Ina May Gaskin Quotes

Birth Matters... It matters because it is the way we all begin our lives outside of our source, our mother's bodies. It's the means from which we enter and feel our first impression of the wider world. For each mother, it is an event that shakes and shapes her to her innermost core. Women's perceptions about their bodies and their babies' capabilities will be deeply influenced by the care they receive around the time of birth.

There's some people that are 24 hours with the baby and it doesn't make a difference. They could be anywhere.

To try to help people have babies in a healthy way and to celebrate the process of delivering a child which will be healthy is, I think, almost the best part of healthcare.

I might sound crazy about this but, years ago, my mom told me: "We almost died when you were born. Both of us." I was a Caesarean baby, and the doctor who delivered me later told me, "I opened your mother up, and you were right there. It freaked me out because everything was broken and out-there." I've thought about it a lot - could this have something to do with the fact that I'm only happy when I'm at home and alone? Maybe I was just freaking out for two weeks before I was born, feeling really insecure.

I chose a career in obstetrics and gynecology because there's something about honoring women, honoring the birth process. We all come from women, and there's something extraordinary about the mothers who raised us.

Every woman, whoever she is, wherever she lives, should be able to give birth without the fear she's going to lose her baby or that her baby will lose her mother.

Every baby saved, every mother helped to choose life is a step in the right direction.

It was very easy for me to dedicate myself to the care of mothers, help them have healthy babies, help them be healthy, help them in a place where they don't have opportunities. Success breeds the excitement to continue going. It's harder to get out of bed when you've failed.

My mother giving birth to me was just like Lady Sybil giving birth, except that there wasn't such a tragic ending.

Postpartum depression is a very real and very serious problem for many mothers. It can happen to a first time mom or a veteran mother. It can occur a few days... or a few months after childbirth.

How may child bearing women be most encouraged and supported in the time of childbearing?

I gained 50 pounds when I was carrying my baby.

In some countries, as many as 91 percent of women have no one at their side to assist them during labor and delivery.

From conception to delivery, it has been a great experience. I was determined to give a natural birth.

I am not just pro-birth. I believe in supporting a woman during and after pregnancy.

Abortion kills twice. It kills the body of the baby and it kills the conscience of the mother. Abortion is profoundly anti-women. Three quarters of its victims are women: Half the babies and all the mothers.

Wine's terrible for babies." Dorian swept into the sitting room to join me, elegantly arranging himself on a love seat that displayed his purple velvet robes to best effect. "Well of course it is. I'd never dream of giving wine to an infant! What do you take me for, a barbarian? But for you... well, it might go a long way to make you a little less jumpy. You've been positively unbearable to live around. "I can't have it either. It affects the babies in utero.

I learnt from Flo how to be mother. Flo was patient, tolerant. She was supportive. She was always there. She was playful. She enjoyed having her babies, as good mothers do.

If you go with what Hillary [Clinton] is saying, in the ninth month, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby. Now, you can say that that's OK and Hillary can say that that's OK. But it's not OK with me, because based on what she's saying, and based on where she's going, and where she's been, you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb in the ninth month on the final day. And that's not acceptable.

I have always felt that too much time was given before the birth, which is spent learning things like how to breathe in and out with your husband (I had my baby when they gave you a shot in the hip and you didn't wake up until the kid was ready to start school), and not enough time given to how to mother after the baby is born.

A baby's mother also needs a mother.

A pregnant woman and her spouse dream of three babies--the perfect four-month-old who rewards them with smiles and musical cooing,the impaired baby, who changes each day, and the mysterious real baby whose presence is beginning to be evident in the motions of the fetus.

Sweeter even than to have had the joy of caring for children of my own has it been to me to help bring about a better state of things for mothers generally, so their unborn little ones could not be willed away from them.

If you do nothing, if a mother doesn't come for care, if she breastfeeds her baby, the chances of the baby getting HIV are about 40%. So it's about the difference between 40% and zero. This is almost totally preventable. But it requires mothers coming for care and getting the medicines they need, and getting the education and support they need.

In modern consumer society, the attack on mother-child eroticism took its total form; breastfeeding was proscribed and the breasts reserved for the husband's fetishistic delectation. At the same time, babies were segregated, put into cold beds alone and not picked up if they cried.