Translation Help? 「産声を上げた」

Question

I'm trying to translate a song as practice and I absolutely cannot figure out what this one line means:

「蝕んだ身体に愛を入れて欲しいと
慣れない産声を上げた」

(It's a bit graphic, and I apologize!)

Anyway, I get the whole wanting-to-put-your-love-into-a-rotted-body thing, but the second part is throwing me off.

Is the と particle in this case being used as a quotation marker? That's what I'm thinking because of the 「産声を上げた」...though apparently that phrase can also mean "being born". And the adjective before it confuses me even more.

Answer 1

産声 is defined as "the first cry of a baby". 産声を上げる is a common fixed idiom which effectively means "to be born", but it's not a good idea to translate this as "to be born" in this case. Without any further context, "cried like a baby" is the safest translation I can think of.

The 慣れない part basically indicates that "crying like a baby" is not what she does often (ie. 産声 is unfamiliar to herself, not to her partner). I'm not sure how to translate this nicely...

と in the first line is the quotation particle, and the following verb is often left unsaid. See: verb+ようにと、 or verb+かと、