Trying a new, manageable plan in which I collect my birth quotes from CfM and Talk Birth on Facebook and share them on a weekly basis, rather than trying to copy and paste months worth into a giant post the way I usually do! As always, I do appreciate a linkback if you re-share 🙂

“Childbirth calls into question our very existence, requiring an expectant couple to confront not only new life but death, pain, fear and, most of all, change.”~ Elizabeth Noble, quoting a new mother (via Midwifery Today e-news)

“I love and respect birth. The body is a temple, it creates its own rites, its own prayers…all we must do is listen. With the labor and birth of my daughter I went so deep down, so far into the underworld that I had to crawl my way out. I did this only by surrendering. I did this by trusting the goddess in my bones. She moved through me and has left her power in me.” ~Lea B., Fairfax, CA via Mama Birth)

This one is so powerful that it gives me chills to read it!

“Birth completely transforms a woman whether she considers her birth ecstatic or traumatic. Let us do everything in our power to help her make it ecstatic…” ~ Jan Tritten

“We women are the fact and flesh of connectedness.” –Grace Pauley & Ynestra King

“Whatever way birth happens, it is your rite of passage into motherhood, and that passage is to be celebrated. Natural childbirth is a passage, cesarean birth is a passage, and birth with an epidural is a passage to be celebrated. That passage cannot be taken away from you. Every mother’s birth experience is valid, and an act of courage.” –Ananda Lowe (The Doula Guide to Birth)

(Shared in honor of a special friend 🙂

“It is not only that we want to bring about an easy labor, without risking injury to the mother or the child; we must go further. We must understand that childbirth is fundamentally a spiritual, as well as a physical, achievement. The birth of a child is the ultimate perfection of human love.” ~Dr. Grantly Dick-Read, 1953

“We can make a woman have contractions, but we don’t always succeed in forcing her body to release the baby and give birth. If we start a labor with chemicals, we may very well have to finish it with a surgeon’s scalpel.” – Gail Hart, Midwife (via Dalai Mama Professional Placenta Escapsulation)

“When you change the way you view birth, the way you birth will change.” ~Marie Mongan, Hypnobirthing