Babies are bits of stardust, blown from the hand of God. Lucky the woman who knows the pangs of birth, for she has held a star.

The quotation casts childbirth and infancy in cosmic, sacred imagery: babies are imagined as “stardust” and as gifts “from the hand of God.” By yoking astronomy (stardust, stars) to theology (God’s hand), it elevates ordinary human reproduction into an event of wonder and metaphysical significance. The second sentence reframes labor pain as meaningful rather than merely traumatic—“lucky” is the woman who has endured it—because the experience culminates in having “held a star,” i.e., touched something rare, luminous, and precious. The rhetoric functions as consolation and celebration, offering a poetic rationale for suffering by emphasizing the value and mystery of new life.