Sometimes, we just need to hear or see something that has the power to get us through difficult or uncertain times. Being pregnant and giving birth can definitely be one of those times, and we need reassurance.
Giving birth, you can ask your birthing partner to read positive birth quotes to you, or if you feel able to, you can read them to yourself. They can play a positive, inspiring and invaluable role to the delivery of your baby.
Encouraging words can have such a massive impact on making you feel more relaxed and at ease, especially when keeping you focused and bringing you into yourself to allow any tension and fear to be released.
Here are some amazing birth quotes which can help you along the ride.
Remember this, for it is as true as it gets.
Your body is not a lemon.
You’re 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 a habit through your life so far, I recommend you learn to think positively about your body.
– Ina May Gaskin, A Guide to Childbirth.
The energy that gets the baby in, is the energy that gets the baby out.
– Ina May Gaskin
My first contraction will bring feelings of anticipation, excitement and confidence in my body.
– Unknown
The power and intensity of your contractions cannot be stronger than you, because it is you.
– Unknown
Just as a woman’s heart knows how to pump, her lungs to fill with air, and her hand to pull back from fire, so her body knows how to birth.
– Virginia Di Orio
When you change the way you view birth, the way you birth will change.
– Marie Mangan
The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed.
– Bob Parsons
Birth isn’t something we suffer, but something we actively do and exult in.
– Sheila Kitzinger
The wisdom and compassion a woman can intuitively experience in childbirth can make her a source of healing and understanding for other women.
– Stephen Gaskin
There is a secret in our culture, and it’s not that birth is painful. It’s that women are strong.
– Laura Stavoe Harm
Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers – strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength.
– Barbara Katz Rothman
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A strong intention, a relaxed body and an open mind are the main ingredients for an active birth.
– Janet Balaskas
In giving birth to our babies, we may find that we give birth to new possibilities within ourselves.
– Myla & Job Kabat-Zinn
Giving birth should be your greatest achievement, not your greatest fear.
– Jane Weideman
The purpose exceeds the pain.
– Beth Moore
The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new.
– Rajneesh
300,000 women will be giving birth with you today. Relax and breathe and do nothing else.
– Unknown
A baby is like the beginning of all things: wonder, hope a dream of possibilities. In a world that is cutting down its trees to build highways, losing its earth to concrete, babies are almost the only remaining link in nature, with the natural world of libing things from which we spring.
– Eda J. Leshan
Part of birthing without fear is trusting your instincts!
– Brande Holm
Face birth like a bull, with full force, no fear or hesitation, with the attitude that you can do this and aren’t going to hold back. This is your opportunity to remember your power as a woman, inhibitions not allowed. Those contractions are power surges, and each one gets you closer to birth. Your baby feels your strength and your fears.
– Ina May Gaskin
Whenever and however you intend to give birth, your experience will impact your emotions, your mind, your body, and your spirit for the rest of your life
– Ina May Gaskin
We must understand that childbirth is fundamentally a spiritual, as well as physical, achievement. The birth of a child is the ultimate perfection of human love.
– Dr. Grantly Dick-Read
Birth should not be a time in a woman’s life when she has to FIGHT for anything.
– Carla Hartley
When I say painless, please understand, I don’t mean you will not feel anything. What you will feel is a lot of pressure; you will feel the might of creation move through you. Pain, however, is associated with something gone wrong. Childbirth is a lot of hard work, and the sensations that accompany it are very strong, but there is nothing wrong with labor.
– Guiditta Tornetta
Having a baby is like falling in love again, both with your husband and your child.
– Tina Brown
Birth is not neat and fast: it’s gritty and primal. But it’s nothing to fear, unless you also think we ought to fear women crying when they are sad or laughing when they are happy. If we stop viewing birth as an emergency – it’s NOT – then we can stop imposing anxiety on women about birth.
– Mayim Bialik
Birth is powerful. Let it empower you.
– Unknown
We are the ONLY species of mammal that doubts our ability to give birth. Think about that.
– Ina May Gaskin
When a woman gives birth, she has to reach down inside herself and give more than she thought she had. The limits of her existence are stretched. There is a comment when every woman thinks, “I can’t do this.” If she is lucky, she has a midwife, a doula or her mom to whisper in her ear, “You are doing it.” As she does it, she becomes someone new: a mother.
– Pam Udy
Childbirth is an experience in a woman’s life that holds the power to transform her forever. Passing through these powerful gates – in her own way – remembering all the generations of women who walk with her… She is never alone.
– Suzanne Arms
Your body can withstand almost anything. It’s your mind yu have to convince.
– Ina May Gaskin
There is a power that comes to women when they give birth. They don’t ask for it, it simply invades them. Accumulates like clouds on the horizon and passes through, carrying the child with it.
– Sheryl Feldman
Birth matters. It brings us into being, on many levels.
– Ananda Lowe
My first contraction will bring a feeling of anticipation, excitement and confidence in my body.
– Unknown
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When a woman births without drugs, she learns that she is strong and powerful. She learns to trust herself, even in the fact of powerful authority figures. Once she realises her own strength and power, she will have a different attitude for the rest of her life, about pain, illness, disease, fatigue, and difficult situations.
– Polly Perez
Muscles send messages to each other. Clenched fists, a tight mouth, a furrowed brow, all send signals to the birth-passage muscles, the very ones that need to be loosened. Opening up to relax these upper-body part relaxes the lower ones.
– Dr. Sears
Deep relaxation, surrender, letting go: when midwives are asked to disclose the secret of giving birth with relative ease, these are the words we choose. More than metaphors for coping, these responses are based on physiological imperatives.
– Elizabeth Davis
Birth is vast and multifaceted; radiant and mysterious. Birth contains multitudes, and through her we birth our multitudes. We give birth to our hopes and our fears, to our ecstasies and our agonies, to our joy and our disappointments. We give birth to our babies, each one perfect and radiant. We give birth through our instincts, and we give birth to our instincts. We give birth to our capacity for instincts, which will match us perfectly with our babies, who are, and always will be, instinctive creatures. May we all be blessed through instinctive birth.
– Sarah Buckley
Learn to respect this sacred moment of birth, as fragile, as fleeting, as elusive as dawn.
– Frederick Leboyer
Birth is as safe as life gets.
– Harriette Haritgan
Labor is also teamwork. It is a mother and baby learning together how to push and how to be born, how to yield and separate from the union of pregnancy. You are not in control nor are you out of control during labor. The best way to approach labor is with an attitude of learning rather than controlling.
– Gayle Peterson
Many women have described their experiences of childbirth as being associated with a spiritual uplifting, the power of which they have never previously been aware. To such a woman, childbirth is a monument of joy within her memory. She turns to it in thought to seek again an ecstasy which passed too soon.
– Grantly Dick Read, Childbirth without Fear
Birth is not a cerebral event; it is a visceral-holistic process which requires all of your self – body, heart, emotion, mind, spirit.
– Baraka Bethany Elihu
Birth is the epicenter of women’s power.
– Ani DiFranco
Giving birth and being born brings us into the essence of creation, where the human spirit is courageous and bold and the body, a mirable of wisdom.
– Harriette Hartigan
A baby is something you carry inside you for nine months, in your arms for three years, and in your heart until the day you die.
– Mary Mason
Grapefruits are sectioned, pizza is delivered, women give birth.
– Unknown
When enough women realize that birth is a time of great opportunity to get in touch with their true power, and when they are willing to assume responsibility for this, we will reclaim the power of birth and help move technology where it belong – in the service of birthing women, not their master.
– Christian Northup
There is no place for ideology in birthing. Each birth has its own story and we must respond to what the baby tells us.
– Spinning Babies.com
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Birth may be a matter of a moment. But it is a unique one.
– Frederick Leboyer
A baby will make love stronger, days stronger, night longer, bankroll smaller, home happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten and the future worth living for.
– Unknown
Birth is an opportunity to transcend. To rise above what we are accustomed to, reach deeper inside ourselves than we are familiar with, and to see not only what we are truly made of, but the strength we can access in and through birth.
– Marcie Macari
Giving birth in ecstasy: This is our birthright and our body’s intent. Mother Nature, in her wisdom, prescribes birthing hormones that take us outside our usual state, so that we can be transformed on every level as we enter motherhood.
– Sarah Buckley
To witness the birth of a child is our best opportunity to experience the meaning of the word miracle.
– Paul Carvel
Making the decision to have a baby is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.
– Elizabeth Stone
So, the question remains. Is childbirth painful? Yes. It can be, along with a thousand amazing sensations for which we have yet to find adequate language. Every birth is different, and every woman’s experience and telling of her story will be unique.
– Marcie Macari
Birth is the sudden opening of a window, through which you look out upon a stupendous prospect. For what has happened? A miracle. You have exchanged nothing for the possibility of everything.
– Willie Dixon
Giving birth to a baby is easier than worrying about it.
– Japanese Proverb
Giving birth is an ecstatic jubilant adventure not available to males.
– John Stevenson
Birth matters, and I believe the way a child is brought into the world has an important impact on the rest of your life. Helping with that transition is an honour.
– Aniji Aurora Hinman, CNM
A baby fills a place in your heart that you never knew was empty.
– Unknown
The knowledge about how to give birth is born within every woman: women do not need to be taught how to give birth but rather to have more trust and faith in their own body knowledge.
– BirthWorks
Birth is an experience that demonstrates that life is not merely function and utility, but form and beauty.
– Christopher Largen
Birthing is the most profound initiation to spirituality a woman can have.
– Robin Lim
Birth is an opportunity to transcend. To rise above what we are accustomed to, rach deeper inside ourselves than we are familiar with, and to see not only what we are truly made of, but the strength we can access in and through birth.
– Marcie Macari
Let the choice whisper in your ear and love murmur in your heart. Be ready. Here comes life.
– Maya Angelou
Let’s start speaking honestly about our births. You’re not a failure if your birth was disappointing. You’re not selfish for knowing you should have been treated with dignity and respect. You’re not melodramatic because you experienced your birth as a traumatic event. It’s time to broaden our definition of “success” to include how women are treated.
– Kathi Valeii
Giving birth is a transformation and it doesn’t matter whether you’ve had eight babies before. It’s still a transformation the next time you have another baby, because you are no longer the same woman you were before you had that baby.
– Penny Handford
We must attempt to tell the whole truth about birth, the truth that includes the transformation, mastery, satisfaction, personal power and the difference between pain and suffering.
– Cheri Van Hoover
Mothers need to know that their care and their choices won’t be compromised by birth politics.
– Jennifer Rosenburg
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Only with trust, faith, and support can the woman allow the birth experience to enlighten and empower her.
– Annie Kennedy and Penny Simkin
Rain, after all, is only rain; it is not bad weather. So, also pain is only pain unless we resist it, then it becomes torment.
– I Ching
Childbirth is an experience in a woman’s life that holds the power to transform her forever. Passing through these powerful gates – in her own way – remembering all the generation of women who walk with her… She is never alone.
– Suzanne Arms
Labour is not about dilation. Your body knows how to give birth whether or not you ever have a pelvic exam during labour. Birthing women need encouragement to trust their bodies, and to be the stars of their own labours.
– The Doula Guide to Birth
Women are strong, strong, terribly strong. We don’t know how strong until we’re pushing out our babies.
– Louise Erdich
A healthy woman who delivers spontaneously performs a job that cannot be improved upon.
– Aidan MacFarlane author of The Psychology of Childbirth (1977)
Giving birth is like taking your lower lip and forcing it over your head.
– Carol Burnett
Birth is the sudden opening of a window, through which you look out upon a stupendous prospect. For what has happened? A miracle. You have exchanged nothing for the possibility of everything.
– William MacNeile Dixon
The instant of birth is exquisite. Pain and joy are one at this moment. Ever after, the dim recollection is so sweet that we speak to our children with a gratitude they never understand.
– Madline Tiger
Good birth is a fine thing, but the merit is our ancestors.
– Plutarch
The so-called miracle of birth is nature getting her own way.
– Camille Paglia
Birth is a beautiful thing.
– Julian Casablancas
Birth is a three legged stool, a healthy mom, a healthy baby and a healthy birth. Without ANY on leg, it is equally unstable.
– Sharon Muza
Birth is a mystery. Words are not enough.
– Marie O’Connor
The birth of a child is a joy to the parent and the world.
– Lailah Gifty Akita
We know that birth takes a woman from one place in her life to another. The birth of a child certainly does change her viewpoint of herself and I believe her viewpoint of the world.
– Sameerah Shareef
In this way, every birth is a natural birth: each of us is part of nature, nor separate from it, and nature is always stunning in its variety. Your birth, then, is part of the natural world, however it unfolds.
– Lauralyn Curtis
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There is nothing that anyone can say to prepare you for childbirth. Each woman’s experience is so different; you never know how it will be for you.
– Poppy Montgomery
Childbirth is more admirable than conquest, more amazing than self-defense, and as courageous as either one.
– Gloria Steinem
My dream is that every woman, everywhere, will known the joy of a truly safe, comfortable, and satisfying birthing for herself and her baby.
– Marie Mongan
The instant of birth is exquisite. Pain and joy are one at this moment. Ever after, the dim recollection is so sweet that we speak to our children with a gratitude they never understand.
– Madeline Tiger
Women, don’t ever apologise for your behaviour or choices during birth. When you OWN your experience and take pride in your journey, you help other women do the same thing. No matter how you did it, you just brought a human being into the world! The world should be kneeling at your feet.
– Lauralyn Curtis
No woman should ever feel guilty about the choices she makes regarding childbirth, breastfeeding, or the manner in which she cares for her baby.
– Amy Tuteur, MD
That first pregnancy is a long sea journey to a country where you don’t know the language, where land is in sight for such a long time that after a while it’s just the horizon – and then one day birds wheel over that dark shape and it’s suddenly close, and all you can do it hope like hell that you’ve had the right shots.
– Emily Perkins
There’s no point in belittling or ridiculing women for standing up and saying that they want a natural birth – and doing the work it takes to get it.
– Kristen Burgess
We learn over and over that the best way to safeguard our mothers and babies is to feed them well, support them and let them birth as nature intended.
– Kristen Burgess
Don’t think of it as pain. Think of it as an interesting sensation that requires all of your attention.
– Ina May Gaskin
Asking your husband to be your sole guide through labour is like asking him to lead the way on a climb of Mt Everest. He may be smart and trustworthy, you may love him, but in the Himalayas you’d both be a lot better off with a Sherpa.
– Pam England
Why are women being told to birth lying down? That’s like trying to take a colossal dump on your back!
– Ina May Gaskin
My body opens, my mind quiets, my baby descends.
– Unknown
Regardless of whether you know about the drugs available or if you think you know exactly what will happen, there is no right or wrong way to feel about childbirth. It’s going to be unique.
You might have everything planned out, but when it comes to the big day, you might end up making different choices as the process goes ahead. Hearing about other people’s positive experiences and affirmations can really bring you the positivity that you need when it’s your turn to give birth.
Giving birth is honestly one of the most powerful and incredible things that you can do and it will mean so much to you regardless of how the process went.