I dig old books. ™
Est. 1998
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Quotations about
Pregnancy & Childbirth
The shamans are forever yacking about their snake-oil "miracles." I prefer the Real McCoy — a pregnant Woman. ~Robert A. Heinlein
I begin to love this little creature, and to anticipate his birth as a fresh twist to a knot which I do not wish to untie. ~Mary Wollstonecraft, letter to husband William Godwin, 1797 June 6th
What does the woman sing to the love-seed under her heart?
"Oh, my beloved, unborn,
Oh, lips in the darkness that yet shall be kissing my breast:
I send my life-blood into you,
And great love upon you:
Hushed in the pool of the dark you blossom in me!..."
Thus sings the woman: this is the song of all women:
So sang a woman to me.
~James Oppenheim, "The Mother," Songs for the New Age, 1914
God's interest in the human race is nowhere better evinced than in obstetrics. ~Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962)
Don't get pregnant, Orlo. It's like a coup on your body. ~The Great, "Heads It's Me," 2021, written by Tony McNamara and Matthew Moore, based on the 2008 play by Tony McNamara, said by the character Catherine the Great
He plough'd her, and she cropp'd. ~William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, c.1606 [II, 2, Agrippa]
A Ship under sail and a big-bellied Woman,
Are the handsomest two things that can be seen common.
~Benjamin Franklin
It was also Jacque who told me that children didn't come out of their mother's tummies. As she put it, "Where the ingredients go in is where the finished product comes out!" ~Anne M. Frank, letter, 1944
Hunting in the dark my father found me,
My mother claimed me, and led me into light,
From my nine-month winter...
~Thomas McGrath, "Escape," The Movie at the End of the World: Collected Poems, 1972
...the fantastic sloppiness of one's coming into existence... one's senses in the radiant and raw stuff of howlingly sore and unexplained registry in the new everywhere, immensely unknown... actual light... the breath crouched in me and then leaping out yowlingly: this uncancellable sort of beginning. ~Harold Brodkey, The Runaway Soul, 1991
I admire the female sex. The life makers. It must be amazing to have a body that can carry an entire creature inside. ~Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain, 2008, garthstein.com
Anna was five months into the pregnancy when Polly Jean started to kick. She kicked hard... and she kicked constantly... She drummed on the walls of the womb like a madman pounds on a padded door. ~Jill Alexander Essbaum, Hausfrau, 2015
Helpless, cruel hours of waiting in the night; lying on the left side the heart is smothered; turning on the right side, still no comfort; finally lying on the back; always a prey to the energy of the child, trying with one's hands pressed on the swelling body to give a message to the child. Cruel hours of tender waiting in the night. What seems countless nights passing like this. With what a price we pay for the glory of motherhood. ~Isadora Duncan, My Life, 1927
The woman about to become a mother, or with her new-born infant upon her bosom, should be the object of trembling care and sympathy wherever she bears her tender burden, or stretches her aching limbs... God forbid that any member of the profession to which she trusts her life, doubly precious at that eventful period, should hazard it negligently, unadvisedly, or selfishly! ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1843
It seems an insult to nature and to the Creator to imagine that pregnancy was ever intended to be a sickness. ~Eliza Bisbee Duffey, What Women Should Know: A Woman's Book about Women, 1873
Life is always a rich and steady time when you are waiting for something to happen or to hatch. ~E. B. White, Charlotte's Web
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published 2002 Mar 8
revised 2021 Sep 26
last saved 2025 Jan 19
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