Ina May Gaskin Quotes
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I dreaded having a boring life when I grew up. And I certainly can't complain about being bored.
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Don't forget to bring your sense of humor to your labor.
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It will take your breastfed baby an average of five to six months to double her birth weight.
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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?
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Why in the world do the insurance companies get to be the boss of birth? That's what I want to know.
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Simply put, when there is no home birth in a society, or when home birth is driven completely underground, essential knowledge of women’s capacities in birth is lost to the people of that society—to professional caregivers, as well as to the women of childbearing age themselves.
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I think midwifery was developed by people with common sense, people who were close to nature, and people who observed other species of mammals and saw that there were lessons there to be learned.
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It's easy to scare women. It's even profitable to scare women... But it's not nice, so let's stop it.
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We are the only species of mammal that doubts our ability to give birth. It's profitable to scare women about birth. But let's stop it. I tell women: Your body is not a lemon.
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I have never observed even the slightest laceration in a woman who used clitoral stimulation as a relaxation method during birth. Clitoral stimulation seems to increase vaginal engorgement as the baby emerges.
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I think that women can be just completely surprised by the change in them from giving birth-you have something powerful in you-that fierce thing comes up-and I think babies need moms to have that fierceness-you feel like you can do anything and that’s the feeling we want moms to have.
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The way a culture treats women in birth is a good indicator of how well women and their contributions to society are valued and honored.
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It does a man good to see his lady being brave while she has their baby... it inspires him.
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If a woman doesn't look like a Goddess during labor, then someone isn't treating her right.
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Nothing in medical literature today communicates the idea that women's bodies are well-designed for birth. Ignorance of the capacities of women's bodies can flourish and quickly spread into the popular culture when the medical profession is unable to distinguish between ancient wisdom and superstitious belief.
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It is important to keep in mind that our bodies must work pretty well, or their wouldn't be so many humans on the planet.
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The energy that gets the baby in is the energy that gets the baby out.
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Pregnant and birthing mothers are elemental forces, in the same sense that gravity, thunderstorms, earthquakes, and hurricanes are elemental forces. In order to understand the laws of their energy flow, you have to love and respect them for their magnificence at the same time that you study them with the accuracy of a true scientist.
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Don't criticize nature, stand in awe of it.
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A society that places a low value on its mothers and the process of birth will suffer an array of negative repercussions for doing so. Good beginnings make a positive difference in the world, so it is worth our while to provide the best possible care for mothers and babies throughout this extraordinarily influential part of life.
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Birth Matters... It matters because it is the way we all begin our lives outside of our source, our mother's bodies. It's the means from which we enter and feel our first impression of the wider world. For each mother, it is an event that shakes and shapes her to her innermost core. Women's perceptions about their bodies and their babies' capabilities will be deeply influenced by the care they receive around the time of birth.
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Why should nutrition matter less in the creation of young humans than it does in young plants? I'm sure that it doesn't.
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Gardeners know that you must nourish the soil if you want healthy plants. You must water the plants adequately, especially when seeds are germinating and sprouting, and they should be planted in a nutrient-rich soil. Why should nutrition matter less in the creation of young humans than it does in young plants? I'm sure that it doesn't.
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Many of our problems in US maternity care stem from the fact that we leave no room for recognizing when nature is smarter than we are.
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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.
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The human species is no more unsuited to give birth than any other of the 5,000 or so species of mammals on the planet. We are merely the most confused.
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Let your monkey do it.
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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.
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I had to learn not to let anyone push me around, to be brave and to say things I knew might make people mad.
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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.
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