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EXCLUSIVE'There's blood splattering all over the curtain': Read Louise Thompson describe her childbirth ordeal in an exclusive extract from her book, and how labour 'destroyed everything good in my life'

Childbirth destroyed everything that was good in my life, yet of course when I learned I was pregnant with Leo I was overjoyed. But I was also very anxious. A couple of months previously I’d miscarried at around eight weeks, so my happiness was tempered by persistent fear it would happen again.

Reaching the 12-week point felt huge. I remember sitting at the NHS Chelsea and Westminster hospital in a room of other pregnant women waiting to be scanned.

I was part of a club I’d wanted to join for a long time.

But from then, I began feeling pushed about in a system where I wasn’t being listened to.