Many midwives work as employees in large hospital practices, where the techno-medical model of care is still the rule. In practices like these, midwives are used to attract women who desire midwifery care, but they may in fact be under constant pressure to practice within the techno-medical mode.
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.
Why in the world do the insurance companies get to be the boss of birth? That’s what I want to know.
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.
If a woman doesn’t look like a Goddess during labor, then someone isn’t treating her right.
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.
There is no other organ quite like the uterus. If men had such an organ they would brag about it. So should we.
The energy that gets the baby in is the energy that gets the baby out.
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.
Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body.
Don’t forget to bring your sense of humor to your labor.
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.
When you cast doubt on some bodily function- you don’t know how sensitive the body is to that kind of idea.
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 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.
Squat 300 times a day, you’re going to give birth quickly.