Matthew McConaughey Quotes

I watched Ricki Lake's documentary, 'The Business of Being Born,' and that led me to call a midwife, and not an ob-gyn, when I found out I had conceived. My delivery was not easy - they call it 'labor,' not 'a vacation!' - but I was incredibly grateful that I did it that way.

It wasn't such a pleasant experience. We went through 14 hours with contractions every two minutes, no epidural, no nothing. Every two minutes, I would pass out. I went to the hospital on Saturday, and Levi was born on Monday.

In any operation, what you have to do is to persuade the patient to grant access to the patient's energy. The purest form of that is when you're trying to help a woman through labor: when you're saying, 'Push, push!' and you're rhythmically with the woman.

In the spring of 1978, when my parents were 23, my mother gave birth to me on their friend Robert's farm in Oregon with the help of two midwives. The labor and delivery took three hours, start to finish.

I always imagined that having a baby is something that I'm going to keep in a private place, but maybe my curse is that all I'm going to want to do is tell everybody about what my birth process was like and what my children's nightmares are.

We're going to do a natural birth. At first she was like, 'We should do it at home,' and I said, 'Look, either way, when you go into labor, I will be checking into a hospital... so if you want to come along, come along.

I'm not interested in being Wonder Woman in the delivery room. Give me drugs.

Giving birth was the most amazing thing I've ever done. I'd been living in a Third World country, and I said, 'I'm going to just squat behind a tree.' I basically did that but in a chair in my living room. I didn't want a sterile hospital room. I didn't want doctors. I had a midwife.

I had both my children at home. It came naturally to me.

I know we can't always know what medical surprises may happen during childbirth. But my hope is to go fully natural - no epidural, no interventions. Wish me luck.

Every one and every single time is different, and I didn't have C-sections, which I don't know if that's lucky or unlucky, but I was able to feel every contraction. You forget what it feels like. God's got a great way of making women forget what it's like because we would never go through it again.

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

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

When I asked what people would change about their bodies on Twitter, the birthing process was an extremely popular response!

Whether you plan to labor with an epidural or the Pitocin Fairy pins you down or you end up having an emergency C-section, there are still choices you can make throughout your entire birth experience that allow you to feel some control over what is probably the most dramatic day of your life.

I had, like, four Sigur Ros records on my playlist when I was in labor.

I always thought my alternative life, if I wasn't acting, would be to become a midwife. I love women. I want to help them exist.

The idea of windows, that's so symbolic to me within labor. And I'm always opening windows during a birth. If someone's been in labor all night and they're exhausted and sort of over it, opening a window or drawing a curtain can change the game. And sometimes the doula is the first one to suggest it.

A home birth is about being able to create exactly what you want, because it's such a violent moment inside of the body that you want everything else to be as beautiful as it can be.

There is no way out of the experience except through it, because it is not really your experience at all but the baby's. Your body is the child's instrument of birth.

I want you to know it was no big deal...those movies showing women screaming in labor are plain bullshit....there's nothing to it...you just push and push and finally the baby pops out...to tell you the truth I don't even rember that much about it except there was a very nice guy standing over me and every time a strong contraction started he gave me a whiff of gas.

I think there can always be beauty in struggle. I mean, as far as childbirth, I had my son in the hospital, but then I had my daughter at home. There's no doubt that there's a struggling in birth, and a beauty and a horror and fear and joy too.

Labor is really going to hurt.

my cousin Shirley, who never complains, screamed and screamed when she was having her baby. True, this was just during conception.

I wanted to be a 'jungle mom', where you're giving birth and getting up and doing things straightaway.