" My own grief has no part in this story. Many women lose their first child. My mother, in the days before I was born, lost two within as many years. I had seen it happen twice to Cathie, and with the last she herself went as well. Men call us the weaker sex. Perhaps it’s true. Yet to carry life within us as we do, to feel it bud and flower and come from us fully formed as a living creature, separate though part of ourselves, and watch it fade and die—this asks for strength and spiritual endurance. "

― Daphne du Maurier , The Glass-Blowers