Birth Of A Baby Quotes & Sayings

Life is expressed in a perpetual sequence of changes. The birth of the child is the death of the baby, just as the birth of the adolescent is the death of the child. — Arnaud Desjardins

Shirley, "the little brown boy," as he was known in the family "Who's Who," was asleep in Susan's arms. He was brown-haired, brown-eyed and brown-skinned, with very rosy cheeks, and he was Susan's especial love. After his birth Anne had been very ill for a long time, and Susan "mothered" the baby with a passionate tenderness which none of the other children, dear as they were to her, had ever called out. Dr. Blythe had said that but for her he would never have lived. "I — L.M. Montgomery

I spent my days spread-eagle in front of a fan, with bright pink calamine lotion slathered all over my undercarriage. If you walked into my room, you'd think I was giving birth to a Pepto-Bismol baby. — Mamrie Hart

It's often said when a baby is born so is a grandparent; well, for me it turned out that when I was born it was also the birth of a Ding Dong. — Lisa A. Tortorello

Somebody betrayed us... The Germans learned the location of our partisan troop. They surrounded the forest from all sides. We were hiding in the deep woods, hiding in the swamps where the torturers did not go [...] A radio operator was with us. She gave birth recently. The baby was hungry... Wanting the breast... But the mother is starving, she has no milk, and the baby is crying. The Germans are nearby... With dogs... If the dogs hear the baby, we're all dead. All of us - thirty people... Do you understand? We make a decision... Nobody dares to tell her the commader's order, but the mother guesses it herself. She puts the bundle with the baby into the water and holds it there for a long time... The baby does not cry... Not a sound... And we cannot lift our eyes. We cannot look at the mother or at each other — Svetlana Alexievich

But since Pontus [the Sea] was male, only the sea creatures that lived in the sea could aspire to be Aphrodite's mother. And it was for this reason that Aphrodite's birth was delayed for so long. As Himeros & Chaos did not want to be born by a sea creature. And thus, Uranus' seed & testicles tossed & tossed on the waves for hundreds of years before Himeros & Chaos reached a compromise. Aphrodite would be born from a cockle, Konche, & Himeros & Chaos would be the shell of the baby cockle. — Nicholas Chong

The birth of a new born baby is a great joy. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The truck stopped in front of the hospital. Everyone seemed relieved that they would tend to the bald man's injuries. But they did not. They were waiting. A woman who was also on the list was giving birth to a baby. As soon as the umbilical cord was cut, they would both be thrown into the truck. — Ruta Sepetys

MICHAEL WAS STILL FILMING. HE HAD ALREADY used up two cartridges recording the nervousness in the waiting room and was working on the third. Things were getting monotonous. But he kept filming. It was either that or fall asleep, and he refused to fall asleep. He didn't care if it was four in the morning, he wasn't missing the birth of Leigh's baby. Of course, it might have been nice if they'd let him into the delivery room with Leigh and Jon. Videographers did that all the time. Okay, so he had a cold. Wasn't that what dentist's masks were for? — Barbara Delinsky

Could anyone fully understand the wonders of how a baby develops in the womb of a woman? This is the mystery about birth. Birth is by divine power of God. — Lailah Gifty Akita

131/ Writing a novel is like having a baby. I know because I've had both, and the experiences were hellish. By comparison, the torture of the damned - plunged into excrement, boiled in blood, beheaded, set upon by harpies - are like love nips from your yippy little dog. — Kim Addonizio

The whole universe is a complex of rhythms," mused Amanda. "We each of us feel a need to identify our bodily rhythms with those of the cosmos. The sea is the grand agency of rhythm. The grain-tops in the wind, the atoms that orbit are rhythmic. The uterus, which is a strong muscular organ, contracts with the birth of a baby - the rhythmic contractions, in fact, are the important motivations for the baby to emerge into the world. Rhythm is how it all begins. — Tom Robbins

There should be different words for giving birth than the ones we have. 'Giving' should at least be 'undertaking' or 'undergoing'. I remember in church how the priest said, 'Mary bore Jesus', and I always thought of it as 'bored'. But now that I know what 'bore' means, and now that I've seen what Jenny went through, it's a much better word than the passive 'the baby was born', like it's as easy as growing fingernails — Frances Greenslade

I know being pregnant and giving birth is the most wonderful thing on Earth. I know that after you have a baby, there is a sense of addiction, a need to have another. It's biological. — Janine Di Giovanni

Then, on the twenty-first day of December in the 109th year of the third era, Queen Channary gave birth to a baby girl. She was officially named Princess Selene Channary Jannali Blackburn of Luna, — Marissa Meyer

Children born deaf of deaf parents have no language delay at all: being exposed to Sign from birth enables a baby to develop as full a vocabulary as the hearing, not just to describe the world, but to manipulate abstract concepts. — Anonymous

Beyond the immediate risks to her health and the health of her baby, when a woman chooses c-section, she decreases the chance that she will be able to get pregnant again and increases the chance that if she does get pregnant, the pregnancy will occur outside the uterus, a situation that never results in a live baby and is life-threatening to the woman. Furthermore, the risk of having an unexplained stillbirth doubles when a woman has had a previous c-section. — Marsden Wagner

I'm beginning to perceive motherhood as a long, slow letting go, of which birth is just the first step. — Sandra Steingraber

Oxytocin is an amino acid peptide. A hormone. They call it the love chemical. "So?" Kelsey gave him a dead-eyed stare. "So when you're further along in your pregnancy, more oxytocin receptors will be created in your uterine muscles. When the baby's big enough, your oxytocin level will rise, triggering labor, and will help your muscles contract so you can give birth." "Gross," said Cory. "No," Jack said. "Miraculous. Without the oxytocin, your muscles wouldn't be strong enough to push that baby out. But because of that chemical, you are. You'll be superhero strong." He smiled right into Kelsey's eyes. "Then, when you see your baby, that rush of oxytocin will help you bond. That's why they call it the love drug. And if you breast-feed, more oxytocin gets released, strengthening that bond. The maternal instinct is the strongest instinct in the world. Chemistry is definitely part of that. — Kristan Higgins

There is in all our strivings a profound homesickness for God. When we touch another we touch God. When we look at a flower, its radiance, its fragrance, its stillness is another moment's experience of something deeper within. When we hold a baby, when we hear extraordinary music, when we look into the eyes of a great saint, what draws us is that deep homesickness for our true nature, for the peace and healing that is our birthright. This homesickness for God directs us toward the healing we took birth for. — Stephen Levine

And let's face it people, no one is ever honest with you about child birth. Not even your mother. "It's a pain you forget all about once you have that sweet little baby in your arms." Bullshit. I CALL BULLSHIT. Any friend, cousin, or nosey-ass stranger in the grocery store that tells you it's not that bad is a lying sack of shit. Your vagina is roughly the size of the girth of a penis. It has to stretch and open andturn into a giant bat cave so the life-sucking human you've been growing for nine months can angrily claw its way out. Who in their right mind would do that willingly? You're just walking along one day and think to yourself, "You know, I think it's time I turn my vagina into an Arby's Beef and Cheddar (minus the cheddar) and saddle myself down for a minimum of eighteen years to someone who will suck the soul and the will to live right out of my body so I'm a shell of the person I used to be and can't get laid even if I pay for it. — Tara Sivec

We repeatedly tell patients we are not in a hurry; there are no trains to catch and we don't care when the baby comes, only how! A doctor who is in a hurry does not belong in the field of obstetrics. As my chief pointed out, 'An obstetrician should have a big rear end and the good sense to sit calmly thereupon and let nature take its course. — Robert A. Bradley

Oh my God! Sam said again, his voice shaking. I've given birth to something inhuman, Phoebe thought. A lamprey with row after row of teeth. — Jennifer McMahon

See, sharks are natural predators. They'll eat anything - including their own offspring.
Right after giving birth, however, the mother shark's brain is flooded with endorphins, putting her into a kind of ecstatic coma. This gives the baby shark about ten minutes to swim away.
Because if he's still around when Momma wakes up? He's lunch. — Emma Chase

It's unfortunate that your offspring make people wish for a dystopian future in which euthanasia is a universally beloved form of birth control, but when elderly women literally everywhere are better parents than you, perhaps it's time to hang up the baby-making spurs. — Neil Hilborn

I might inform those humanitarians who have a nightmare of new and needless babies (for some humanitarians have that sort of horror of humanity) that if the recent decline in the birth-rate were continued for a certain time, it might end in there being no babies at all; which would console them very much. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Nobody today is nearly smart enough to make the sorts of weapons even the poorest nations had a million years ago. Yes, and they were being used all the time. During my lifetime, there wasn't a day when, somewhere on the planet, there weren't at least three wars going on. And the Law of Natural Selection was powerless to respond to such new technologies. No female of any species, unless maybe she was a rhinoceros, could expect to give birth to a baby who was fireproof, bombproof, or bulletproo — Kurt Vonnegut

But if you were going to change the chain of events that killed your child, where would you begin? How far back would you go? All the way back to their birth? And how many times had you saved your child's life without even realizing how close you'd just come to disaster, to being one link too late in a chain of events that would wrap around your neck and choke you forever? How close had you come to knowing this place - the place where you collapse on your knees with one fist in your belly and the other clutching a blue GAP bag containing your baby's ruined clothes, the place from which there is no going back? — Kelly Kittel

Republicans are definitely pro-birth - they'll do everything they can to make sure that that baby comes out, regardless of how it got in, but are they pro-life? Can you be pro-life and vote to cut funding that supports the life of a child? — Jennifer Granholm

She had a way about her that spoke of homemade bread, and caring for people, and the kind of patience that women have when they help a ewe birth a lamb, or stay up in the night with a baby calf bawling for its momma. — James Aura

For as grateful as she feels for the company of the Nandis and Dr. Gupta, these acquaintances are only substitutes for the people who really ought to be surrounding them. Without a single grandparent or parent or uncle or aunt at her side, the baby's birth, like most everything else in America, feels somehow haphazard, only half true. — Jhumpa Lahiri

The birth of my sons. The birth of new emotions ... what a privilege. What a blessing. — Elle Macpherson

It's funny, isn't it, what will make you break? Your lover moves to London and falls in love with a news reader for the BBC and you feel fine and then one day you raise your umbrella slightly to cross Fifty-seventh Street and stare into the Burberry shop and begin to sob. Or your baby dies at birth and five years later, in an antique store, a small battered silver rattle with teeth marks in one end engraved with the name Emily lies on a square of velvet, and the sobs escape from the genie's bottle somewhere deep in your gut where they've lain low until then. Or the garbage bag breaks. — Anna Quindlen

The baby, when he or she is ready to be born,
will send a message that tells the mother's body that it is ready.
The mother's body can then begin labour by slowly releasing oxytocin, the hormone of love.
The mother and baby work together to bring the baby into the world. — Ruth Ehrhardt

Sara reached over and rubbed Holly's arm for a moment. Then she pulled back and asked, "Have you ever heard the Christmas song, Mary, Did You Know?" Holly looked up, into her friend's clear blue eyes. She shook her head and Sara continued. "It's a beautiful song about the Savior's mother, Mary. The singers ask if when she held baby Jesus, if she knew what His life would be like or that He would be her Savior and the Savior of the world. I think every mother is like Mary. Not in the fact that we gave birth to the Savior, but that when we have a child, we never know what his future holds, how he'll change our lives or someone else's life. — Danyelle Ferguson

Drugs and medical technology can be enormously beneficial when used to take care of real complications, but too often they are abused when applied to women birthing normally. These women are thus subjected to unnecessary risks. The key to this problem is informed consent, an ideal too seldom realized. Informed consent means that no woman during pregnancy or labor should ever be deceived into thinking that any drug or procedure (Demerol, Seconal, spinals, caudals, epidurals, paracervical block, etc.) is guaranteed safe. Not only are there no guaranteed safe drugs, but many of them have well-known, recognized side effects and potential side effects.
Informed consent should mean that no woman would ever hear such falsehoods as, "This is harmless," or, "I only give it in such a small dose that it can't affect the baby," or, "This is just a local and won't reach the baby. — Susan McCutcheon

I took my coffee into the dining room and settled down with the morning paper. A woman in New York had had twins in a taxi. A woman in Ohio had just had her seventeenth child. A twelve-year-old girl in Mexico had given birth to a thirteen-pound boy. The lead article on the woman's page was about how to adjust the older child to the new baby. I finally found an account of an axe murder on page seventeen, and held my coffee cup up to my face to see if the steam might revive me. — Shirley Jackson

But every woman is different. Some women need more monitoring, others need very little. Sometimes medical intervention helps a pregnancy, and sometimes it leads to problems. Some women feel more comfortable surrounded by medical facilities; others feel more comfortable in the familiarity of their homes. Our job is to place you in the most ideal situation to allow you to give birth, so that you and your baby are healthy. — Lisa Ferland

I watched my friend Eleanor give birth," she said. "Once you've seen a child born, you realize a baby's not much more than a reconstituted ham and cheese sandwich. Just a little anagram of you and what you've been eating for nine months. — Lorrie Moore

When God wanted to defeat sin, His ultimate weapon was the sacrifice of His own Son. On Christmas Day two thousand years ago, the birth of a tiny baby in an obscure village in the Middle East was God's supreme triumph of good over evil. — Charles W. Colson

Truly, I am a woman of the last minute. When I was pregnant, I organised three different hospitals because I couldn't decide where I wanted to have my baby: London, Rome or Paris. In the end, I decided to go to Rome, arrived on the Monday and gave birth on the Saturday. — Monica Bellucci

Beth gave birth to a baby girl, so much so that the first thing I thought of was Nessie, and then I couldn't stop cackling for like fifteen minutes. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Without a single grandparent or parent or uncle or aunt at her side, the baby's birth, like most everything else in America, feels somehow haphazard, only half true. As she strokes and suckles and studies her son, she can't help but pity him. She has never known of a person entering the world so alone, so deprived. — Jhumpa Lahiri

it's going great. Two months in, and I've created three apps."

"Apps?"

"For people who buy my book as an e-book --which will be everybody. The first is called Don't Look. It's for the overly sensitive. It blurs and turns the type red when a dog dies or a baby is born with a birth defect. Stuff like that. My second is It's Not Okay When You Say It, and it delivers an electrical zap if the reader laughs at a racial slur. My third is Jesus Thesaurus, which replaces explicit sexual language with church words. So, when one of my characters 'saints' a guy's 'disciple', He'll beg her to 'cavalry' his 'Baptists' and 'shout amen'. — Helen Ellis

Trap. Horrible trap. At one's birth it is sprung. Some last day must arrive. When you will need to get out of this body. Bad enough. Then we bring a baby here. The terms of the trap are compounded. That baby also must depart. All pleasures should be tainted by that knowledge. But hopeful dear us, we forget. Lord, what is this? — George Saunders

Unto you is born
in the city of David
a Savior for all. — Richelle E. Goodrich

According to physiological law, all natural, normal functions of the body are achieved without peril or pain. Birth is a natural, normal physiological function for normal, healthy women and their healthy babies. It can, therefore, be inferred that healthy women, carrying healthy babies, can safely birth without peril or pain. — John Dye

I have lived a long life, and I have seen a few things. I walked away from the Last Great Time War. I marked the passing of the Time Lords. I saw the birth of the universe and I watched as time ran out, moment by moment, until nothing remained; no time, no space. Just me. I walked in universes where the laws of physics were devised by the mind of a madman. I watched universes freeze and creations burn. I have seen things you wouldn't believe, I have lost things you will never understand. And I know things, secrets that must never be told, knowledge that must never be spoken. Knowledge that will make parasite gods blaze! So come on then! Take it! Take it all, baby! Have it! You have it all! — Neil Cross

Billy tried to imagine the birth of Cyril's wife's baby. It would happen in grim lights violently. A dripping thing trying to clutch to its hole. Dredged up and beaten. Blood and drool and womb mud. How cute, this neon shrieker made to plunge upward, odd-headed blob, this marginal electric glow-thing. Dressed and powdered now. Engineered to abstract design. Cling, suck and cry. Follow with the eye. Gloom and drought of unprotected sleep. Had there been a light in her belly, dim briny light in that pillowing womb, dusk enough to light a page, bacterial smear of light, an amniotic gleam that I could taste, old, deep, wet and warm? Return, return to negative unity. — Don DeLillo

It's very healthy for a young girl to be deterred from promiscuity by fear of contracting a painful, incurable disease, or cervical cancer, or sterility, or the likelihood of giving birth to a dead, blind or brain-damaged baby (even ten years later when she may be happily married). — Phyllis Schlafly

With longer life spans and better health and education, many feel that giving birth to a baby a mere couple of decades after they themselves were in the cradle is a little premature. — Mariella Frostrup

The innocuous-sounding term "fertility treatment" enables the wealthy to breed their own kind, buying sperm and eggs at "baby centers" around the country. Abortion and birth control, meanwhile, are for evangelical conservatives a violation of God's will that all people should be fruitful and multiply, and yet this same fear of unnatural methods of reproduction does not engender opposition to fertility clinics. Antiabortion activists, like eugenicists, think that the state has the right to intervene in the breeding habits of poor single women. Poor — Nancy Isenberg

Bipedalism is a demanding and risky strategy. It means refashioning the pelvis into a full load-bearing instrument. To preserve the required strength, the birth canal in the female must be comparatively narrow. This has two very significant immediate consequences and one longer-term one. First, it means a lot of pain for any birthing mother and greatly increased danger of fatality to mother and baby both. Moreover, to get the baby's head through such a tight space it must be born while it's brain is still small - and while the baby, therefore, is still helpless. This means long-term infant care, which in turn implies solid male-female bonding. — Bill Bryson

When we [adoption agency] have a birth mother who is pregnant and she doesn't know the race of the father, she is using drugs, and she is in crisis, usually we cannot place that baby with a heterosexual family. Almost all of the times when we have a drug-addicted child, we place the baby in a homosexual family. — Rosie O'Donnell

Now I find the stack of chapters I called Under Magnolia. Why, after many years, even open these flowered folders? Dare alla luce, the Tuscans say at the birth of a baby, to give to the light. — Frances Mayes

[On peanut M&Ms:] It is the eggness of them. A shell, chocolate placenta, proteiny peanut baby. Life shape, birth shape, cell shape, protoplasmic-ooze shape. A shape that calls straight through civilization to our reptilian brains. — Cynthia Heimel

We decided to have the baby at home because we wanted it to be a natural birth, and it turns out that it was 30 hours of natural. Eight hours of pushing - that's the part that men don't understand. Women go, 'Oh, dear, oh, dear God, eight hours of pushing?' And the men are like, 'Okay, eight hours of pushing.' — Evangeline Lilly

The baby explodes into an unknown world that is only knowable through some kind of a story - of course that is how we all live, it's the narrative of our lives, but adoption drops you into the story after it has started. It's like reading a book with the first few pages missing. It's like arriving after curtain up. The feeling that something is missing never, ever leaves you - and it can't, and it shouldn't, because something IS missing. That isn't of its nature negative. The missing part, the missing past, can be an opening, not a void. It can be an entry as well as an exit. It is the fossil record, the imprint of another life, and although you can never have that life, your fingers trace the space where it might have been, and your fingers learn a kind of Braille. — Jeanette Winterson

Humans became easy prey when they moved from the forest to the savanna, which deprived them of the option of climbing trees to flee predators. This shift made it necessary for the men to actively protect the women and their babies. Only as a result of this protection were women able to give birth in shorter intervals, perhaps once every two or three years. This meant that they could produce offspring about twice as frequently as apes. I would be willing to bet that this rapid reproduction is one of the reasons why we dominate the world today, and not the apes. — Frans De Waal

If you want to understand what a year of life means, ask a student who just flunked his end-of-the-year exams. Or a month of life: speak to a mother who has just given birth to a premature baby and is waiting for him to be taken out of the incubator before she can hold him safe and sound in her arms. Or a week: interview a man who works in a factory or a mine to feed his family. Or a day: ask two people madly in love who are waiting for their next rendezvous. Or an hour: talk to a claustrophobia sufferer stuck in a broken-down elevator. Or a second: look at the expression on the face of a man who has just escaped from a car wreck. Or one-thousandth of a second: ask the athlete who just won the silver medal at the Olympic Games, and not the gold he trained for all his life. Life is magic, Arthur, and I know what I'm saying because since my accident I appreciate the value of every instant. So I beg you, let's make the most of all the seconds that we have left. — Marc Levy

The coarsest father gains a new impulse to labor from the moment of his baby's birth; he scarcely sees it when awake, and yet it is with him all the time. Every stroke he strikes is for his child. New social aims, new moral motives, come vaguely up to him. — Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Kangaroos give birth to only one baby at a time. So as soon as one baby is born, the female gets pregnant again. Otherwise the kangaroo population would never sustain itself. This means the female kangaroo spends her entire life either pregnant or nursing babies. If she's not pregnant, she's nursing babies; if she's not nursing babies, she's pregnant. You could say she exists just to ensure the continuance of the species. The kangaroo species wouldn't survive if there weren't any kangaroos, and if their purpose wasn't to go on existing, kangaroos wouldn't be around in the first place. — Haruki Murakami

The all-pervading energy source of existence or Shakti manifests itself as creation. Shakti is the divine mother who gives birth to and nurtures the newborn-whether it is a newborn babies a brand new relationship, a fresh idea, or a magical manifestation. Although Shakti is beyond the boundaries of gender, form or color, we call It Mother because of its mothering and creative qualities. — Deepak Chopra

According to my file, I was abandoned on the steps of the children's home in Telbury with a birth certificate tucked inside the shawl. The certificate stated my name, date of birth, and place of birth - which was Aldabury Maternity Hospital - and my birth mother's name and address. All I have is my first name and date and place of birth. Everything else regarding my birth mother on the certificate seems to be false. — Lorna Peel

Christmas has been a season of mixed interests and meanings, but the very foundation, of course, is its religious significance. No matter what other personal desires or crises we have faced, I've never forgotten that this is the time to celebrate the birth of the Baby Jesus, and the impact of this event on the history of the world. — Jimmy Carter

Anthony Weiner and his wife, Huma, have given birth to a baby boy. He posted a photo of the new baby on Twitter, but people are afraid to open it. — Jay Leno

When people truly open their minds, and contemplate the way in which the universe is ordered and governed, they are amazed-overwhelmed by a sense of the miraculous. When people contemplate with open minds the germination of a single seed, they are equally overwhelmed-yet numerous babies are born every day, and no-one marvels. If only people opened their minds, they would see that the birth of a baby, in which a new life is created, is a greater miracle than restoring life. — Saint Augustine

If a woman is physically active during labor, her baby is constantly repositioning in the womb, readjusting and descending, preparing for the birth. Requiring a woman to be in bed during any part of her labor and decreasing her ability to move increases the need for interventions. — Barbara Harper

whole. I can't imagine anything more terrifying than losing Sophie. When you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again; yet after giving birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep her close enough for comfort. That's the strange thing about being a mother: Until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one. It doesn't — Jodi Picoult

We got off the Clash of the Titans tour and I said that my wife and I were working on having a baby and sure enough we found out that she was pregnant. So I told them nine months in advance that I wasn't going to tour in September so I could witness the birth of my first son. — Dave Lombardo

I want to see the birth of my baby. Hopefully it's a boy. He can play for St. John's. — Jayson Williams

Have you ever had a big idea or dream - something you wanted so bad ... but you were too scared to make it happen, or maybe you didn't really believe it could? Think of how often you've had someone you looked up to or viewed as successful - shoot one of your suggestions full of holes. Ideas and babies have a lot in common - they require a lot of nourishment to survive. A new idea, regardless of its size, may not be able to withstand a beating when you first give it birth. — Bob Proctor

I personally would go further and say that, if your morality is based, as mine is, on a desire to increase the sum of happiness and reduce suffering, the decision to deliberately give birth to a Down baby, when you have the choice to abort it early in the pregnancy, might actually be immoral from the point of view of the child's own welfare. — Richard Dawkins

When the strong healthy boy, howling at the indignity of the birth process, was put to her breast, she felt a wild tenderness for him, The other baby, Francis, in the crib next her bed, began to whimper. Katie had a flash of contempt for the weak child she had borne a year ago, when she compared her to this new handsome son. She was quickly ashamed of hr contempt. She knew it wasn't the little girl's fault. "I must watch myself carefully," she thought. "I am going to love this boy more than the girl but I mustn't ever let her know. It is wrong to love one child more than the other but this is something that I cannot help. — Betty Smith

I'm pretty low-maintenance, but I like my time to myself, and once you have a child, you have to fight for it. I remember the first long bath I took [after Ptolemy's birth] was such a moment. Because a lot of the time you're in the shower, and if that baby cries, you've got to turn off the water and go! — Gretchen Mol

The techno-medical model of maternity care, unlike the midwifery model, is comparatively new on the world scene, having existed for barely two centuries. This male-derived framework for care is a product of the industrial revolution. As anthropologist Robbie Davis-Floyd has described in detail, underlying the technocratic mode of care of our own time is an assumption that the human body is a machine and that the female body in particular is a machine full of shortcomings and defects. Pregnancy and labor are seen as illnesses, which, in order not to be harmful to mother or baby, must be treated with drugs and medical equipment. Within the techno-medical model of birth, some medical intervention is considered necessary for every birth, and birth is safe only in retrospect. — Ina May Gaskin

Let us remember that the Christmas heart is a giving heart, a wide open heart that thinks of others first. The birth of the baby Jesus stands as the most significant event in all history, because it has meant the pouring into a sick world of the healing medicine of love which has transformed all manner of hearts for almost two thousand years ... Underneath all the bulging bundles is this beating Christmas heart. — George Matthew Adams

Simon told me I should take you home and start making kits. What do you think?" Max looked down at her, love and lust glowing equally in his brilliant smile. "Max?" "What?" His tone was wary; he'd come to expect the unexpected when she used that particular tone of voice. "Will I give birth to a baby or a litter?" "Emma," he groaned. "I mean, will we be feeding them baby formula or Kitten Chow?" "Emma!" "If they get stuck in a tree, who do we call? Does the fire department do kitten rescues anymore? This is important stuff to know, Lion-O!" "God save me. — Dana Marie Bell

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

But to measure cause and effect ... you must ensure that a simple correlation, however tempting it may be, is not mistaken for a cause. In the 1990s the stork population of Germany increased and the German at-home birth rate rose as well. Shall we credit storks for airlifting the babies? — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

After Birth is a fast-talking, opinionated, moody, funny, and slightly desperate account of the attempt to recover from having a baby. It is a romp through dangerous waters, in which passages of hilarity are shadowed by the dark nights of earliest motherhood, those months so tremulous with both new love and the despairing loss of one's identity-to read it is an absorbing, entertaining, and thought-provoking experience. — Lydia Davis

The ability and desire to transform the mundane materials at hand that we both bring into the collaboration well beyond the sum total of the parts - to birth a new baby neither of us could claim single parentage of. — Gary Lucas

I felt so proud to be having a baby and so excited. And I felt closer to other women - to my sisters, to my mom. I felt empowered, like, 'I've given birth. I did it! There's nothing I can't handle.' I've really enjoyed this time that I have taken to be with Suri, as well as the challenges of the first couple of months: feeding and pumping, learning to decipher what each cry means - is she hungry? Is she tired? Does she need a fresh diaper? - and figuring out how to really help her. — Katie Holmes

With all its imperfections lying heavy on its head, I can't help being attached to it because in the writing of it I first heard the sound of my own voice, lame and halting perhaps, but nevertheless my very own. This is an experience no artist ever forgets - the birth cry of a newly born baby of letters, the genuine article. — Lawrence Durrell

There is a folk tale that before birth, every human soul knows all the secrets of life and death and the universe. But then, just before birth, an angel leans down, puts his finger to the new baby's lips, and whispers "Shhh."' Harris touches his philtrum. 'According to the story, this is the mark left by the angel's finger. Every human being has one. — Stephen King

Quite honestly, a baby covered in blood, still slightly blue, eyes screwed up, in the first few minutes after birth, is not an object of beauty. — Jennifer Worth

To demand that others should provide you textbook prognoses is like asking a strange woman to give birth to your baby. There are insights that can be born only of your own pain, and they are the most precious. — Janusz Korczak

Hemorrhoids Go big or go home! That was my mental response to childbirth. You want me to push? Okay, awesome. I'm going to push so hard that I not only eject this baby from me, but I'm also going to turn my butthole inside out. When I explained the issue to my OB, she insisted hemorrhoids were totally normal, and if they didn't go away, I could get a quick surgery to correct them, a suggestion that I met with a resounding "Nope!" I had already spent a month in elementary school sitting on a blowup pillow, and I'm not pulling my pants down as an adult to have surgery in my butt. So, here I am, five years out from my last birth and sitting in my chair a quarter of an inch taller. — Brittany Gibbons

Five mysteries hold the keys to the unseen: the act of love, and the birth of a baby, and the contemplation of great art, and being in the presence of death or disaster, and hearing the human voice lifted in song. These are the occasions when the bolts of the universe fly open and we are given a glimpse of what is hidden; an eff of the ineffable. — Salman Rushdie

Babies are equipped at birth with a number of instinctive reflexes and behavior patterns that cause them to spend their first several years trying to kill themselves. If your home contains a sharp, toxic object, your baby will locate it; if your home contains no such object, your baby will try to obtain one via mail order. — Dave Barry

It is a sign of immaturity to believe that being older than someone (automatically) makes you more (mentally) mature than them. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

A society that places a low value on its mothers and the process of birth will suffer an array of negative repercussions for doing so. Good beginnings make a positive difference in the world, so it is worth our while to provide the best possible care for mothers and babies throughout this extraordinarily influential part of life. — Ina May Gaskin

I can't express how wonderful it is to get feedback when you've been sort of in a bubble working on something and then you release it to the world and hope for the best. It's like the birth of a musical baby. — Susanna Hoffs

What will Ofwarren give birth to? A baby, as we all hope? Or something else, an Unbaby, with a pinhead or a snout like a dog's, or two bodies, or a hole in its heart or no arms, or webbed hands and feet? There's no telling. They could tell once, with machines, but that is now outlawed. What would be the point of knowing, anyway? You can't have them taken out; whatever it is must be carried to term. — Margaret Atwood

The birth of the baby Jesus stands as the most significant event in all history, because it has meant the pouring into a sick world the healing medicine of love which has transformed all manner of hearts for almost two thousand years. — George Matthew Adams

Publishing a novel is often likened to having a baby. It is much worse to that. It is like giving birth to something with cloven hooves, a monster in a black and white mask. Characters must reveal a blend of good and bad qualities with distinguishing tics and mannerisms. It obliges the writer to clear the mist from the mirror to see who you really are in order to establish who they really are. — Chloe Thurlow

Superstition, she said. Soup with a bonobo finger in it is supposed to make a pregnant woman give birth to a strong baby. Putting another finger in the bathwater keeps the baby strong. "I hope the stupid polio", I said, and surprised myself by even sort of meaning it. I kissed the top of the bonobo's head. I imagined him in his crate, crying against the bars, someone lifting him out only to chop off a finger. Plunging him back into the crate, then pulling him out a few days later to take another ... — Eliot Schrefer

If we believe that this particular pain is the one that will push the baby out of the womb and into our arms, we somehow try to make a place for that pain in our heart. Pain is still there: excruciating, terrible pain. But at the moment of birth, we rarely feel betrayal or rage; we somehow feel that this is simply pain that has come with life. — Wayne Muller

Where the techno-medical model of birth reigns, women who give birth vaginally generally labor in bed hooked up to electronic fetal monitors, intravenous tubes, and pressure-reading devices. Eating and drinking in labor are usually not permitted. Labor pain within this model is seen as unacceptable, so analgesia, and anesthesia are encouraged. Episiotomies (the surgical cut to enlarge the vaginal opening) are routinely performed, out of a belief that birth over an intact perineum would be impossible or that, if possible, it might be harmful to mother or baby. Instead of being the central actor of the birth drama, the woman becomes a passive, almost inert object - representing a barrier to the baby's eventual passage to the outside world. Women are treated as a homogenous group within the medical model, with individual variations receding in importance. — Ina May Gaskin

Haiku Christmas Story

New light in the sky
announces a sacred birth.
Shine brightly young star.

Hallelujah song
carries on a gentle wind,
heralding a king.

Shepherds lift their heads,
not to gaze at a new light
but to hear angels.

"Unto you is born
in the city of David
a Savior for all."

Born on straw at night
under low stable rafters,
Baby Jesus cried.

Sheep and goats and cows
gather 'round a manger bed
to awe at a babe.

Wise men come to see
a child of greater wisdom
and honor divine.

Rare and precious gifts,
gold and myrrh and frankincense,
to offer a king.

Mary and Joseph
huddle snugly together.
They cradle God's son.

On this wise He came,
the Son of God to the earth.
A humble wonder. — Richelle E. Goodrich