Inspirational Birth Quotes

I feel it's time for a little inspiration in the world of childbirth. It can be so easy to get discouraged as we must fight to bring the evidence to light against the noise of modern maternity care and the not-so-helpful advice of friends and family when we tell them we're planning a natural birth.

So, here's a dose of inspiration to let you know you are not alone. There are others, many others, who have gone before you and embrace natural birth for the calm, peaceful, empowering event that it is.


"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


"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


"Every [hospital] intervention is a lesson in who really owns your body and your baby's body." Jock Doubleday


"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


"Many Western doctors hold the belief that we can improve everything, even natural childbirth in a healthy woman. This philosophy is the philosophy of people who think it deplorable that they were not consulted at the creation of Eve, because they would have done a better job." Kloosterman 1994


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


"Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are." Augustine


"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


"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


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


"Unfortunately, the role of obstetrics has never been to help women give birth. There is a big difference between the medical discipline we call "obstetrics' and something completely different, the art of 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


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


"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." Dr. Marsden Wagner


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


"Only about 15% of medical interventions are supported by solid scientific evidence...This is partly because only 1% of the studies in medical journals are scientifically sound and partly because many treatments have not been assessed at all." Richard Smith, editor of the British Medical Journal


"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


"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 ICAN, during an interview on Today, November 30, 2004


"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


"A study of interactions between women and obstetricians offers an explanation. It described three levels of increasing power imbalance: In the first, you fight and lose; in the second you don't fight because you know you can't win. However, in the highest level of power differential, your preferences are so manipulated that you act against your own interests, but you are content. Elective repeat cesarean exemplifies that highest level." Henci Goer, Thinking Woman's Guide to a Better Birth


"Having a highly trained obstetrical surgeon attend a normal birth is analogous to having a pediatric surgeon babysit a healthy 2-year-old." M. Wagner


"When you have come to the edge of all the light you know and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things will happen: there will be something solid to stand on or you will be taught how to fly." Patrick Overter