Quotes for Midwives

My last meeting with the lovely midwifery students I've been working with in Papua New Guinea is this morning.

 Pacific Adventist University Midwifery Students PNG

I've been surfing the net, looking for quotes that relate to midwifery, women and birth that I thought would inspire them.   I've come across the following and thought I'd share them with you.

"You are a midwife, assisting at someone else’s birth. Do good without show or fuss. Facilitate what is happening rather than what you think ought to be happening. If you must take the lead, lead so that the mother is helped, yet still free and in charge. When the baby is born, the mother will rightly say: “We did it ourselves!”  - From The Tao Te Ching

Speak tenderly to them. Let there be kindness in your face, in your eyes, in your smile, in the warmth of our greeting. Always have a cheerful smile. Don’t only give your care, but give your heart as well. ~ Mother Teresa

Ask me for strength and I will lend not only my hand, but also my heart. ~ Unknown

If you lay down, the baby will never come out! ~ Native American saying

Offer hugs, not drugs ~ Adina Lebowitz

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man (sic) will have discovered fire. ~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

  Just as a woman's heart knows how and when to pump, her lungs to inhale, and her hand to pull back from fire, so she knows when and how to give birth. ~Virginia Di Orio

You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

For God hath not give us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. ~2Timothy 1:7

If I had my life to live over, instead of wishing away nine months of pregnancy, I'd have cherished ever moment and realized that the wonderment growing inside me was the only chance in life to assist God in a miracle. ~Irma Bombeck

Making the decision to have a baby – it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone

What's done to children, they will do to society. ~Karl Menninger

A woman
in harmony
with her spirit
is like
a river flowing.
She goes
where she will
without pretense
and arrives
at her destination,
prepared
to be herself
and only herself.
~Maya Angelou