- English translation
Better a birth every day than a year's miscarriage.
- Literal wording
A birth every day, and not a miscarriage of a year.
- Meaning and lesson
This saying ranks a pregnancy carried to term and delivered normally as easier and safer for a woman than a miscarriage. Setting ordinary births 'every day' beside a single loss makes the comparison stark: the full-term delivery remains the lighter ordeal.
The words about a year allow two readings: a miscarriage whose toll is felt across a whole year, or one simply measured against a year's span. Under either reading, the point holds that a natural birth costs less in strain and danger than losing a pregnancy.
- When it is used
Fits a comparison between a normal full-term delivery and the loss of a pregnancy, when the speaker wants to stress that ordinary birth, even repeated daily, is the lighter and safer ordeal.
Cite or copy proverb
How this record reached us: Editorially sourced.
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