Childbirth Quotes

All times are connected. Treasure each moment.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The sacred-time determines the due events.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I will hold my babies in my hand at sacred-time.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The best way to teach a child is live an exemplary life.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Divine is supernatural.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Her mother’s quiet disapproval and withdrawal was a death in itself, and Franckline’s despair at it was transmitted, she was sure of it, to the child. She transgressed twice, first by making the child, then by giving it her despair, the despair that left it unable to live.

~ Pamela Erens

The wonder of life begins in the womb of a woman.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

You are my angel.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Holy moment is a sacred existence.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

All things are made beautiful at a timely hour.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Listen to me. Forget all you saw. Leave it. Take your mind from it. It has nothing to do with you. But use it for experience. Now you know what hurt it brings to women when men come into the world. Remember, and make it up to your Mama and to all women...And another thing let it do. There is no room for pride in any man. There is no room for unkindness. There is not room for wit at the expense of others. All men are born the same, and equal. As you saw today, so come Captains and the Kings and the Tinkers and the Tailors. Let the memory direct your dealings with men and women. And be sure to take good care of Mama. Is it?

~ Richard Llewellyn

The sacred-time will hold my babies in my hand.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

You know, there was a time when childbirth was possibly the most terrifying thing you could do in your life, and you were literally looking death in the face when you went ahead with it. And so this is a kind of flashback to a time when that's what every woman went through. Not that they got ripped apart, but they had no guarantees about whether they were going to live through it or not. You know, I recently read - and I don't read nonfiction, generally - Becoming Jane Austen. That's the one subject that would get me to go out and read nonfiction. And the author's conclusion was that one of the reason's Jane Austen might not have married when she did have the opportunity...well, she watched her very dear nieces and friends die in childbirth! And it was like a death sentence: You get married and you will have children. You have children and you will die. (Laughs) I mean, it was a terrifying world.

~ Stephenie Meyer

The health of your future kids does not start with their birth—it starts with you, right now, well before you plan to impregnate your wife.

~ Pratik Patil

A day of birth is a glorious event.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The desires for both a good experience and a healthy baby are very much connected, and there is nothing wrong with wanting both!

~ Jennetta Billhimer

He feels a second pang now for the existence of perfection, the stubborn existence of perfection in the most vulnerable of things and in the face of his refusal-logical-admirable refusal-to engage with this existence in his heart, in his mind. For the comfortless logic, the curse of clear sight, no matter which string he pulls on the same wretched knot: (a) the futility of seeing given the fatality in a place such as this where a mother still bloody must bury her newborn, hose off, and go home to pound yam into paste; (b) the persistence of beauty, in fragility of all places!, in a dewdrop at daybreak, a thing that will end, and in moments, and in a garden, and in Ghana, lush Ghana, soft Ghana, verdant Ghana, where fragile things die.

~ Taiye Selasi

Every child should be nurture with great love. The feeling of great love promotes wellness and potential for greatness.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

A child s a special possession from God.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Isn’t it wonderful to give birth to your own kind?

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Birthday is a glorious day.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

She was perfect. I knew this the moment she emerged from my body, white and wet and wailing. Beyond the requisite ten fingers and ten toes, the beating heart, the lungs inhaling and exhaling oxygen, my daughter knew how to scream. She knew how to make herself heard. She knew how to reach out and latch on. She knew what she needed to do to survive. I didn’t know how it was possible that such perfection could have developed within a body as flawed as my own, but when I looked into her face, I saw that it clearly was.

~ Vanessa Diffenbaugh

There is no room for pride in any man. There is no room for unkindness. There is no room for wit at the expense of others. All men are born the same, and equal. As you saw to-day, so come the Captains and the Kings and the Tinkers and the Tailors.

~ Richard Llewellyn

Lust is the blessing of the fruit of the womb.

~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Children see beauty in everything.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The silence stretched out between us as I stared at him, the tears blurring my vision as I waited for him to save me from this torment. Surely he could find a way.

~ Kathryn Michaels

I could not get my fill of looking.There should be a song for women to sing at this moment or a prayer to recite. But perhaps there is none because there are no words strong enough to name that moment.

~ Anita Diamant

Her eyes were open, taking in my tired face... Her face twitched into what looked like a squinty smile, and in her wordless expression I saw gratitude, and relief, and trust. I wanted, desperately, not to disappoint her.

~ Vanessa Diffenbaugh

I am often slow in catching up to the times, but even so, I still cannot even grip this idea: With nothing more than pitocin in your IV drip, you can sooner control the date and time of the birth of a human being-- the gushing entry into the great blue world of a whole new person-- than you can the scheduling of a few line cooks in your operation.

~ Gabrielle Hamilton

How naive Lore had been, despite being the daughter of a father no one spoke of, despite the strange, incomplete conversations at her mother’s deathbed; how again and again she was caught up short by the discovery that other people had stories they didn’t tell, or told stories that weren’t entirely true. How mostly you got odd chunks torn from the whole, impossible truly to understand in their damaged form.

~ Pamela Erens

I heard a baby cry. And this blood-splattered thing was put in my arms. My child. And, at that moment, it was like a gigantic plug appeared and - POW! - I was plugged into humanity in a way I'd never been before. Never could be. I was part of all mothers and all births from the beginning of time. I was a woman in a mud hut in Africa, in an igloo in the Arctic, a wigwam in America, a cave, a skyscraper, a spaceship. I was part of a flow and that flow was blood -

~ Philip Ridley

Just as there is no warning for childbirth, there is no preparation for the sight of a first child... There should be a song for women to sing at this moment, or a prayer to recite. But perhaps there is none because there are no words strong enough to name the moment.

~ Anita Diamant

He carries no burden, he feels no pain. What man, like woman, lies down in the darkness and gets up with child? The gentle, smiling ones own the good secret. Oh, what strange wonderful clocks women are. They nest in Time. They make flesh that holds fast and binds eternity.

~ Ray Bradbury

The moment of birth is a miracle .

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Remember this, for it is as true and true gets: Your body is not a lemon. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic. Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceri, elephants, moose, and water buffalo. Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body.

~ Ina May Gaskin

Má leaves me but I'm not alone, and a terrifying thought creeps into my head. Family is now something I have created and not just something I was born into.

~ Thi Bui

Only rarely do doctors in training have the opportunity to sit continuously with laboring women for hours. Most are taught to intervene in the normal process so often and so early that they have never witnessed a normal labor and birth.

~ Ina May Gaskin

Death is like giving birth. 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. You might wonder about the parallel I’m making between birth and death. But I say to you, the fear and pain accompanying an awful death is over quickly. Beyond that portal one is suddenly in the light, in oneness and bliss…Just as a woman heals rapidly after childbirth and then is able to fall in love with her baby, those who pass over also are able to fall in love with a new life.-Kuan Yin (From Oracle of Compassion: the Living Word of Kuan Yin

~ Hope Bradford

The context needs to be that the goal is a healthy mom. Because mothers never make decisions without thinking about that healthy baby. And to suggest otherwise is insulting and degrading and disrespectful.

~ Jennifer Block

We live in a country where you can electively have your nose broken to reshape it, inject fat from your butt into your face to look younger, but pushing a baby out of your own vagina can be restricted.

~ Ann Brasco