#childbirth

Nobody that has seen a baby born can believe in god for a second. When you see your child born, and the panic, and the amount of technology that is saving the life of the two people you love most in the world, when you see how much stainless steel and money it takes to fight off the fact that god wants both those people dead, no one, no one can look into the eyes of a newborn baby and say there's a god, because I'll tell ya, if we were squatting in the woods, the two people I love most would be dead. There's just no way around that. If I were in charge, no way. We need technology to fight against nature; nature so wants us dead. Nature is trying to kill us. ↗

— Penn Jillette

#childbirth #love #nature #technology #life

Postpartum depression is a very real and very serious problem for many mothers. It can happen to a first time mom or a veteran mother. It can occur a few days... or a few months after childbirth. ↗

— Richard J. Codey

#childbirth #days #depression #few #first

My friend Kathy is the only person who'll be halfway honest with me. 'Did you ever see a cowboy film, where someone has been caught by the Indians and tied between two wild stallions, each pulling in opposite directions?' she asked. I nodded mutely. 'That's a bit what giving birth is like. ↗

— Marian Keyes

#humor #family

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

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

Publication is to thinking as childbirth is to the first kiss. ↗

— Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

#first #first kiss #kiss #publication #thinking

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

As indicated by the increase in maternal mortality in 2010, right now it's more dangerous to give birth in California than in Kuwait or Bosnia. Amnesty International reports that women in [the United States] have a higher risk of dying due to pregnancy complications than women in forty-nine other countries (black women are almost four times as likely to die as white women). The United States spends more than any other country on maternal health care, yet our risk of dying or coming close to death during pregnancy or in childbirth remains unreasonably high. ↗

— Jessica Valenti

#maternity-care #pregnancy #death

Many married women who have deliberately spurned the "hour" of childbearing are unhappy and frustrated. They never discovered the joys of marriage because they refused to surrender to the obligation of their state. In saving themselves, they lost themselves! ↗

— Fulton J. Sheen

#childbirth #christianity #expectation #family-planning #happiness

I want to write a song based on my own childbirth. Of course, this is all a bit premature. ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#funny #humor #music #song #music