Centuries ago it may have been difficult for pregnant women and their children to get proper nourishment, probably leading to smaller - and therefore shorter-lived - adults.
Women are more likely to have a ruptured uterus if they've had multiple C-sections because there's more scar tissue.
The leading cause of death for girls 15 to 19 worldwide is not accident or violence or disease; it is complications from pregnancy. Girls under 15 are up to five times as likely to die while having children than are women in their 20s, and their babies are more likely to die as well.
When my babe was born, they said it was premature. It weighed only four pounds; but God let it live.
When I gave birth to my fourth child, I suffered from post partum hemorrhaging. I almost lost my life. I was lucky to be under the care of trained health care personnel. I started wondering then what was happening to women in rural villages.
A lot of people die giving birth to their children who have AIDS and HIV and a lot of people don't survive after a time because they've been sick too.
For millions of girls around the world, motherhood comes too early. Those who bear children as adolescents suffer higher maternal mortality and morbidity rates, and their children are more likely to die in infancy.
After delivering my daughter in 2003, I endured and survived a hemorrhage, the leading childbirth-related complication that takes the lives of thousands of other mothers all over the world.
I love being a mom and having two kids. But I've had two C-sections, and I have suffered enough. That's my favourite mantra when it comes to motherhood.
Everyone has an image of a premature child, but until you live it and experience it, you just don't know how bad it is.
My mum had 14 pregnancies - but only four of us survived. We had a little sister born for a few days and she died. There had to be a funeral.
Childbearing, I mean, if there's no place to go to deliver your baby, then you're the one that's delivering in those unhealthy circumstances. Or if you can't get access to family planning, your chances of surviving and being able to bring your kids up if they come one right after the other, that locks you into a cycle of poverty.
Just previous to the birth of my little son, my mind gave way and my child was born in the asylum for the insane at Stockton, Cal. My boy was buried there.
Adults worldwide can today look forward to a life-expectancy of 60 plus. But not young Pakistani women: they die like flies, daily, during childbirth...
I was 17 pounds when I was born. My mother couldn't walk for three weeks.
I am particularly interested in helping to heal women who have a fistula after their pregnancies.
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.
Because I was very big and she was very small, my mother had a horrible birth when I was born. So she always said: 'I'm never having any more kids!'
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.
Childbearing is glorified in part because women die from it.
My mother had had six children in five and a half years, and three of them died in that time.
Every second minute, a woman or a girl dies in the world due to pregnancy.
We see very, very high rates of C-sections, Cesarean sections, in India. Lots of reasons for it, high levels of malnutrition have meant that women have very small pelvic areas often, so if they have larger babies, it's very hard to deliver.
My natural mother died one month after I was born, apparently due to giving birth at an advanced age.
Dying in childbirth is something that's not new; it's been going on for ages, and so it's not something that people focus on; it's not something that gets funded a lot, and it's exactly for that reason that we are losing mothers all the time, and we have kids with no mothers.
