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Childbirth Quotes

Browse 278 quotes about Childbirth.

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Childbirth Quotes

“A child, thought Carl, is not the only result of childbirth. A mother, too, is born. You see them every day--nondescript women with a bulge just above the groin, slightly double-chinned. Perpetually forty. Someone's mother, you think. There is a child somewhere who has made this woman into a mother, and for the sake of the child she has altered her appearance to better play the part.”

ThinkingChildrenMadePlayMotherBornResultsSakeAppearanceFortyAlteredChildbirth
Author:Joshua Ferris
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“There comes a turning point in intense physical struggle where one abandons oneself to a profligate usage of strength and bodily resource, ignoring the costs until the struggle is over. Women find this point in childbirth; men in battle.”

MenStruggleBattleCostResourcesOneselfIntenseAbandonChildbirthTurning PointsUsage
Book:The Outlander Series 8-Book Bundle: Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn, The Fiery Cross, A Breath of Snow and Ashes, An Echo in the Bone, Written in My Own Heart's Blood
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“Granana doesn't understand what the big deal is. She didn't cry at Olivia's funeral, and I doubt she even remembers Olivia's name. Granana lost, like, ninety-two million kids in childbirth. All of her brothers died in the war. She survived the Depression by stealing radish bulbs from her neighbors' garden, and fishing the elms for pigeons. Dad likes to remind us of this in a grave voice, as if it explained her jaundiced pitilessness: "Boys. Your grandmother ate pigeons."”

IfsTwoWarBigsKidsRememberNamesLostVoiceDealsBoysMillionsDoubtCryBrotherDadGardenDiedNeighborGravesStealingLikesFishingGrandmotherFuneralSurvivedNinetyBig DealChildbirthPigeonsBulbsYour GrandmotherOliviaRadishesBrother Died
Author:Karen Russell
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“(He) was in love with the idea of revolution. Men like that, even when they turn their backs on their party and their comrades, can never let go of the idea: it's the secret god that rules their hearts. It is what makes them come alive; they revel in the danger, the exquisite pain. It is to them what childbirth is to a woman, or war to a mercenary.”

MenHeartIdeasWarPainTurnsPartySecretAliveDangerRevolutionLetting GoExquisiteChildbirthComradeMercenaryNever Let Go
Book:The Hungry Tide: A Novel
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“Later on Lady Maccon was to describe that particular day as the worst of her life. She had neither the soul nor the romanticism to consider childbirth magical or emotionally transporting. So far as she could gather it mostly involved pain indignity and mess. There was nothing engaging or appealing about the process. And as she told her husband firmly she intended never to go through it again.”

SoulPainProcessWorstParticularInvolvedHusbandMessEngagingRomanticismChildbirthIndignity
Author:Gail Carriger
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“I know girls who pine for it. They like to play dress-up and pretend being Vor ladies of old, rescued from menace by romantic Vor youths. For some reason they never play 'dying in childbirth', or 'vomiting your guts out from the red dysentery', or 'weaving till you go blind and crippled from arthritis and dye poisoning', or 'infanticide'. Well, they do die romantically of disease sometimes, but somehow it's always an illness that makes you interestingly pale and everyone sorry and doesn't involve losing bowel control.”

KnowsWellsSometimesReasonPlayDiesGirlDyingYouthDiseaseLosingRedDressesBlindSorryIllnessGutsPaleChildbirthMenacePoisoningCrippledWeavingArthritisVomitingInfanticideDysentery
Author:Lois McMaster Bujold
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“In the book Soldiers on the Home Front, I was greatly struck by the fact that in childbirth alone, women commonly suffer more pain, illness and misery than any war hero ever does. An what's her reward for enduring all that pain? She gets pushed aside when she's disfigured by birth, her children soon leave, hear beauty is gone. Women, who struggle and suffer pain to ensure the continuation of the human race, make much tougher and more courageous soldiers than all those big-mouthed freedom-fighting heroes put together.”

HumansChildrenDoeBookWarFactsHomeBigsPainTogetherSufferingFightingRaceStruggleGoneFrontsBirthHeroMiseryRewardsEndureSoldierIllnessHuman RaceCourageousChildbirthContinuationWar Hero
Author:Anne Frank
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“Katherine of Aragon was speaking out for the women of the country, for the good wives who should not be put aside just because their husbands had taken a fancy to another, for the women who walked the hard road between kitchen, bedroom, church and childbirth. For the women who deserved more than their husband's whim.”

ShouldCountryHardChurchTakenWifeHusbandKitchenFancyBedroomChildbirthWhimSpeaking OutGood Wife
Book:The Other Boleyn Girl: A Novel
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“When anesthesia was developed, it was for many decades routinely withheld from women giving birth, since women were "supposed" to suffer. One of the few societies to take a contrary view was the Huichol tribe in Mexico. The Huichol believed that the pain of childbirth should be shared, so the mother would hold on to a string tied to her husband's testicles. With each painful contraction, she would give the string a yank so that the man could share the burden. Surely if such a mechanism were more widespread, injuries in childbirth would garner more attention.”

IfsMenGivingShouldPainMotherSufferingViewsAttentionShareBirthHusbandEmpathyPainfulBurdenDecadesContraryInjuryStringsMechanismMexicoTiedWomens RightsTribesChildbirthGiving BirthContractionsTesticlesAnesthesia
Author:Nicholas D. Kristof
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“It is a mistake to talk about the artist looking for his subject. In fact, the subject grows within him like a fruit and begins to demand expression. It is like childbirth. The poet has nothing to be proud of. He is not master of the situation, but a servant. Creative work is his only possible form of existence, and his every work is like a deed he has no power to annul. For him to be aware that the sequence of such deeds is due and ripe, that it lies in the very nature of things, he has to have faith in the idea; for only faith interlocks the system of images for which read system of life.”

IdeasFactsFormLyingArtistGrowsExistenceMistakeSituationCreativeSubjectsPoetExpressionMastersProudDemandFruitDeedsDuesServantHave FaithBe ProudSequenceRipeChildbirthCreative Work
Author:Andrei Tarkovsky
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“The suburban housewife - she was the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. The American housewife - freed by science and labor-saving appliances from the drudgery, the dangers of childbirth, and the illnesses of her grandmother had found true feminine fulfillment.”

WorldSaidDreamYoungFoundDangerLaborIllnessEnvySavingFulfillmentGrandmotherFeminineChildbirthHousewifeAmerican WomanDrudgeryAppliances
Book:The Feminine Mystique
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“Back in the days when men were hunters and chest beaters and women spent their whole lives worrying about pregnancy or dying in childbirth, they often had to be taken against their will. Men complained that women were cold, unresponsive, frigid... They wanted their women wanton. They wanted their women wild. Now women were finally learning to be wanton and wild - and what happened? The men wilted.”

MenWholeWantedWomenWorryTakenHappenedDyingHe ManColdSexualityWhole LifePregnancyChestsHuntersChildbirthWomen WantWantonFrigidUnresponsive
Author:Erica Jong
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“Discrimination and multiple deprivations of human rights are also frequently part of the problem, sentencing entire populations to poverty... It is surely a matter of outrage that over half a million women die annually from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. This is nearly half the annual global death toll, and arguably, a direct reflection of the disempowerment of women in social, economic and political life.”

HumansMatterProblemPoliticalDiesSocialHalfPovertyMillionsRightsEconomicReflectionDirectHuman RightsPopulationDiscriminationRelatedPregnancyMultipleOutrageChildbirthAnnualsDeprivationTollsComplicationPolitical LifeDisempowerment
Author:Navi Pillay
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“Decades from now, people will look back and wonder how societies could have acquiesced in a sex slave trade in the twenty-first century that is... bigger than the transatlantic slave trade was in the nineteenth. They will be perplexed that we shrugged as a lack of investment in maternal health caused half a million women to perish in childbirth each year.”

PeopleYearsFirstsLooksSexHalfWonderMillionsCenturyBiggerTwentiesTradeSlaveInvestmentDecadesWomens RightsChildbirthPerplexedSlave TradeMaternal Health
Book:Half The Sky: How to Change the World
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“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.”

IfsWantGivingChildrenWomenInspiringImagineTeamBirthFutureSafeMedicalAlternativesThought ProvokingPregnancyControlledGiving BackSurgeonsChildbirthGiving BirthMidwifeRediscoveryMidwiferyBack To BasicsNatural ChildbirthHome Birth
Author:Michel Odent
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“...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.”

GivingHumansImportantCertainStrongWomenHuman BeingsInspiringNiceSocietyStrengthBirthEssentialsExperienceValuableExtrasEmpoweringThought ProvokingPregnancyWomen EmpowermentStrong WomenFulfillingChildbirthGiving BirthRespect WomenWomen StrengthChildbearing
Author:Marsden Wagner
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“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.”

WorldDreamEarthNaturalInspiringWonderCuttingTreePossibilityBabyBirthLosingSpringAll ThingsThought ProvokingPregnancyLinksConcreteHighwaysLiving ThingsNatural WorldChildbirthCutting Down
Book:The Conspiracy Against Childhood
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“Because they've either conveniently forgotten with time or they're trying to be supportive, most mothers won't tell you how hard pregnancy (and then childbirth) can be. Let me tell you, it is. It's brutal sometimes! But, if I did it, ANYONE can do it. I mean, I always knew I was meant to do something really BIG in life, and now I know that this was it. Screw winning an Academy Award someday ... I GAVE BIRTH”

IfsKnowsTryingMeanSometimesHardBigsMotherWinningCan DoBirthLet MeForgottenSomedayPregnancyAwardsBrutalScrewsSupportiveAcademyChildbirthAcademy Awards
Author:Jenny McCarthy
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“Birth is the sudden opening of a window, through which you look out upon a stupendous prospect. For what has happened? A miracle. You have exchanged nothing for the possibility of everything.”

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Book:The Human Situation: The Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Glasgow, 1935-1937
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“Birth is about making mothers... strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength”

KnowsMotherStrongBirthCapableInner StrengthPregnancyPregnantCompetentChildbirthGiving BirthMidwifeBirthingBeautiful PregnancyPregnant InspirationalBirth Of A ChildInspirational PregnancyBabies Being BornNatural Childbirth
Book:A Bun in the Oven: How the Food and Birth Movements Resist Industrialization
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