#childbirth

I have always wanted to act ever since I was a little girl. I would put a blanket under my shirt and pretend that I was pregnant. Then, I would go through childbirth. ↗

— Dakota Fanning

#always #blanket #childbirth #ever #girl

You know, there was a time when childbirth was possibly the most terrifying thing you could do in your life, and you were literally looking death in the face when you went ahead with it. And so this is a kind of flashback to a time when that's what every woman went through. Not that they got ripped apart, but they had no guarantees about whether they were going to live through it or not. You know, I recently read - and I don't read nonfiction, generally - Becoming Jane Austen. That's the one subject that would get me to go out and read nonfiction. And the author's conclusion was that one of the reason's Jane Austen might not have married when she did have the opportunity...well, she watched her very dear nieces and friends die in childbirth! And it was like a death sentence: You get married and you will have children. You have children and you will die. (Laughs) I mean, it was a terrifying world. ↗

— Stephenie Meyer

#childbirth #horror #jane-austen #death

Death, taxes and childbirth! There's never any convenient time for any of them. ↗

— Margaret Mitchell

#death #humor #taxes #truth #death

The desires for both a good experience and a healthy baby are very much connected, and there is nothing wrong with wanting both! ↗

— Jennetta Billhimer

#birth #childbirth #health #mother #experience

Quests are a huge inconvenience. Don't let anyone tell you differently, even if that person has experience. The problem is that people forget the pain and aggravation as soon as the quest ends successfully, and then they remember only the glorious parts. In this way quests are a bit like childbirth, even to the point of saying that quests often give birth to glory. Maybe. ↗

— Amy Neftzger

#glory #inconvenience #plainful #quests #experience

I have a clear understanding of things, and no stress. A child brings regrets, not clarity. It can open up your eyes to an illusion, not a reality. But nonetheless, the gift of life is a beautiful thing; cherish it, love it, and lavish it. A birth of a child may not bring clarity, but it brings infinite love, new hope, and turns its parent(s) to a new light. ↗

— Lionel Suggs

#beauty

The pain of childbirth is not remembered. It's the child that's remembered. ↗

— Freeman Dyson

#childbirth #pain #remembered

At the moment of childbirth, every woman has the same aura of isolation, as though she were abandoned, alone. ↗

— Boris Pasternak

#alone #aura #childbirth #every #isolation

When anesthesia was developed, it was for many decades routinely withheld from women giving birth, since women were "supposed" to suffer. One of the few societies to take a contrary view was the Huichol tribe in Mexico. The Huichol believed that the pain of childbirth should be shared, so the mother would hold on to a string tied to her husband's testicles. With each painful contraction, she would give the string a yank so that the man could share the burden. Surely if such a mechanism were more widespread, injuries in childbirth would garner more attention. ↗

— Nicholas D. Kristof

#empathy #women #women-s-rights #oppression

I once heard two ladies going on and on about the pains of childbirth and how men don't seem to know what real pain is. I asked if either of them ever got themselves caught in a zipper. ↗

— Emo Philips

#asked #caught #childbirth #either #ever