My Wild and Sleepless Nights: The brave, raw Sunday Times bestselling memoir

‘Haven’t you had it yet?’ people say, so that I have to resist the urge to growl: No, I’m waiting, in fact I’m holding on just to piss you, in particular, off.

all. I am highly likely to survive childbirth, but I will be changed by it, too.

Lying still in the dawn as light creeps around me, I feel so alone that it’s as if I am the last person alive in the world.

My body will do exactly what needs to be done almost without me being present.

I’m moving away from him and over into the outer reaches where this car and the road and the mist are unimportant, and perhaps don’t really exist.

me. I can almost remember what my labour screams are like and I am certain they would traumatize all my children. They would make the house sound as if I was either being murdered or mustering my powers to horribly murder someone else.

It’s more wonderful and extraordinary and strange than I could have imagined.

She was luminous with a bliss that wiped out the exhaustion and physical demands of a difficult birth and a baby who struggled to feed.

but a feeling that something inside me is unfinished, like a song I can’t sing any more.’