Childbirth may be a major experience during a woman's life, but the relation between childbirth experiences and later mother-infant outcomes has been understudied. This study examined the relation between mode of delivery and subjective birth experience and mothers' descriptions of their babies and their maternal self-esteem, both powerful predictors of maternal caregiving behavior. Mode of delivery showed an immediate effect on how mothers describe their babies, but not maternal self-esteem, which wasn't mediated by subjective birth experience. Subjective birth experience had direct effects on both outcomes. Infant age didn't moderate any of those pathways. Results point to the subjective aspects of childbirth as important components of women's experience of labor and delivery. Implications are discussed. In times, improvements in knowledge and technological advances have greatly improved the health of mother and youngsters. However, the past decade was marked by limited progress in reducing maternal mortality and a slow-down within the steady decline of childhood mortality observed since the mid-1950s in many countries, the latter being largely due to a failure to reduce neonatal mortality. Every year, over four million babies less than one month of age die, most of them during the critical first week of life; and for every new born who dies, another is stillborn. Most of these deaths are a consequence of the poor health and nutritional status of the mother coupled with inadequate care before, during, and after delivery. Unfortunately, the problem remains unrecognized or worse- accepted as inevitable in many societies, in large part because it is so common. Recognizing the large burden of maternal and neonatal ill-health on the development capacity of individuals, communities and societies, world leaders reaffirmed their commitment to invest in mothers and children by adopting specific goals and targets to reduce maternal and childhood-infant mortality as part of the Millennium Declaration. There is a widely shared but mistaken concept improvement in new born health requires sophisticated and expensive technologies and highly specialized staff. The reality is that many conditions that result in perinatal death can be prevented or treated without sophisticated and expensive technology. skills during childbirth and therefore the immediate postpartum period.