1. Part of being a parent is rolling with the punches, so consider an unexpected pregnancy the universe’s way of helping you to learn to do that.

- Heather Wittenberg

2. There are two things in life for which we are never fully prepared: twins.

- Josh Billings

3. If your baby is beautiful and perfect, never cries or fusses, sleeps on schedule and burps on demand, an angel all the time—you’re the grandma.

- Theresa Bloomingdale

4. Pregnancy is a process that invites you to surrender to the unseen force behind all life.

- Judy Ford

5. Your pregnant elephant ankles will return to normal. Just hang in there.

- Adriel Booker

6. No matter how you bring a baby into the world (even through adoption), it’s emotionally and physically exhausting – but somehow you find a way through.

- Rachel Hollis

7. Birthing is the most profound initiation to spirituality a woman can have.

- Robin Lim

8. We can’t understand when we’re pregnant, or when our siblings are expecting, how profound it is to have a shared history with a younger generation: blood, genes, humor. It means we were actually here, on Earth, for a time—like the Egyptians with their pyramids, only with children.

- Anne Lamott

9. Pregnancy and birth are a space between worlds — a liminal space — a place where you are no longer not a parent and not yet one either. This betwixt and between is sacred space within which powerful and profound events occur — often uninvited.

- Brita Bushnell

10. Truthfully, being pregnant is changing me as a person. Each day is part of this amazing journey that has completely shifted the focus of my life and made me reevaluate my personal and professional goals.

- Holly Madison

11. It’s an established fact. Some women can’t stand being pregnant, getting big and bloated, and hauling around a giant stomach, and some women, for reasons probably understood by Darwin, love it.

- Rich Cohen

12. To be pregnant is to be vitally alive, thoroughly woman, and distressingly inhabited. Soul and spirit are stretched – along with body – making pregnancy a time of transition, growth, and profound beginnings.

- Anne Christian Buchanan

13. You are proof that love before first sight does exist.

- Araceli M. Ream

14. Making the decision to have a child – it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.

- Elizabeth Stone

15. Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life.

- Albert Einstein

16. When your first baby drops her pacifier, you sterilize it. When your second baby drops her pacifier, you tell the dog: ‘Fetch!’

- Bruce Lansky

17. Giving birth and being born brings us into the essence of creation, where the human spirit is courageous and bold and the body, a miracle of wisdom.

- Harriet Hartigan

18. We never know the love of a parent until we become parents ourselves.

- Henry Ward Beecher

19. Rigid plans work best if you’re building a skyscraper; with something as mysteriously human as giving birth, it’s best, both literally and figuratively, to keep your knees bent.

- Mark Sloan, M.D.

20. Still the most magical day of my life was the day I became a mom.

- Linda Becker

21. Let us make pregnancy an occasion when we appreciate our female bodies.

- Merete Leonhardt-Lupa

22. What good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is usually best after all.

- Benjamin Spock

23. Babies are bits of star-dust blown from the hand of God. Lucky is the woman who knows the pangs of birth for she has held a star.

- Larry Barretto

24. That first pregnancy is a long sea journey to a country where you don’t know the language, where land is in sight for such a long time that after a while it’s just the horizon – and then one day birds wheel over that dark shape and it’s suddenly close, and all you can do is hope like hell that you’ve had the right shots.

- Emily Perkins

25. Sometimes when you pick up your child you can feel the map of your own bones beneath your hands, or smell the scent of your skin in the nape of his neck. This is the most extraordinary thing about motherhood – finding a piece of yourself separate and apart that all the same you could not live without.

- Jodi Picoult

26. During my first pregnancy, the people I was around told me how great I looked, asked me how I was feeling, saved the comfiest chairs for me, and stocked the office with decaf tea. This time around, the person I spend the most time with—although she seems to think I’m swell—insists on eating my food and waking me up early every morning.

- Emily Fisk

27. Childbirth is more admirable than conquest, more amazing than self-defense, and as courageous as either one.

- Gloria Steinem

28. Pregnancy is the only time when you can do nothing at all and still be productive.

- Evan Esar

29. A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bankroll smaller, home happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten, and the future worth living for.

- Unknown

30. A baby is something you carry inside you for nine months, in your arms for three years, and in your heart until the day you die.

- Mary Mason

31. Whether your pregnancy was meticulously planned, medically coaxed, or happened by surprise, one thing is certain – your life will never be the same.

- Catherine Jones

32. Birth is, without a doubt, one of the greatest self-expressive and creative processes we can embark upon in womanhood. I believe that a part of a woman’s birthing heart centre resides within the pelvis and hip area.

- Maha Al Musa

33. Of all the rights of women, the greatest is to be a mother.

- Lin Yutang

34. Giving birth should be your greatest achievement not your greatest fear.

- Jane Weideman

35. Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child.

- Sam Levenson

36. There is only one pretty child in the world, and every mother has it.

- Chinese Proverb

37. A good way to prepare yourself for parenthood is to talk to rocks because they have similar listening habits.

- Rodney Lacroix

38. Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers — strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength.

- Barbara Katz Rothman

39. There are no words that can describe the euphoria you feel when your baby recognizes you for the first time and smiles.

- Jared Padalecki

40. A mother’s joy begins when new life is stirring inside… when a tiny heartbeat is heard for the very first time, and a playful kick reminds her that she is never alone.

- Unknown

41. The first pregnancy is the most self-indulgent thing in the world because you get massages and prenatal yoga and hypnotherapy CDs. During this one I forget that I’m even pregnant. I’m hoisting my 2-year-old around.

- Emily Blunt

42. If you want to know the feeling, just take your bottom lip and pull it over your head.

- Carol Burnett

43. The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.

- George Santayana

44. Speak to your children as if they are the wisest, kindest, most beautiful and magical humans on earth, for what they believe is what they will become.

- Brooke Hampton

45. A baby is a wishing well. Everyone puts their hopes, their fears, their pasts, their two cents in.

- Elizabeth Bard

46. With every newborn baby, a little sun rises.

- Irmgard Erath

47. When you change the way you view birth, the way you birth will change.

- Marie F. Mongan

48. You are pregnant and you are powerful. You are bold and you are beautiful. Go forward in your boldness, in your beauty and in your contentedness. Trust your body to birth and know that the collective power of women worldwide will be with you.

- Unknown

49. Now my belly is as noble as my heart.

- Gabriela Mistral

50. I’m a mother, and I look like one.

- Olivia Wilde

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

- Emma Bombeck

52. The amazing thing about becoming a parent is that you will never again be your own first priority.

- Olivia Wilde

53. A baby fills a place in your heart that you never knew was empty.

- Unknown

54. There is such a special sweetness in being able to participate in creation.

- Pamela S. Nadav

55. A man is not complete until he has seen the baby he has made.

- Sammy Davis Jr.

56. It is the most powerful creation to have life that is growing inside of you. There is no bigger gift.

- Beyonce

57. For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted the desires of my heart.

- 1 Samuel 1:27

58. The purpose exceeds the pain.

- Beth Moore

59. Going into a pregnancy is a really challenging time for a woman, because it’s forever-changing, both mentally and physically.

- Brooke Burke

60. Words can not express the joy of new life.

- Hermann Hesse

61. My body has given me the greatest gift of my life.

- Hilary Duff

62. 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 DiOrio

63. In pregnancy, there are two bodies, one inside the other. Two people live under one skin. When so much of life is dedicated to maintaining our integrity as distinct beings, this bodily tandem is an uncanny fact.

- Joan Raphael-Leff

64. Before you were conceived I wanted you. Before you were born I loved you. Before you were here an hour old I would die for you. This is the miracle of Mother’s Love.

- Maureen Hawkins

65. Motherhood: The only place you can experience heaven and hell at the same time.

- Unknown

66. When I was pregnant, I was so huge and people on the bus would get up for me. That made me feel so precious and valued and valuable. I try to treat everyone like they’re pregnant.

- Mariska Hargitay

67. I’m never as happy as when I’m pregnant. I literally would have 10 babies if I could!

- Tori Spelling

68. Life is a flame that is always burning itself out, but it catches fire again every time a child is born.

- George Bernard Shaw

69. There are words in the soul of a newborn baby, wanting and waiting to be written.

- Toba Beta

70. Loving a baby is a circular business, a kind of feedback loop. The more you give the more you get and the more you get the more you feel like giving.

- Penelope Leach

71. Let choice whisper in your ear and love murmur in your heart. Be ready. Here comes life.

- Maya Angelou

72. People always say that pregnant women have a glow. And I say it’s because you’re sweating to death.

- Jessica Simpson

73. Every four weeks I go up a bra size… it’s worth being pregnant just for the breasts.

- Natasha Hamilton

74. Being pregnant means every day is another day closer to meeting the other love of my life.

- Unknown

75. Birth is an opportunity to transcend. To rise above what we are accustomed to, reach deeper inside ourselves than we are familiar with, and to see not only what we are truly made of, but the strength we can access in and through birth.

- Marcie Marcari

76. Sometimes you don’t realize what is missing in your life until it arrives.

- Araceli M. Ream

77. There is no way out of the experience except through it, because it is not really your experience at all, but the baby’s. Your body is the child’s instrument of birth.

- Penelope Leach

78. Of course I can do this. I’m pregnant, not brain-damaged. My condition doesn’t change my personality.

- Christine Feehan

79. Life is tough enough without having someone kick you from the inside.

- Rita Rudner

80. Life doesn’t get more real than having a newborn at home.

- Eric Church

81. Motherhood is the biggest gamble in the world. It is the glorious life force. It’s huge and scary—it’s an act of infinite optimism.

- Gilda Radner

82. There is something very beautiful about being pregnant. I think I enjoy being pregnant more than not being pregnant. I know it could go either way, and the next pregnancy could be the complete opposite.

- Chrissy Teigen

83. The wisdom and compassion a woman can intuitively experience in childbirth can make her a source of healing and understanding for other women.

- Stephen Gaskin

84. A ship under sail and a big-bellied woman are the handsomest two things that can be seen common.

- Benjamin Franklin

85. You are the closest I will ever come to magic.

- Suzanne Finnamore

86. It’s a really magical time, those first few weeks. It almost makes you wish you didn’t have to tell anyone, ever. You could just watch your belly grow bigger, and no one would be allowed to ask you about it, and you would have your baby and a year later you would allow visitors to finally come and meet your little miracle.

- Amy Poehler

87. Giving birth is not a matter of pushing, expelling the baby, but of yielding, surrendering to birth energy.

- Marie Reid

88. When we encourage new parents to ‘treasure these moments because they don’t last forever,’ we need to remember to also reassure them that they will survive these moments because they don’t last forever.

- L.R. Knost

89. A mother does not become pregnant in order to provide employment to medical people. Giving birth is an ecstatic jubilant adventure not available to males. It is a woman’s crowning creative experience of a lifetime.

- John Stevenson

90. Remember this, for it is as true and true gets: Your body is not a lemon. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic. Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceri, elephants, moose, and water buffalo. Even if it has not been your habit throughout your life so far, I recommend that you learn to think positively about your body.

- Ina May Gaskin

91. You do a lot of growing up when you’re pregnant. It’s suddenly like, ‘Yikes. Here it is, folks. Playtime is over.’

- Connie Fioretto

92. Pregnancy can be a time when you take tremendous pleasure in eating, not only because you may enjoy food more but also because you know that it is nourishing both you and your baby.

- Martha Rose and Jane L. Davis