For the woman preparing for pregnancy, birth & the first forty days
The complete book of pregnancy, birth and the fourth trimester. Everything I did to prepare for the birth I wanted, and everything I learned when it came.
Instant download · 79 pages · plus the full recipe collection and guided audio practice · 14-day guarantee
A home birth in candlelight. My husband and my midwife, and no one else. My daughter born into warm water at 8:58 on a May morning, latching in her first hour. A recovery so quick my pelvic physiotherapist said, eight weeks later, that it didn't look like I had given birth.
I understand why it sounds like luck.
But here is what that story leaves out. The midwife interviews. The fear-release work, tracing what ran down my mother's line before it could run my labour. The perineal preparation from week 32. The freezer I filled with forty days of food. The birth plan with a page for every scenario, including the ones I hoped never to open. The moment at 4am, in enormous pain, when I asked my midwife whether to keep timing contractions, and shut off everything, and went inward, and let my body do what it had been trained to do.
I was not lucky. I was prepared.
And preparation, unlike luck, can be handed to another woman.
Prepared, Not Lucky is the complete map of how I prepared. As an aerospace engineer who plans for every scenario, and a teacher of meditation and nervous system regulation who knows that safety is a state the body can be trained to find.
It walks the whole road. Part I — Pregnancy: your vision, your team, your mind, your body, your systems, week by week. Part II — Birth: the nervous system in labour, deciding in the moment, your partner's true role, and my full birth story from my journal, raw and unfiltered, the vomiting and the doubt included. Part III — The Fourth Trimester: the first forty days, the two professionals I tell every mother to book, breastfeeding with the hard middle left in, and the person you become.
This is not a book that promises your birth will look like mine. It is a book that promises you will walk into your birth, whatever shape it takes, as an active participant and decision-maker. Never a passive passenger.
Nourishment your body can actually digest. Rest you protected before you needed it. Support mapped while you still had the clarity to map it.
Parts I to III, with the photographs from my own pregnancy, birth and postpartum throughout.
The real document from my living room, annotated line by line, plus a blank template built on its architecture: plan A, transfer plan, caesarean plan, NICU.
Birth vision, the fear loop, your thresholds, your postpartum support map. The book teaches the method; these are where you work it.
For your midwife or birth team, your doula, your lactation consultant. Printable, and worth the price on their own.
My labour foods and liquids, and my complete hospital bag, packed while planning a home birth.
One page for him to hold on the day.
The exact batch-cooking recipes from my own freezer, with the weekly planner for the first days.
My voice, ten minutes, training the state your body will labour from.
Every book that shaped me, when to read each, and what to skip.
I invested thousands of pounds in my preparation. The independent midwife. The postpartum doula. The courses, hypnobirthing, antenatal, first aid, the couples workshop. The pelvic physiotherapy, the craniosacral work, the one-to-one fear release.
I would spend every pound again. And I know not everyone can.
This book is the complete map of all of it. What each piece was for, which parts are free, which are worth paying for, and which I would skip, for less than the cost of a single bodywork session. Your budget was never meant to be the limit of your preparation. That belief is built into every page.
You are pregnant, or wanting to be, or preparing to be, and you want to walk in prepared rather than hope to be lucky. You want honesty: a birth story with the hard parts left in, a breastfeeding chapter that survives past the perfect beginning. You like your wisdom both ancient and practical: nervous system science beside Ayurvedic food, worksheets beside ceremony. You are planning a home birth, a birthing centre, or a hospital. The method travels. I packed a hospital bag while planning a home birth, and the book shows you how every preference survives a change of rooms.
It is not for you if you want someone to promise you a pain-free birth, or to tell you there is one right way. I will tell you the truth instead: it was the hardest thing I have ever done, I would not trade a minute of it, and both of those things shaped every page.
I am an aerospace engineer at the European Space Agency, a women's self-leadership coach, yoga teacher, and Aurora's mother.
I wrote this book because the two halves of my life turned out to be one: the engineer who prepares for every scenario, and the teacher who knows that safety is a state the body can be trained to find. Birth is where those two truths met.
If it does not serve you, reply to your receipt and I will refund you in full, no questions asked. The only thing I ask you to risk is a few hours of reading.
Not that your birth looks like mine, or anyone's. This book exists to help you discover what that means for you, and then to build it, deliberately, while there is still time. You are not alone in this.
Get the book — £39With love, Rita
P.S. If you are early in pregnancy and not sure yet, start with my free guide, Prepared, Not Lucky: Pregnancy Preparation for the Birth You Want. When you are ready for the rest, the birth, the forty days, the plan, the recipes, this page will be here.