2011 - Talk Birth

current health status of a large segment of the U.S. population and as a predictor of the health of the next
generation.” –Healthy People, 2010
”The miraculous nature inherent in the unfolding of a flower is the very same that moves through a
woman as she gives life to the world. We can neither control nor improve upon it, only trust it.” -Robin Sale
”Loving, knowing, and respecting our bodies is a powerful and invincible act of rebellion in this society.”
–Inga Muscio
”A new baby’s fresh milk smell causes the mother’s heart to spill over.” -Melanie Lofland Gendron
”...childbirth is much like a marathon...marathon runners know how to breathe, to run, and to complete
their race according to their own body signals. Similarly, women know how to breathe, to birth, and
to complete the [birth] according to their own body signals. Marathon runners who are true champions are
free to stop the fast pace, and even quit the race without loss of integrity.” –Claudia Panuthos
”Birth, like love, is an energy and a process, happening within a relationship. Both unfold with
their own timing, with a uniqueness that can never be anticipated, with a power that can never be
controlled, but with an exquisite mystery to be appreciated.” –Elizabeth Noble
”...all those tasks and interactions of motherhood, a day full of which might make you feel you’ve
’gotten nothing done’ because you’ve been in the cycle of care, are the heart and soul of the best brain
building possible.” –Lauren Lindsey Porter (Attachment Theory in Everyday Life, in Mothering magazine,
2009)
”The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do
not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars, every place is the center of the world.”
–John Burroughs
”Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.” Meryl Streep
(via [4]Midwifery Today)
”It is not ’ladylike’ to give birth. The strength and power of labor is not demure.” –Rhonda (midwife
quoted in Gayle Peterson’s [5]An Easier Childbirth Book)
”What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.”
—Helen Keller
”The greatest teachers we have are the women we serve.” –Jan Tritten
”...undisturbed (not neglected or abandoned) birth is a powerful initiation into motherhood, not only
in a physical and physiological sense, but also in an emotional and spiritual sense.” –Christina Hurst-Prager
(in [6](ICEA) International Childbirth Education Association’s journal)
”Never hire a midwife who is afraid your birth will go wrong.” –Arielle Greenberg/Rachel Zucker,
[7]Home/Birth: A Poemic
”It is dangerous to be right on a subject on which the established authorities are wrong.” –Bumper
sticker quoted in the book [8]Home/Birth: A Poemic
137