AustLit

'I remember sitting in a restaurant, out to dinner with a friend, before I had kids. At the next table a group of mature women were enjoying their meal and a few glasses of wine. They were telling their birth stories, screaming with laughter. The stories and the way they were told were a revelation. Birth was full of things, not just life, death and pain, but jokes, suspense, faces and hands, gas, water, pillows, floors, food, shoes, music, other people, words and sounds, joy, frustration, bitterness, fury and love.'