EXHAUSTED AND INCREDIBLY HAPPY

When journalist Okka Rohd finds out she’s pregnant, she orders a stack of self-help books about pregnancy, starts trawling through them and yet can’t find the answers she’s looking for. They all say the same thing: being a mother is exhausting. What all those books largely ignore is how happy having children can make you. And the strength that happiness can give. Rohd’s husband, the journalist Peter Praschl, has been through it all before; his two children are already grown up. What does this “new” fatherhood feel like for him? What makes him nervous, and what does he take in his stride? Okka Rohd’s experiences with her daughter are told with a heart-warming honesty, and serve to reassure young mothers that there other mums out there who are extraordinarily happy, utterly exhausted and often overcome with a sense of unending wonder…