What is the best Ina May Gaskin quote?

"Remember this, for it is as true and 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 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

What are some short Ina May Gaskin quotes?

"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." "Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body." "If you can't be a hero, you can at least be funny while being a chicken." - Ina May Gaskin

How many quotes did Ina May Gaskin wrote?

The author Ina May Gaskin wrote around 40 of quotes.

71 Ina May Gaskin Quotes on Birth, Girl power and Birth

Q: What are some Ina May Gaskin quotes?

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

We are, indeed, fully prepared to believe that the bearing of children may and ought to become as free from danger and long debility to the civilized woman as it is to the savage. – Thomas Huxley.

Why in the world do the insurance companies get to be the boss of birth? That’s what I want to know.

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?

The strangest request I have encountered was that of a first-time mother who – just before pushing – asked her husband for a jar of peanut butter and proceeded to eat two heaping table-spoonfuls. She then washed the peanut butter down with nearly a quart of raspberry leaf tea and pushed her baby out. I was impressed.

Contrary to myth, for instance, intrinsic physical characteristics only rarely interfere with the capacity to give birth. In other words, your pelvis is probably big enough for vaginal birth. Nearly every woman’s is. Mental attitudes and emotions, on the other hand, interfere with the ability to give birth far more than is generally understood.

If you can’t be a hero, you can at least be funny while being a chicken.

When you cast doubt on some bodily function- you don’t know how sensitive the body is to that kind of idea.

Why should nutrition matter less in the creation of young humans than it does in young plants? I’m sure that it doesn’t.

Mother’s milk is soul food for babies. The babies of the world need a lot more soul food.

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

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.

I dreaded having a boring life when I grew up. And I certainly can’t complain about being bored.

It’s good to laugh at times that feel inappropriate.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I had to learn not to let anyone push me around, to be brave and to say things I knew might make people mad.

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.

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.

If birth matters, midwives matter. In Europe, there are hospitals where the cesarean rate is less than 10%, and you’ll find midwives in these hospitals, you’ll see a lot less re-admissions with infections and complications, and you’ll see a lot less injury to mothers.

Let your monkey do it.

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

Squat 300 times a day, you’re going to give birth quickly.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Dear Lord, make us truly grateful for what it is that we are about to receive.

Ina May's Guide to Childbirth Quotes

Touch is the most basic, the most nonconceptual form of communication that we have. In touch there are no language barriers; anything that can walk, fly, creep, crawl, or swim already speaks it.

Communication Quotes Spiritual Midwifery Quotes Touch Quotes

Where the techno-medical model of birth reigns, women who give birth vaginally generally labor in bed hooked up to electronic fetal monitors, intravenous tubes, and pressure-reading devices. Eating and drinking in labor are usually not permitted. Labor pain within this model is seen as unacceptable, so analgesia, and anesthesia are encouraged. Episiotomies (the surgical cut to enlarge the vaginal opening) are routinely performed, out of a belief that birth over an intact perineum would be impossible or that, if possible, it might be harmful to mother or baby. Instead of being the central actor of the birth drama, the woman becomes a passive, almost inert object - representing a barrier to the baby's eventual passage to the outside world. Women are treated as a homogenous group within the medical model, with individual variations receding in importance.

Baby Quotes Childbearing Quotes Episiotomies Quotes Ina May's Guide to Childbirth Quotes Labor and deliver Quotes Techno medical model of birth Quotes