birth pangs

It is decreed of mothers that their birth pangs shall not cease until they die.

In anguish, fear, and humiliation had his love been born, but the birth-pangs had been as brief as they were intense.

They are striving earnestly and successfully to adjust conditions created in the birth pangs of a social revolution.

The birth-pangs of Democracy, wherewith convulsed Europe was groaning in cries that reached Heaven, could not escape me.

The curtains of the dark are already shaken by the birth-pangs of the morning.