Quotes from Ina May Gaskin

We midwives and physicians have a lot to teach each other.

Don't criticize nature, stand in awe of it.

When a child is born, the entire Universe has to shift and make room. Another entity capable of free will, and therefore capable of becoming God, has been born.

The best a health care system can do is to equip itself to meet the needs of each individual woman and birth. Those needs run the gamut from undisturbed home birth to planned cesarean section.

Whenever and however you give birth, your experience will impact your emotions, your mind, your body, and your spirit for the rest of your life.

When we as a society begin to value mothers as the givers and supporters of life, then we will see social change in ways that matter.

Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body.

I dreaded having a boring life when I grew up. And I certainly can't complain about being bored.

I had to learn not to let anyone push me around, to be brave and to say things I knew might make people mad.

It's very rare to see an undisturbed birth in a modern U.S. teaching hospital, but when you see a woman who isn't frightened, who's giving birth without interference, you stand back in awe and realize how little needed you are except in the rare circumstance.

If birth matters, midwives matter. In Europe, there are hospitals where the cesarean rate is less than 10%, and you'll find midwives in these hospitals, you'll see a lot less re-admissions with infections and complications, and you'll see a lot less injury to mothers.

It's good to laugh at times that feel inappropriate.

Why in the world do the insurance companies get to be the boss of birth? That's what I want to know.

Why do we, then, continue to treat women as if their emotions and comfort, and the postures they might want to assume while in labor, are against the rules?

Believe me: if you are told that some experience is going to hurt, it will hurt. Much of pain is in the mind, and when a woman absorbs the idea that the act of giving birth is excruciatingly painful—when she gets this information from her mother, her sisters, her married friends, and her physician—that woman has been mentally prepared to feel great agony.

I kept thinking while I was pushing, I'm going to get huge. I'm going to get huge!" she said.

Contrary to myth, for instance, intrinsic physical characteristics only rarely interfere with the capacity to give birth. In other words, your pelvis is probably big enough for vaginal birth. Nearly every woman's is. Mental attitudes and emotions, on the other hand, interfere with the ability to give birth far more than is generally understood.

Stand or kneel with one hand on your pubic bone in front and the other on your tailbone. Notice how far apart your hands are. Now lean backward as far as possible (taking care not to hurt yourself) and continue to notice how far apart your hands are. Next, lean forward until your torso is parallel to the ground.

Many midwives work as employees in large hospital practices, where the techno-medical model of care is still the rule. In practices like these, midwives are used to attract women who desire midwifery care, but they may in fact be under constant pressure to practice within the techno-medical mode.

An Rh negative mother's blood is said to be "sensitized" when this process has taken place. Procedures such as amniocentesis, aggressive external version, and episiotomy increase the chances of sensitization.

Dear Lord, make us truly grateful for what it is that we are about to receive.

Mother's milk is soul food for babies. The babies of the world need a lot more soul food.

It will take your breastfed baby an average of five to six months to double her birth weight.

We are, indeed, fully prepared to believe that the bearing of children may and ought to become as free from danger and long debility to the civilized woman as it is to the savage. —Thomas Huxley