The Collaborative International Dictionary
Birthing \Birth"ing\, n.
(Naut.) Anything added to raise the sides of a ship.
--Bailey.the act or process of giving birth.
Wiktionary
a. Of or relating to birth. n. 1 The act of giving birth. 2 (context nautical English) Anything added to raise the sides of a ship.
WordNet
n. the process of giving birth [syn: parturition, birth, giving birth]
Usage examples of "birthing".
Under the sunlight, the rose blemish that had flared so starkly on the tumulus and inside the birthing house faded to a mere spot of red on his cheek, nothing out of the ordinary.
Weiwara had birthed her first child three summers ago, and as every person knew, the first two birthings were the most dangerous: if you survived them, then it was likely that the gods had given their blessing upon you and your strength.
Only one woman in the village was close to her birthing time: her age mate and friend, Weiwara.
The birthing house lay outside of the village, upstream on high ground beside the river.
She closed the gate behind her and stamped three times with each foot just outside the birthing house.
Agda gently probed up the birth canal while Getsi watched from behind her, standing like a stork, on one foot, a birthing cloth draped over her right shoulder.
Because the birthing house was itself a passageway between the other worlds and this world, it always had to be protected with charms and rituals.
The sight startled her so profoundly that she skipped back and collided with Alain as he stepped into the birthing house.
All the women watched in horror and the twin cried, as if in protest, as he knelt on the packed earth floor of the birthing house to chafe the limbs of the dead baby between his hands.
It seemed in that short space of time that the whole village had heard of the adult male who had walked into the birthing house.
She had to purify her old house, which had sat empty for two courses of the moon, and she had to purify the birthing house, since a male had set foot in it.
Women who had borne living children passed in and out of the birthing house while she worked.
Going to renew the charms in the birthing house, she found Weiwara nursing one infant and rocking the other with a foot where it lay asleep in a woven cradle.
Closer still lay the birthing house, and from within its confines he heard a baby cry fretfully.
The masked attackers who rushed out of the forest swarmed toward the birthing house, where Weiwara sheltered with her infant twins.