Talking to women about birth can be polarizing.

Every time you have a carrot instead of a cookie, every time you go to the gym instead of going to the movies, that's a costly investment in your health. But how much you want to invest is going to depend on how much longer you expect to live in the future, even if you don't make those investments.

Even if you are planning a birth with an epidural, the evidence suggests that a doula can help make things go much more smoothly.

I've always loved doing research. I remember doing a research project on the Babylonian numeral system in the eighth grade and thinking, 'This is pretty awesome - is this really a job you can have?' This led me toward a career as an academic, although it took me until college to realise that economics was the right field.

I have amazing kids, an amazing husband, a fabulous career, wonderful parents. If I had to go through some rough spots to get to this amazing place, so be it.

I have seven uncles, and my dad played bass, they had a band together, that was the family band. And of course as the cousins got older, including myself, we joined a family band. All the cousins played. That's my heritage.

My own mother, my sister and nearly all the women in my family had full-time jobs as mothers. They were wonderful at it. They drove their children back and forth to soccer, skating lessons, piano lessons, private schools, but I sensed, even in my own mother, a kind of distant dissatisfaction.

I noticed that when my daughter was born, my son really, really liked her. But then as she started getting older, and as she started crawling around our house and touching different things that were his, sibling rivalry issues started appearing.