As someone who has recently started to become ‘clucked in the head’, I was happy to get my paws on a copy of Kasey Edwards’s tale of what happened when the question she’d been happily ignoring (whether to have a baby or not) became, after an unpleasant doctor’s visit, a question of now-or-never. Unsure if she even wanted to have children, she and her partner Chris suddenly had to decide as soon as possible – and every month that passed made success more unlikely.

Up for a challenge, Kasey goes on the hunt: she talks to her friends and acquaintances, meets strangers in coffee shops, and reads up on everything she can. She speaks to those who elect to be child-free and those who do not want to be, but are anyway; to people who found it easy to have babies and those who are struggling. She does plumb a narrow field of those in a similar socioeconomic status to herself –only those with enough financial backing are able to help nature along, with the expense of fertility treatments quite staggering.

It can be a devastating read, as the women and couples struggle with all facets of pregnancy: the difficulties of conception, the fear of losing job prospects if you do become a mother (as in one story when a female CEO announces she’s pregnant and the company holds an emergency meeting, but, as Edwards points out, this would never occur if a male CEO announced he was going to become a father), the heartbreak of miscarriage. Then, after birth, there’s the judgemental nature of other parents when it comes to breastfeeding and parenting styles. Despite the grim realities of making babies, Edwards has a light touch, brings on quite a few laughs – as does her surely impossibly lovely partner – and the beauty of child-rearing, for those who like that kind of thing, still shines through. And unfortunately for my bank account but luckily for my mother, I’m still not put off by parenting. Sorry, savings.

Fiona Hardy is from Readings Carlton.