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.

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.

It would be a mistake, though, to consider care by family doctors or midwives inferior to that offered by obstetricians simply on the grounds that obstetricians need not refer care to a family physician or midwife if no complications develop during a course of labor.

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.

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

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