“In the 1940s women were changing from home to hospital where they gave birth alone and thus birth became a mystery to the next generation.”

“It troubles me every time to think my fellow women were the ones who actually gave birth to men with attitudes as stringent as yours.”

“C-sections and epidurals should be blessings to women, but I suddenly wondered if they had become a means from which to steal the magic of the power of birth away from a generation of mothers.”

“in 3000 b.c....in spain, france, the british isles and old europe, the lives of people centered on nature and motherhood. they honored mother nature, mother earth and mother creator. women were revered as the givers of life. as creators, they were thought to be connected to diety. statues of the goddesses of these early people were of full-breasted women with bodies clearly depicting the ballooning abdomen of women about to give birth. these primal people regarded birthing as the highest manifestation of nature. when a woman gave birth, everyone gathered around her in the temple for the "celebration of life." birthing was a religious rite, and not at all the painful ordeal it came to be years later. ”

“But Loki's relations with Svadilfari were such that a while later he gave birth to a colt.”

“Why did I not know that birth is the pinnacle where women discover the courage to become mothers?”