This is where I tell you about me, I guess, in the hope that you understand a little more about who I am and what my work is all about.

In a nutshell, I am a mother of three, I live in Cambridge and I write books and newspaper/magazine features about motherhood, parenting, family life and other such confusing subjects. I also do a lot of broadcast work on various programmes, as a so-called 'parenting expert', which always makes me laugh!

I had kids young (though hadn't really planned to - I proposed to my husband when I was 19 and it all kind of went from there...). I am hopeless at gardening, surprisingly un-hopeless at DIY and awesome at juggling (life, not balls...). I would be utterly miserable without running in the fresh air, ballet, really rubbish 1920s-style jazz, anything at all to do with films, and portrait photography, and I would be much happier without computer games, chick peas, people who don't say please and thank you, and the colour beige. So that's me.

MY WRITING

I wrote my first book after three pregnancies where I couldn't find a single book about motherhood which didn't make me feel a) inadequate, b) terrified and c) very depressed about being pregnant. It was all "you will now be really blooming" (I wasn't) and "your baby now weighs 5lbs and can suck its thumb". (I didn't really care - I felt exhausted and sick!). I wanted to know if I was the only woman on Earth who felt ghastly being pregnant, who burst into unstoppable tears when they had no milk in Tesco and who didn't feel the least bit like a mother-to-be in any way at all.

I wanted something funny, quick-witted, intelligent and honest, which spoke to me as a young woman who was deeply confused and frightened of what was to come and who felt utterly alone in this process. Most of all I wanted something which didn't look like a pregnancy book, and which I wouldn't be agonisingly embarrassed to be seen reading.

No book like this existed. And so I wrote it myself.

It became an instant best-seller, proving that I was not alone after all, and that thousands of other women also felt pregnancy and motherhood was something they struggled to identify with, and wanted help with.

The whole Yummy Mummy thing is something which I have found very hurtful when people assume things about me which aren't true. Friends know how down to Earth I am, and I'm known about town as 'that lady who cycles really fast with a child on the back and half a ton of shopping in her basket." I do not have manicures. I do not have a facialist, a personal trainer or a nanny. I am just a very ordinary woman who wanted every mother out there - that's you! - to feel that she is GORGEOUS and can feel good about herself if she keeps remembering she is beautiful, and not only a mother. So I put Yummy Mummy in the title of my books, to make you feel better about your self. Not to make anyone feel under pressure to look like a supermodel!! Some people got it. Others didn't. I hope you do!

My blog page should give you a good sense of what my life is generally like and I really hope you will read my books and make a judgement for yourself. My advice is always very straight-forward, non-prescriptive and based on pure common sense and the fact that every woman is different and every child is too. You can just have a go, and see what works for you.

And that's the centre of everything I write - have a go, try the best you can, and don't beat yourself up if you fail sometimes: we ALL do!!