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There was a special challenge in describing the awful childhood of a person who happens to be my own husband. It was very painful at times, for both of us.

Becoming a mother was the single defining event of my life. It felt like the whole world shifted.

My mother giving birth to me was just like Lady Sybil giving birth, except that there wasn't such a tragic ending.

After delivering my daughter in 2003, I endured and survived a hemorrhage, the leading childbirth-related complication that takes the lives of thousands of other mothers all over the world.

I would love to live free of the fear and sadness and real desperation that I think the effect of childbirth has on women, especially because we are expected to be so concerned by 'recovery' from childbirth.

My birth was managed so rottenly that my mother had eventually to have a hysterectomy, after which she was ill off & on till she dies for obscure reasons when I was just 7.

Giving birth was the most amazing thing I've ever done. I'd been living in a Third World country, and I said, 'I'm going to just squat behind a tree.' I basically did that but in a chair in my living room. I didn't want a sterile hospital room. I didn't want doctors. I had a midwife.

When 1970s feminism hit the United States, women demanded the right to natural childbirth and to have their husband or another support person in the delivery room. My mother gave birth to me during this time.

I wish I had been a better mother and a more compassionate and understanding wife in both of my marriages.

Pregnancy and motherhood are the most beautiful and significantly life-altering events that I have ever experienced.