One of the best moments of my life was on the postnatal ward the day after my second daughter Elinor was born. She had spent the night in my bed, after an unwelcome attempt by the midwives to move her to a cot, and now she was lying between my breasts, in that hollow designed for newborns between feeds. The consultant dropped by with a bunch of students. “Aha,” he said. “This, ladies and gentlemen, is how it ought to be.” And I felt ridiculously, hopelessly, delightfully proud, of Elinor and of myself, and bursting with excitement for the milky, muddled mayhem that lay ahead.