My Wild and Sleepless Nights: THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

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So I was somewhat nervous of reading the intensity of motherhood in this memoir: would I be further swayed one way or the other? Labour is “Medusa ripping out” and early days of breastfeeding are “nipples bleeding, like being stabbed with hot pokers” (I’m paraphrasing but you get my point).

MORE PRAISE FOR CLOVER STROUD:’Clover’s expertise is writing about family life in a way that feels both new and entirely familiar’ – Pandora Sykes’As tender, blazing, funny and unflinching as the love it describes. Some beautiful writing and captures moments in motherhood so well, but overall I don’t relate to the author and I find some of it a bit needlessly melodramatic.As Stroud battles through pregnancy, labour, breastfeeding, and meetings with the school about Jimmy’s weed habit, her third and fourth children, Dash and Evangeline, wheel about in a world of spilled cornflakes and imaginary cats. She has an amazing way with words, and she is right that many parenting books deal with pregnancy and the early years and don’t look at what happens after that, what you might honestly feel as a mum, and how extreme the highs and lows of parenting can be. I really liked the writing style but think it was spoilt a bit by the unnecessary sexual references.

She is currently living in Washington DC with her husband and the youngest three of her five children. Reading this book is like listening to a friend who describes your own feelings, doubts and frustrations. as a busy mum myself I prefer to read something that overall lifts my mood and reminds me, overall, how really really lucky I am to be a mum. You want to take the book in in small portions as you know it will end but you don't want it to end.I was in tears from the first chapter, so many pages succinctly described my exact feelings in various moments - the fury of waiting after due date and batting off those "any sign? Some of it I don't really recognise in my own like, but other bits feel like she's got inside my head and can read my darkest thoughts. And while she is acutely alive to its joys – sexual, exhausting, earthy joys – these are always intertwined with darkness and difficulty. Upon expecting my second baby I enjoyed reading this nothing held back, honest opinions on motherhood you often don't hear.