“I actually thought I was going to die at one point and left my body. I was looking down on myself, the pain was so intense.”

“In some cases more than others, your body experiences a kind of trauma through childbirth that is difficult to explain unless you’ve had that experience. My case was like that, everything from my thyroid to my platelets crashed. [My] body was really bent out of shape after the boys were born. Bouncing back feels impossible, but I know it is important as a woman, and now a mummy, to not give up.”

“I have my doctor and my mum [Goldie Hawn] kind of looking over with these headlights. And she brings a magnolia flower. And she sort of starts to do these visualisations with me. And she’s going, ‘Imagine your va-jay-jay as a large magnolia flower blossoming.” 

“Giving birth is just whoa! What I remember the most is the cry. When the baby is born, the cry penetrates on such a deep level and Keith says that, too. He goes, ‘What about that cry!’ And we actually did record our birth. So we’ve heard it back. And every time it jolts me back into the moment.”

“I’ve never talked about this. I’ve actually gone to great pains to cover it up. But Mia [Threapleton, now 16] was an emergency C-section. I just said that I had a natural birth because I was so completely traumatised by the fact that I hadn’t given birth. I felt like a complete failure. My whole life, I’d been told I had great childbearing hips. There’s this thing amongst women in the world that if you can handle childbirth, you can handle anything. I had never handled childbirth, and I felt like, in some way that I couldn’t join that ‘powerful women’s club.”

“I didn’t scream, it was really Zen. It was amazing. The labour was more like meditation. I did yoga breathing. I was focused.”

“We were in this little hospital in Africa when Shi was born. I don’t think there was anybody else in the hospital. It was just a little cottage, the three of us. It ended up being the greatest thing. We had wonderful doctors and nurses. It was lovely, very personal, all three in this sweet room. I had a C-section and I found it fascinating. I didn’t find it a sacrifice and I didn’t find it a painful experience. I found it a fascinating miracle of what a body can do.”

“When I was having contractions, I envisioned my child pushing through a very heavy door. And I imagined this tiny infant doing all the work, so I couldn’t think about my own pain.”

“Don’t tell your kids you had an easy birth or they won’t respect you. For years I used to wake up my daughter and say, ‘Melissa you ripped me to shreds. Now go back to sleep.’”

“I ended up on all fours in the back of a taxi with my husband on the way to the hospital, but otherwise I feel like I had a very lucky and good experience. I always knew I wanted an epidural. I am not a daredevil.”