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

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.

‘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.

and the sight of a fragment of a green shirt my mother dressed me in as a baby will make me cry, and even the chance to lie down in a dark room without anyone pressing small, sticky palms into my face, or asking me to find their lunch box, will make me cry.

since their father was luminously important in their lives but mostly absent.

The midwife says I should include a lot of whole grains and oily fish in my diet. I nod a silent lie to her over my blue notes, because I know these things will make me want to throw up from a very dark and deep place inside me.

My breasts, with a tracing of blue veins like deep-water rivers pressed against the white skin,

There’s no reason to have another baby, apart from a ravenous kind of hunger that’s like joy and melancholy and nostalgia and daring all mixed together.

He knew, of course he knew, as soon as he saw the pregnancy test in my bag. But he hugs me, telling me it will be great, and really sweet to have another baby in the family. But it’s difficult, too, as they both know that a new baby doesn’t spell straightforward pleasure and happiness. More babies are a joy, a sweet, jolly, milky blessing, everythi

We haven’t told anyone about the pregnancy for weeks: partly because our family is such a palpable chaos that having a conversation alone is very rarely possible, but also because having a secret Pete and I alone share is valuable.