Birth Quotes

Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers ~ strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength.
- Barbara Katz Rothman, PhD

My body knows just what to do. My baby grows just as it should be.
Penny Simkin

The whole point of woman-centered birth is the knowledge that a woman is the birth power source. She may need, and deserve, help, but in essence, she always had, currently has, and will have the power.
- Heather McCue

The knowledge of how to give birth without outside intervention lies deep within each woman. Successful childbirth depends on an acceptance of the process.
- Suzanne Arms

The beauty of my body is not measured by the size of the clothes it can fit into, but by the stories that it tells. I have a belly and hips that say, "We grew a child in here," and breasts that say, "We nourished life." My hands, with bitten nails and a writer's callus, say, "We create amazing things."
- Sarah, from I Am Beautiful: A Celebration of Women in Their Own Words

The Rose
My cervix is like a rosebud
Ready to Open
I am nurtured by those around me as the rose is nurtured by the soil
The rosebud gradually, ever so softly, opens and blossoms.
I open and blossom.
My cervix is soft and ripe like a rosebud.
I see the outer petals of the rose falling away
I see my cervix yielding like the outer petals of the rose.
Every contraction opens another petal of my rosebud cervix.
I welcome each contraction, which helps me open my rosebud cervix.
I welcome and receive all the nurturing around me, which helps me open.
Just like the warm sun opens the rose, the warmth I receive opens my cervix.
I yield and open.
The rose does not resist.
I open and blossom.
- Barbara Harper "Gentle Birth Choices"

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

The way I teach women to breathe in awareness and slowly is: breathe in through your nose and out through your toes.
- Unknown

If I don't know my options, I don't have any.
- Diana Korte

We must give women the opportunity to challenge their fears, work with them, and birth through them. Not only will this change each woman, it will change the political and medical climate in which they make these choices.
- Connee L. Pike-Urlacher MS

Anytime anyone has anything done to them by a physician, there is risk. Even a blood draw.
- Dr. Tim Johnson, U of Michigan

If we are to heal the planet, we must begin by healing birthing.
- Agnes Sallet Von Tannenberg

Just as a woman's heart knows how and when to pump, her lungs to inhale, and her hand to pull back from fire, so she knows when and how to give birth.
- Virginia Di Orio

The same movements that get the baby in, get the baby out.
- From Birthing From Within

You are constructing your own reality with the choices you make...or don't make. If you really want a healthy pregnancy and joyful birth, and you truly understand that you are the one in control, then you must examine what you have or haven't done so far to create the outcome you want.
- Kim Wildner-Mother's Intention: How Belief Shapes Birth

I think one of the best things we could do would be to help women/parents/families discover their own birth power, from within themselves. And to let them know it's always been there, they just needed to tap into it.
- John H. Kennell, MD

Mothers need to know that their care and their choices won't be compromised by birth politics.
- Jennifer Rosenberg

Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.
- Carol Bard

The parallels between making love and giving birth are clear, not only in terms of passion and love, but also because we need essentially the same conditions for both experiences: privacy and safety. Women's bodies have their own wisdom, and a system of birth refined over 100,000 generations is not so easily overpowered.
- Sarah Buckley

To know the way ahead, ask those coming back.
- Chinese proverb

Focus on what you can do, then do it with all your heart.
- Lois Wilson

Birth is an experience that demonstrates that life is not merely function and utility, but form and beauty.
- Christopher Largen

There is no scientific evidence that doing over 10 percent of births with a cesarean improves the outcome for the woman or improves the outcome for the baby. In every country where I have seen real progress in maternity care, it was women's groups working together with midwives that made the difference.
- Marsden Wagner, MD, MSPH, Pediatrician, neonatologist and perinatal epidemiologist, Director of Women's and Children's Welfare for the World Health Organization for 15 years. Renowned author of five books, including Pursuing the Birth Machine: the Search for Appropriate Brith Technology

Only nature cures. The task of the physician should be to help nature's efforts, not combat them.
- Hippocrates

We try to give a birthing woman freedom to find the right position for her own needs and comfort. Unfortunately, in our society we think of birthing as something done while lying down.
- Michel Odent, MD

Only with trust, faith, and support can the woman allow the birth experience to enlighten and empower her.
- Claudia Lowe

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

Man cannot feed the baby within the uterus. What justifies his presumption that he is able to improve upon the physiological provision because the child has recently left the uterus? We can fortify and reinforce with certain substances the adequacy of both the placental and the breast nutrition, but the basic natural nourishment supplies something no concoction can contain.
- Dr. Grantly Dick-Reed, M.D.

Meconium happens.
- Unknown

The woman about to become a mother, or with her newborn infant upon her bosom, should be the object of trembling care and sympathy wherever she bears her tender burden or stretches her aching limbs…. God forbid that any member of the profession to which she trusts her life, doubly precious at that eventful period, should hazard it negligently, unadvisedly or selfishly.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

The power and intensity of your contractions cannot be stronger than you, because it is you.
- Unknown

Natural childbirth has evolved to suit the species, and if mankind chooses to ignore her advice and interfere with her workings we must not complain about the consequences. We have only ourselves to blame.
- Margaret Jowitt

Midwifery is rooted in the natural approach. Pregnancy and birth are considered fundamentally healthy processes which have many normal variations; it is normal part of life, not a medical condition…Only when complications occur which are beyond the midwife’s expertise, is the woman transferred to obstetric care.
- Caroline Steiger

Peace... it does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.
- Unknown

Fear can be overcome only by Faith.
Dr. Grantly Dick-Read

Birth is as safe as life gets.
Harriette Hartigan

It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature
Dr. Bradley

How DARE Mother Nature question SCIENCE!
- Mike Tymeson

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

Rain, after all is only rain; it is not bad weather. So also, pain is only pain; unless we resist it, then it becomes torment.
- I Ching

This whole situation [hospitals denying women the right to VBAC] is the result of the American College of OBGYN’s in 1999 changing their guidelines for VBAC in response to medical/legal concerns to require that a physician be immediately available during an entire VBAC labour. This has been interpreted by hospitals, especially those in the more rural areas, to require around the clock emergency cesarean capabilities. Now there are complications that can arise in any labour, even if there is no VBAC issue. So if a hospital isn’t safe enough for a mother to have a VBAC in, it’s not safe for her to have her baby in period. I understand that it is a risk/benefit analysis for the physicians in the hospitals and it’s all coming back to the bottom line, and that’s unconscionable.
- Tonya Jamois, president of the International Cesarean Awareness Network (ICAN) Inc.,  during an interview on Today,11/30/04

Reluctant doctors like to believe that they haven't much influence over their patients, but that is clearly not the case. Several studies have found that when doctors genuinely encouraged women to have VBACs, most of them did, and when they said nothing or acted neutral, most women didn't. Finally, when obstetricians discouraged VBAC in women who wanted to try it,none of them did.
Henci Goer, Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth

You're six times more likely to have a doctor who is an impostor than you are to suffer a uterine rupture. Two percent of docs are phonies (1 in 50), according to several sources I found. So instead of worrying about rupture, why not take a few minutes to check up on your doctor's credentials? It'd be a more profitable use of your time and a substantially more likely cause for alarm.
- Gentlebirth.org

We've put birth in the same category with illness and disease and it's never belonged there. 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

...the obstetric community has been overly zealous in ‘treating’ a normal physiological process and has been triggering many of the medical crises that lead to cesarean surgery. Greater adherence to evidence-based medicine would drop the national cesarean rate dramatically. Obstetricians and hospitals have found that high-intervention birth, warranted or not, is very profitable. So there is a tremendous financial incentive to bypass the clinically optimal approach, and opt for convenience and profit. For example, many hospitals across the country have eliminated facility-based midwifery practices simply because the low-intervention approach, while clinically sound, does not bring in as many dollars.
- Tonya Jamois, president of ICAN

$13 to $20 billion a year could be saved in health care costs by demedicalizing childbirth, developing midwifery, and encouraging breastfeeding.
- Frank Oski, MD, Professor and Director, Department of Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD

You are constructing your own reality with the choices you make...or don't make. If you really want a healthy pregnancy and joyful birth, and you truly understand that you are the one in control, then you must examine what you have or haven't done so far to create the outcome you want.
- Kim Wildner-Mother's Intention: How Belief Shapes Birth

...experiences have clearly shown that an approach which "de-medicalizes" birth, restores dignity and humanity to the process of childbirth, and returns control to the mother is also the safest approach.
- Michel Odent, MD

Treating normal labors as though they were complicated can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- Rooks

The woman’s choice itself may influence her level of anxiety and apprehension, and in obstetrics levels of anxiety have been shown to predict obstetric complications.
- Wiegers study

Faith, Acceptance, Surrender
- Unknown

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

The truth for women living in a modern world is that they must take increasing responsibility for the skills they bring into birth if they want their birth to be natural. Making choices of where and with whom to birth is not the same as bringing knowledge and skills into your birth regardless of where and with whom you birth.
- Common Knowledge Trust

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
- W. B. Yeats

The best way to avoid a cesarean is to stay out of the hospital.
- Brooke Sanders Purves

The effort to separate the physical experience of childbirth from the mental, emotional and spiritual aspects of this event has served to disempower and violate women.
- Mary Rucklos Hampton

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

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

Technology has turned the fetus into a patient, reducing the mother to being the 'maternal environment' and preventing attachment until after the ultrasound has shown the fetus to be 'normal.'
- Jennifer Hall

The traditional midwife believes that birth proceeds in a spiral fashion: labor starts, stops and starts, while the baby goes down, up and down, and the cervix opens, closes and opens. Nature has no design for failure; she holds her own meaning for success.
- Sher Willis

You're braver than you believe. Stronger than you seem. And smarter than you think.
- Christopher Robin in Pooh's Grand Adventure

Pregnancy is 40 weeks at term - Your baby will NEVER be easier to take care of than it is right there inside of you. Don't rush it!
- Unknown

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

If it hurts, get off it, move it around, rub it better.
- Barbara Kott (president of the NCT)

If in doubt, breathe out
- Cathy Doberska - Reading, UK NCT teacher

Putting women in the position of coping with conflict when they should be concentrating on having their babies counted as an intervention in itself!
- Unknown

A plant in an inappropriate location is a weed
A plant in an appropriate location is a flower
An obstetric technique at an inappropriate time is an intervention
An obstetric technique at an appropriate time is a godsend!
- Unknown