“Of course, if 40% of women need oxytocin to progress normally, then something is wrong with the definition of normal.”

“The second reason caregivers may be silent about the dark side of epidurals is that they generate big bucks for anesthesiologists and hospitals. Epidural charges range from $500 to $2500. A hospital consultant explained to me that hospitals have to maintain staff anesthesiologists around the clock to handle obstetric emergencies. In order for these doctors to make what they consider an adequate income, the hospital has to maintain something like an 80 percent epidural rate. Given this, how strongly do you think medical staff would resist the notion that epidurals are not always a good thing and most women can cope without them?”

“Every human being thinks different things are right, and different things are wrong. Whether something is normal or not, it is still different for every person. Happiness is the same – everyone has their own definition of it.”

“Reality is, there is almost always something going wrong. Hard times are normal.”

“Everybody knows there is no such thing as normal. There is no black-and-white definition of normal. Normal is subjective. There's only a messy, inconsistent, silly, hopeful version of how we feel most at home in our lives.”

“In reality there is no normal. Normal is something people have agreed to invent so we have something to compare ourselves to. Normal should be the least of your worries.”

“I was beginning to understand something about normality. Normality wasn't normal. It couldn't be. If normality were normal, everybody could leave it alone. They could sit back and let normality manifest itself. But people-and especially doctors- had doubts about normality. They weren't sure normality was up the job. And so they felt inclined to give it a boost.”