I really cannot believe I have written an actual book. I was an avid reader as a child – a real bookworm who rebelled by staying up past lights-out with a book, tilting it towards the crack in my bedroom door so the light from the hallway would offer enough illumination to enable me to continue reading. My love of books extended well into my teenage years and led me to study English Literature for my first degree. To have been given the opportunity to write a book and be published has been a dream come true; a huge tick on the dream-life bucket list.
A large number of people have made this possible and the hardest bit about writing these acknowledgements is the real fear that I will forget to thank someone integral! So, preempting this, I would like first to offer a massive and general (albeit very sincere!) thank-you to every single person who has, in whatever way, helped this book come to be a real-life published piece of work. That said, there are a few people who deserve an extra special thank-you and to be named individually for their efforts . . .
Zoe, Emily, Jillian, Jo and the rest of the team at Little, Brown, thank you for your patience and encouragement and for being as passionate and excited about this book as I am. Thanks to Louise Turpin and Josephine Dellow for the interior illustrations, and Hannah Wood for the cover design. Thanks to my agent Hannah Ferguson, and my friend (and author) Sarah Turner for introducing us. You both have kept me going when the overwhelm has peaked. Thank you. To my friend Lucy Flower for recommending me to her friend Alyson Slater who, in turn, recommended me to her cousin Lucy Malagoni, who then said, ‘I’ve a colleague who might be interested in your book idea.’ Without that happy chain of events this book would likely not exist.
Thank you to Oisin, Arlo and Ailbe Fox, to whom this book is dedicated, for making me a mum – this book, my business, none of it exists without you. I promise to spend more time being Mum and less time writing and working from now on. To James, my partner in birth, parenting and life, thank you for stepping up when I started working on my business and stepping up again when I also took on writing a book; for running the home and raising the children almost single-handedly, making me endless cups of tea and margaritas, allowing me to lie in after I’d spent all night awake (a frequent occurrence) and reminding me that I could do this, whenever I doubted myself (which was often). All this whilst holding down your own full-time job. Thank you for enabling me and encouraging me to do this (and hardly ever berating me for taking on too much)! And to my brother Mike, who insists I mention him, for championing me always and letting me know how proud he is of his big sis.
Finally, my biggest thank-you goes to the thousands of amazing and inspiring women I have had the honour of teaching – some of whom have contributed their birth stories for inclusion in this book. I am so grateful to each and every one of you for allowing me to play a small part in the most magical chapter of your lives. I am truly privileged and forever grateful for your support, which has been immense and genuinely life-changing for me.