Midwifery Quotes:

If we want to find safe alternatives to obstetrics, we must rediscover midwifery. To rediscover midwifery is the same as giving back childbirth to women. And imagine the future if surgical teams were at the service of the midwives and the women instead of controlling them.

- Michel Odent

topic: Team, Pregnancy, Giving, Childbirth, Midwifery

Abortion politics have distracted all sides from what is really essential: a major aid campaign to improve midwifery, prenatal care and emergency obstetric services in poor countries.

- Nicholas D. Kristof

topic: Country, Abortion, Care, Midwifery, Poor Countries

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

- Ina May Gaskin

topic: Thinking, Body, Habit, Midwifery, Water Buffalo

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.

- Ina May Gaskin

source: FaceBook post by Ina May Gaskin from Mar 22, 2015

topic: Giving, Doubt, Scare, Midwifery, Midwife

One way to measure a particular doctor's openness and attitude toward women in general is simply to ask about the doctor's opinion of midwifery.

- Marsden Wagner

source: Marsden Wagner (2008). “Born in the USA: How a Broken Maternity System Must be Fixed to Put Women and Children First”, p.103, Univ of California Press

topic: Attitude, Doctors, Way, Childbirth, Midwifery

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.

- Ina May Gaskin

topic: Thinking, Elephants, Giving, Childbirth, Midwifery

Whoever heard of a midwife as a literary heroine? Yet midwifery is the very stuff of drama. Every child is conceived either in love or lust, is born in pain, followed by joy or sometimes remorse. A midwife is in the thick of it, she sees it all.

- Jennifer Worth

source: "Call the Midwife: The real life heroine behind major new TV series", www.mirror.co.uk. January 14, 2012.

topic: Pain, Children, Drama, Midwifery, Love Or Lust

My passion for maternal and child health led me to continue my studies and pursue the path of midwifery. And here I am now... still catching babies.

- Robin Lim

source: "An Interview With Robin Lim | CNN Woman of The Year". Interview with Polly Armstrong, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

topic: Baby, Children, Passion, Midwifery

Having a highly trained obstetrical surgeon attend a normal birth is analogous to having a pediatric surgeon babysit a healthy 2-year-old.

- Marsden Wagner

topic: Years, Healthy, Normal, Childbirth, Midwifery

The Creator is not a careless mechanic.

- Ina May Gaskin

source: Ina May Gaskin (2010). “Ina May's Guide to Childbirth”, p.141, Random House

topic: Mechanic, Careless, Creator, Midwifery, Water Buffalo

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

- Ina May Gaskin

topic: Men, Uterus, Should, Childbirth, Midwifery

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.

- Ina May Gaskin

topic: Thinking, People, Common Sense, Midwifery

How can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation? Only as they discover themselves to be 'hosts' of the oppressor can they contribute to the midwifery of their liberating pedagogy. As long as they live in the duality in which to be is to be like and to be like is to be like the oppressor, this contribution is impossible. The pedagogy of the oppressed is an instrument for their critical discovery that both they and their oppressors are manifestations of dehumanization.

- Paulo Freire

source: Paulo Freire (2014). “Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition”, p.48, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

topic: Discovery, Long, Impossible, Midwifery, Dehumanization

13 to $20 billion a year could be saved in health care costs by demedicalizing childbirth, developing midwifery, and encouraging breastfeeding.

- Frank Oski

topic: Pregnancy, Years, Breastfeeding, Midwifery, Health Care Costs

The one seeks a midwife to deliver his thoughts, the other, someone to assist: thus a good conversation comes into being.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

topic: Conversation, Good Conversation, Midwife, Midwifery