obstetrics you are numbed by the technology. Your ability to understand the more sacred and spiritual aspects of birthing is extremely numbed.” –Dr. Eden Fromberg, OB/GYN 

"Midwives see birth as a miracle and only mess with it if there's a problem; doctors see birth as a problem and if they don't mess with it, it's a miracle!" - Barbara Harper in Gentle Birth Choices



"The skill of being with women in pain in labour often rests in believing in women when they do not believe in themselves." - Nicky Leaf

Speak tenderly to them. Let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of our greeting. Always have a cheerful smile. Don’t only give your care, but give your heart as well.
~ Mother Teresa 

“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.”
― Maya Angelou

“When you destroy midwives, you also destroy a body of knowledge that is shared by women, that can’t be put together by a bunch of surgeons or a bunch of male obstetricians, because physiologically, birth doesn’t happen the same way around surgeons, medically trained doctors, as it does around sympathetic women.” –Ina May Gaskin

"You are a birth servant. Do good without show or fuss. If you must take the lead, lead so that the mother is helped, yet still free and in charge. When the baby is born, they will rightly say: 'We did it ourselves!'" - Tao Te Ching 

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou




Doula/support


If a doula were a drug, it would be unethical not to use it.
~ John H. Kennell, MD

“Asking your husband to be your sole guide through labor is like asking him to lead the way on a climb of Mt Everest. He may be smart and trustworthy, you may love him, but in the Himalayas you’d both be a lot better off with a Sherpa!” - Pam England









Facing fear

"Anything I’ve ever done that ultimately was worthwhile…initially scared me to death." - Betty Bender



You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.
~ Eleanor Roosevelt