Quotes About Motherhood

because sometimes it's just so damn hard to be a mother. We have to wait and wait and wait for our children to open their hearts to us. And if that doesn't work, we have to bide our time and look for the moment of weakness when we can sneak back into their lives and they will see us and remember us for the people who love them unconditionally.

Every mother must leave her children to work, and every mother suffers, but we do it.

When she's in the sea, she's in the womb of the world.

She should be good, not complain, learn through her eyes and ears, and make her mother proud.

You stole my placenta?

This will come when I can no longer bring children into the world—

I accepted these limitations, knowing that my worth was based entirely on the child growing inside me.

All we can do is take their pain and carry it in our hearts, That's a mother's love... love and pain.

Sometimes it seemed like that was all it was, motherhood—grief and guilt and fear. You said good-bye a little every day—from the minute they left your body until they left your home.

Once a woman has a husband and child, her time, her heart, her desires never quite belong to her again. A blessing some days, a burden others, like all the other gifts that life brings.

Remember that one of the best things you can do for your daughter is take care of each other.

Motherhood was a widening circle of good-byes.

The nanny you let into your home seduces your husband, sets fire to your life. And all because you wanted to work and be a mother.

feel like when my mother died, she took with her the Mia I saw when she looked at me. I could never find that girl in my own reflection. To Mom, I was special—bright, powerful, beautiful—her angel. To the rest of the world, I was just a girl. Small for my age, shy, passingly pretty, smart enough. Just Mia.

seemed like that was all it was, motherhood—grief and guilt and fear. You said good-bye a little every day—from the minute they left your body until they left your home. But no, that wasn't all. There was that love, that wrenching, impossible love.

She would die, Claire realized, before she would give up the love she felt for her son.

Delwyth, Bethan, and Eira be their names—I midwifed each one, same year.

Alys told her that it was the way of women, to tote a newborn and then adjust as it grew until by the time the child was plump and heavy, the weight seemed naught.

Birthmother was an important job, if lacking in prestige.

Some books had shiny pages that showed paintings of landscapes unlike anything Matty had ever seen, or of people costumed in odd ways, or of battles, and there were many quiet painted scenes of a woman holding a newborn child.

From across the room, Mama watched them

With her toddler playing on the floor by her feet, his widow now nursed her new baby on the porch of her homeplace, attended by comforting women who sat with their knitting and embroidery and spoke only of happy things.

It must be quite a shock to suddenly find out you're pregnant, seventeen times over—at your age, too.

Save me from that! To pour your life into sons for eighteen or twenty years, and then have the government take them away and waste them cleaning up after some failure of politics—no thanks.