When I ask my medical students to describe their image of a woman who elects to birth with a midwife rather than with an obstetrician, they generally describe a woman who wears long cotton skirts, braids her hair, eats only organic vegan food, does yoga, and maybe drives a VW microbus.
Alice Dreger
I'd be just as happy being a midwife. That's my ideal job.
Allison Anders
There was a woman in Tunisia called Madame Pinot. She was a midwife and had helped in the birth of my siblings and me. I assisted her. I helped women give birth to a lot of babies when I was very young.
Azzedine Alaia
A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
Billy Wilder
Who is a professional? A professional is someone who has a combination of competence, confidence and belief. A water diviner is a professional. A traditional midwife is a professional. A traditional bone setter is a professional. These are professionals all over the world. You find them in any inaccessible village around the world.
Bunker Roy
Giving birth was the most amazing thing I've ever done. I'd been living in a Third World country, and I said, 'I'm going to just squat behind a tree.' I basically did that but in a chair in my living room. I didn't want a sterile hospital room. I didn't want doctors. I had a midwife.
Carolyn Murphy
You have that first joy of finding work, and then to become part of a show like 'Call the Midwife' - which I have watched religiously with my mum since it started -is doubly brilliant.
Charlotte Ritchie
Like a midwife, I make my living bringing new babies into the world, except that mine are new advertising campaigns.
David Ogilvy
Once upon a time, about 10 years ago, I thought maybe I could write a mystery series about a midwife in Elizabethan England. I had an elaborately convoluted title and an elaborately convoluted plotline, and at that point I got stupendously bored.
Deborah Harkness
I was always interested in becoming a midwife. Then, at my own birth, I didn't get the support I'd hoped for, and that changed everything. That's why I became a doula. There's such a need.
Domino Kirke
I was always interested in midwifery; it was my plan B.
I truly believe being a midwife is the greatest job for a feminist. It's women helping women, believing in them at a time when they're thinking, 'Am I ever going to get through this?'
Emma Willis
What I've learnt is that being a midwife is not a job about cute babies. And as a maternity care assistant there's a lot of cleaning involved. It's a vocation.
One of the marks of a truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action.
Eric Hoffer
After about five hours of pushing, my midwife and my birthing assistant said, 'You know, we have a few suggestions.' And I was like, 'Really? After five hours of pushing you have a few suggestions? You couldn't have told me five minutes in?'
Evangeline Lilly
I really like sitting down with my daughter to watch programmes like 'Call the Midwife,' '24 hours in A&E,' 'One Born Every Minute' and 'Our Girl.' It's just the two of us, which is really nice.
Fiona Bruce
After 'Question Time,' I find my mind is racing. So I try to watch something that's a million miles away from all that, like 'Poldark' or 'Call the Midwife' or 'Derry Girls.'
The artist's job, I think, is to be a conduit for mystery. To intuit it, and recognize that the story-germ has some inherent mystery in it, and sort of midwife that mystery into the story in such a way that it isn't damaged in the process, and may even get heightened or refined.
George Saunders
Berta Caceres, a Lenca woman, grew up during the violence that swept through Central America in the 1980s. Her mother, a midwife and social activist, took in and cared for refugees from El Salvador, teaching her young children the value of standing up for disenfranchised people.
Greg Grandin
Poverty was my mother's midwife. She had her children in poverty. But she also found a road to bring us a sense of purpose, and she taught us how to be valiant in the face of oppression.
Harry Belafonte
I love 'Call the Midwife'; it's an absolute gem of a programme. Filming the Christmas special and then the second series felt like going back to a boarding school that you really love and is full of friends.
I have always appreciated vintage clothing, but after working on 'Call the Midwife' for six months, I love moving away from vintage in my day-to-day wear.
Normally, I'm the one fawning over the man, but in 'Call The Midwife,' I'm the experienced woman.
It's amazing what it opens up in women when you tell them you've just played a midwife.
Truth is the daughter of time, and I feel no shame in being her midwife.
My dad's an English teacher and my mum's a midwife. Then my mum's side of the family are all crazy creative.
Because 'Call The Midwife' is a gentle drama, not a documentary, it's not appropriate to portray Sister Monica Joan's condition in all its brutal reality.
I don't know if a penny's dropped somewhere, but you've had 'Lark Rise to Candleford,' you've had 'Cranford,' you've had 'Last Tango in Halifax,' you've had 'Call the Midwife'... I think the largest portion of the viewing public are over 55, and they like to see people they can identify with.
My first draft is always way too long; my books start out with delusions of 'War and Peace' - and must be gently disabused. My editor is brilliant at taking me to the point where I do all the necessary cutting on my own. I like to say she's a midwife rather than a surgeon.
My own father flipped out on me when I told him we decided to ditch our doctor and go with a midwife instead.
I'm obsessed with that show 'Call The Midwife'. Although I had to take a break at a certain point in my pregnancy because every episode is about having babies.
We should work to guarantee that there is a midwife or health worker by every woman's side during childbirth.
Nationalism of the Irish type is often regarded as reactionary. With the World Revolution and the Classless Society waiting for the midwife, why take a torch to the stable to assist at the birth of a puppy? Even if the puppy is pedigree. On this question I am unable to make up my mind.
The task of the mediator is to help the parties to open difficult issues and nudge them forward in the peace process. The mediator's role combines those of a ship's pilot, consulting medical doctor, midwife and teacher.
My dad is a nurse midwife, one of about only 50 male midwives in the U.S., I think.
I'm obsessed with 'Call The Midwife.'
You wouldn't tolerate an underperforming surgeon in an operating theatre, or a underperforming midwife at your child's birth. Why is it that we tolerate underperforming teachers in the classroom?
I wanted to deliver babies and become a midwife. I think childbirth is one of the most amazing things you could ever experience, and I loved working with people and seeing the joys in family when they welcome a new member to it. It really brought me joy to be around that.
Abortion politics have distracted all sides from what is really essential: a major aid campaign to improve midwifery, prenatal care and emergency obstetric services in poor countries.
I was not the midwife of the Law School, but its fraternal twin.
Working with the dying is like being a midwife for this great rite of passage of death. Just as a midwife helps a being take their first breath, you help a being take their last breath.
My wife is a midwife, and there's only so many states where you can do that. Texas is a place where she can work.
I watched Ricki Lake's documentary, 'The Business of Being Born,' and that led me to call a midwife, and not an ob-gyn, when I found out I had conceived. My delivery was not easy - they call it 'labor,' not 'a vacation!' - but I was incredibly grateful that I did it that way.
I thought it was going to be a hut in Topanga and Janis Joplin was going to come out, but it's a real doctor... I went to Beverly Hills to meet this midwife; you'd think they'd be in nature.
There is a certain justice in criticism. The critic is like a midwife - a tyrannical midwife.
My mother was a midwife and a herbalist, so we would go on these long walks, looking for yarrow or rosehips or whatever she needed to make her tinctures.
A critic is not a creative artist, is a commenter, a midwife of creativity, but not creative himself.
I always thought my alternative life, if I wasn't acting, would be to become a midwife. I love women. I want to help them exist.
