Ina May Gaskin Quotes

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.

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.

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.

If a woman doesn't look like a Goddess during labor, then someone isn't treating her right.

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.

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.

Remember this, for it is as true as true gets: Your body is not a lemon. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic. Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth as well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceri, elephants, moose, and water buffalo. Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body.

The energy that gets the baby in is the energy that gets the baby out.

There is no other organ quite like the uterus. If men had such an organ they would brag about it. So should we

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.

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.

Ask the woman, she will tell you everything you need to know

Don't forget to bring your sense of humor to your labor.

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.

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.

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

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

When you destroy midwives, you also destroy a body of knowledge that is shared by women, that can’t be put together by a bunch of surgeons or a bunch of male obstetricians, because physiologically, birth doesn’t happen the same way around surgeons, medically trained doctors, as it does around sympathetic women.

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.

It does a man good to see his lady being brave while she has their baby... it inspires him.

It's easy to scare women. It's even profitable to scare women... But it's not nice, so let's stop 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 Creator is not a careless mechanic.

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.

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