Why this book exists
A focused place to understand what is happening
Nia is thirty-one and her daughter is fourteen months old and perfectly well. Nia has not driven past the hospital since. She cannot watch anything involving a hospital scene, cannot tolerate being examined by a doctor, and has told her partner she does not want another child. She wakes at around three most nights, and what wakes her is not the baby. It is a particular moment from the delivery room, arriving with the vividness of something happening now rather than something remembered. Nia has told very few people, because every time she has approached it she has been met with the same response in different words: that the baby is healthy, that all that matters is a healthy baby, that lots of women have difficult births, that at least everyone is.
The writing is designed to reduce shame, bring the underlying pattern into view and give you practical ways to respond without pretending that every life follows the same formula.
