Jaime," I said softly, "are you happy about it? About the baby?" Outlawed in Scotland, barred from his own home, and with only vague prospects in France, he could pardonably have been less than enthused about acquiring an additional obligation.
He was silent for a moment, only hugging me harder, then sighed briefly before answering.
"Aye, Sassenach," His hand stayed downward, gently rubbing my belly. "I'm happy. And proud as a stallion. But I am most awfully afraid too."
"About the birth? I'll be all right." I could hardly blame him for apprehension; his own mother had died in childbirth, and birth and its complications were the leading cause of death for women in these times. Still, I knew a thing or two myself, and I had no intention whatever of exposing myself to what passed for medical care here.
"Aye, that--and everything," he said softly. "I want to protect ye like a cloak and shield you and the child wi' my body." His voice was soft and husky, with a slight catch in it. "I would do anything for ye...and yet...there's nothing I can do. It doesna matter how strong I am, or how willing; I canna go with you where ye must go...nor even help ye at all. And to think of the things that might happen, and me helpless to stop them...aye, I'm afraid, Sassenach.
"And yet"--he turned me toward him, hand closing gently over one breast--"yet when I think of you wi' my child at your breast...then I feel as though I've gone hollow as a soap bubble, and perhaps I shall burst with joy.
Diana Gabaldon
When you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again, yet after having given birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep it close enough for comfort. That's the strange thing about being a mother: until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one.
He was born a politician.
No, Ursula thought, he was born a baby, like everyone else. And this is what he has chosen to become.
Kate Atkinson
No one asks how to motivate a baby. A baby naturally explores everything it can get at, unless restraining forces have already been at work. And this tendency doesn't die out, it's wiped out.
B.F. Skinner
Here is something that Peach, one of the Casserole Queens, says about men and women and love. You know that scene in Romeo and Juliet, where Romeo is standing on the ground looking longingly at Juliet on the balcony above him? One of the most romantic moments in all of literary history? Peach says there's no way that Romeo was standing down there to profess his undying devotion. The truth, Peach says, is that Romeo was just trying to look up Juliet's skirt.
Deb Caletti
She looks at Sam. 'Close your ears if you don't want to know what I suspect to be the sex of your child,' she says, and he blocks his ears.
'It's Sam's?' Jonesey asks, surprised, just as he gets a message.
'Where have you been, Jonesey?' Bernadette says. 'In La La Land?'
'Contrary to popular belief, I think it has no penis,' Georgie whispers to them while Lucia covers Sam's ears.
Jonesey looks up from his text messaging, shocked. 'Poor little guy.
Acheron kissed her lightly on the cheek. "Rest. We'll be back when he needs you." He watched her
climb into bed before he took his nephew down to his room.
"Well, it appears to be just the two of us, little one. What say you we get naked, drunk and find us some
wenches?"
The baby actually smiled up at him as if he understood.
Acheron nodded. "So that's it, eh? Barely a month old and you're already lecherous. You are your father's son.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. A book that does nothing to you is dead. A baby, whether it does anything to you, represents life. If a bad fire should break out in this house and I had my choice of saving the library or the babies, I would save what is alive. Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn baby. The finest of our precision watches, the most super-colossal of our supercargo plants, don't compare with a newborn baby in the number and ingenuity of coils and springs, in the flow and change of chemical solutions, in timing devices and interrelated parts that are irreplaceable. A baby is very modern. Yet it is also the oldest of the ancients. A baby doesn't know he is a hoary and venerable antique — but he is. Before man learned how to make an alphabet, how to make a wheel, how to make a fire, he knew how to make a baby — with the great help of woman, and his God and Maker.
Just as there is no warning for childbirth, there is no preparation for the sight of a first child... There should be a song for women to sing at this moment, or a prayer to recite. But perhaps there is none because there are no words strong enough to name the moment.
Anita Diamant
I'm no more a wonder than anyone. And that's what makes the world magical. Every baby's a seed of wonder - that gets watered or it doesn't.
Dean Koontz
You can love someone, hell, you can love a lot of someones, but when you find the right person--the one that you're meant to be with--it's like..." "You can breathe for the first time," she finishes for me. "Yes." I cant help but smile.I needed to find that to understand." And you have," She says softly."Lucy." "Lucy," I agree.
Things certainly aren't the way you imagine them when you're a kid and dreaming big dreams about what your life as a grown-up will look like.
Emily Giffin
I'm afraid it's not nonsense," Genghis said, shaking his turbaned head and continuing his story. "As I was saying before the little girl interrupted me, the baby didn't dash off with the other orphans. She just sat there like a sack of flour. So I walked over to her and gave her a kick to get her moving."
"Excellent idea!" Nero said. "What a wonderful story this is! And then what happened?"
"Well, at first it seemed like I'd kicked a big hole in the baby," Genghis said, his eyes shining, "which seemed lucky, because Sunny was a terrible athlete and it would have been a blessing to put her out of her misery."
Nero clapped his hands. "I know just what you mean, Genghis," he said. "She's a terrible secretary as well."
"But she did all that stapling," Mr. Remora protested.
"Shut up and let the coach finish his story," Nero said.
"But when I looked down," Genghis continued, "I saw that I hadn't kicked a hole in a baby. I'd kicked a hole in a bag of flour! I'd been tricked!"
"That's terrible!" Nero cried.
Babies of around one year old are often active by day and wake frequently at night, for no obvious reason. Then a mother can feel desparate for sleep yet equally desparate to comfort her baby when he needs her at night. I have spoken to many mothers who have sacrificed their own sleep, waking up numerous times every night because their babies cried for them. It seems terrible that these hardworking women think of themselves as failures as a result. Surely a mother who has chosen to sacrifice her sleep deserves respect and admiration for her generous mothering.
I'm beginning to perceive motherhood as a long, slow letting go, of which birth is just the first step.
Sandra Steingraber
...I can't possibly take time off for a second baby, unless I do, in which case that is nobody's business and I'll never regret it for a moment unless it ruins my life.
Tina Fey
Psychology researchers now claim that it is important for babies to learn how to stop crying by themselves. Fortunately, many parents still prefer to comfort their babies. If they didn't, we might find ourselves living in a society of very solitary people, who had learned to control thier distress rather than to find strength through sharing it.
A brilliant idea is like a baby in a mothers womb.
You need to bring it out in the world, nurture it, feed it, grow it, till it becomes big enough to take care of itself.
If you leave it at the stage of an idea itself, it is as good as non existent.
Manoj Arora
[Or perhaps my friends should have realized that they shouldn't have left behind the FRICKING REASON FOR THEIR PROTEST!
And that thought just cracked me up.]
It was like my friends had walked over the backs of baby seals in order to get to the beach where they could protest against the slaughter of baby seals.
Her body accepted my brutal seed and took it to swell within, just as the patient earth accepts a falling fruit into its tender soil to cradle and nourish it to grow. Came a time, just springtime last, our infant child pushed through the fragile barrier of her womb. Her legs branched out, just as the wood branches out from these eternal trees around us; but she was not hardy as they. My wife groaned with blood and ceased to breathe. Aye!, a scornful eve that bred the kind of pain only a god can withstand.
People think blood red, but blood don't got no colour. Not when blood wash the floor she lying on as she scream for that son of a bitch to come, the lone baby of 1785. Not when the baby wash in crimson and squealing like it just depart heaven to come to hell, another place of red. Not when the midwife know that the mother shed too much blood, and she who don't reach fourteen birthday yet speak curse 'pon the chile and the papa, and then she drop down dead like old horse. Not when blood spurt from the skin, on spring from the axe, the cat-o'-nine, the whip, the cane and the blackjack and every day in slave life is a day that colour red. It soon come to pass when red no different from white or blue or black or nothing. Two black legs spread wide and mother mouth screaming. A black baby wiggling in blood on the floor with skin darker than midnight but the greenest eyes anybody ever done seen. I goin' call her Lilith. You can call her what they call her.
Go on, glare your eyes at me, and cry and plead, and talk to
me about money and what it can buy. But it can't buy back a child once he's dead!
V.C. Andrews