November non-fiction book of the month: Nobody Told Me by Hollie McNish - watch our exclusive video

[RachelMumsnet]

After a call out from Mumsnetters for more non-fiction book recommendations, we decided to introduce a non-fiction book of the month earlier this year. It's been a huge success with brilliant discussions and author Q&As and we hope you agree it's given us the opportunity to read a broad range of fascinating books.

Our November choice is a fitting book to end such a great year. Nobody Told Me is Hollie McNish's collection of poems and stories taken from her diaries from pregnancy through to her daughter's third year. Her diaries are funny, sad and perfectly capture those bewildering months of pregnancy, birth and early motherhood.

Watch our exclusive video of Hollie reading from one of her poems, 'Mushy Mummy Baby Brain' and apply for a free copy of Nobody Told Me.

All questions for Hollie should be posted on the thread before midday on Thursday 8 December.

Thank you for sending me this book mn. I've not finished it yet and have been dipping in and out.

I have long loved your poems Hollie.
This book is a delight 'where the fuck is Kansas when you need it' sums up much of my early stumbling through motherhood.

My eldest son is in his late twenties and I can't help feeling that somehow in the 80's that some stuff was so much easier. I don't think the whole boy, girl split was so stark. Gender division and the whole pink invasion of everything wasn't there. Perfection and pressure not the big thing it is now. Maybe I have my rose tinted glasses on.

As a mum of sons I always said that if I could get them to put the loo seat back down then I would have done a good job.
Reading your worries for your growing child has reminded me of so much of those early years.

I don't really have a question but I'm so glad you found the time to write, as others have said this is a book for all new parents.

A very interesting idea for a book. Hollie, are you always thinking of how you can make a poem fit into whatever situation you find yourself? And, did you ever give a name to Little One and wasn't Dee (as well as grandparents etc.) pressurising you into doing so?

I'm another one who hasn't finished the book yet, but thoroughly enjoying it and shedding a few nostalgic tears along the way.

Thank you Hollie and Mumsnet for such a fabulous book!

Loving the book (I haven't finished yet, not a lot of time to read!). It has made me laugh out loud at times (got some funny looks sitting at swimming lessons.)

Not everything rings true for me (I was never questioned about being unmarried), so much of it did. I love the raw honesty of it, the feeling that your body and life is being taken over and you are supposed to know all about it, but actually don't.

I asked the question above, but would like to know if Hollie ever gets criticism for her honesty. I've been criticised in past for displaying the honest truth about my parenting experiences on Facebook or even in real life. I was told I shouldn't talk about my birth story as it would scare pregnant women!

But a recent chat with friends we talked about how much we don't talk about in relation to pregnancy and parenting. Loads of women I know didn't know about the bleeding, or the postnatal shuffle, or the joint emotion of overwhelming love and wanting to run away and scream. I loved the Woman's hour bits you did. We need to be more open about these things.

Thank you for sending me a copy of this book. It's not the type of thing I'd usually read but I'd seen it before and been interested enough to pick up a copy from the library just prior to getting this free copy. I like that it's not just a poetry collection but also documents the background behind the poems. It tells a very individual and personal story but also speaks of more universal experiences of motherhood, particularly relevant to the 21st century. I've not had chance to read it properly yet (I have two small children so am not reading as much as I normally would) but looking forward to having the time to savour it

Thank you Mumsnet for introducing me to Hollie McNish she is brilliantly talented. "Nobody Told Me" hits the spot on pregnancy and early motherhood especially the taboos - breasts part 2 (yes, yes, yes)! I enjoyed reading your book but I have to say watching you performing your poetry is fabulous. I am mesmerised, hopefully one day I will see you preform live. After each chapter of your book I found myself watching you on YouTube (I hope that doesn't sound too creepy?)

Please don't stop writing about motherhood, I want to hear about the school run, the teenager years, etc.

If I'm not too late to ask a question I would like to know if there are and basic rules you adhere to when writing poetry?

I've not finished reading yet but I am enjoying it, I love how there is a poem for every occasion and how the poems have been ordered in the book

Thank you mn for the copy of this book. My children aren't babies anymore but this took me right back to when they were. It is incredibly touching and Hollie is very honest also. I loved it and will be recommending it to friends.

Thank you so much for my copy of Hollie's book. My youngest baby has just turned 1 - how I wish I had seen this honest account from pregnancy to toddler when I was pregnant on my first. I was full sure I was doing everything wrong and was the only imperfect parent ever! Hollie's raw and honest account really struck a cord with me and even though I am too late to leave a comment for her, mine would simply be a thank you. Also to let her know I am passing this book along to my pregnant friend - I think I owe it to her!

Thanks everyone for all this amazing feedback - we're really thrilled that you have enjoyed Nobody Told Me as much as we did. We've gathered all the questions and sent over to Hollie. As soon as we have her answers back, we'll upload to this thread.

Thanks for my copy. I've never read any of Hollie's poetry before but am really enjoying it. It's so easy to read and very identifiable. It's great to have some poetry as the book of the month- more please mumsnet!

Thanks again everyone for your questions, thoughts, reviews and wonderful poems. We've passed all the comments over to Hollie and she's sent the answers back to your questions which we're about to upload.

@HuckleberryGin

Loving the book (I haven't finished yet, not a lot of time to read!). It has made me laugh out loud at times (got some funny looks sitting at swimming lessons.)

Not everything rings true for me (I was never questioned about being unmarried), so much of it did. I love the raw honesty of it, the feeling that your body and life is being taken over and you are supposed to know all about it, but actually don't.

I asked the question above, but would like to know if Hollie ever gets criticism for her honesty. I've been criticised in past for displaying the honest truth about my parenting experiences on Facebook or even in real life. I was told I shouldn't talk about my birth story as it would scare pregnant women!

But a recent chat with friends we talked about how much we don't talk about in relation to pregnancy and parenting. Loads of women I know didn't know about the bleeding, or the postnatal shuffle, or the joint emotion of overwhelming love and wanting to run away and scream. I loved the Woman's hour bits you did. We need to be more open about these things.

Yeah totally. I get negative responses too – from people saying it spoils us all being able to have out individual stories or the common one about not telling people some of the more painful or difficult sides and just let them enjoy it. But I think the majority of people just seem grateful whenever anyone else lets out a stifled truth about how they’re feeling! That’s the main feedback, the whole ‘thank God I’m not the only one’. I think for the majority, more talk, rather than less, is definitely a positive. For fathers too, or even especially, as I think they have even less other dad’s to look to than we do.

@JoMummy2boys

Would love to read Hollies book sounds brilliant. Im hoping to write a book too but finding the time to sit down and write is so difficult with working and looking adter my 2 young boys (with additional needs). My question to Hollie woud be do you have any advice about how to find tge time to write when you have children. Xxx

I have one child, I have to say that first. I have no doubt it’s a lot bloody harder with more. I don’t have set times I write either, so don’t really set time aside to just sit and write cos i can’t do it like that. I often think of a poem and just have to let it go if I’m with my daughter and normally, I never remember it again. I guess when she was a baby, it was mainly when she was asleep or just staring at a mobile or a tree or something. Now she’s older and at school there’s obviously more time. I guess the main thing that helps me is always to have something on me I can write with. I carry a pen / paper always or my phone to jot anything down when I have ideas. And I guess like any other parent, it’s after the kid/s are asleep that I can write mainly. Unless I fall asleep reading to her, which happens a lot too. I have always preferred writing at night, which is helpful really. A little bit each week.

@nobodysbabynow

Thank you for my free copy! I found some of the poems really made me laugh, and I'd like to ask Holly whether she found any of her experiences funny at the time, or only in retrospect?

Definitely both. A lot of it was funny in the kind of verging on the absurd way. Even the low points like sitting on the pavement as she screamed. I still often feel like it’s this out of body experience having kids. Like the other day she was trying to climb on my head to grab my toothbrush out my mouth cos she didn’t want to brush her teeth. I could see my reflection in the mirror, hair everywhere, a small child like a koala hanging from my hair. It was very tiring and I was half wanting to cry but also ridiculous at the same time! I find a lot of the whole ‘you either have to laugh or cry’ situations – never sure which way they’ll go!

@BedtimeBubble

Thanks for my copy. I love this book, almost as much as I love listening to Hollie read her poems on YouTube. I can really identify with lots of what she writes. I'd like to know how she will feel of her daughter reads her book when she grows up? Will she give it to her to read or wait until she is pregnant? I'd love to have something like this from my mum!

I am a little petrified! Saying that, she has already asked me this year ‘you’re not giving me your book for Christmas are you?’! But she has a copy in her room she took and threatens to read some of the poems with swear words in school. Though obviously never would. I think by then she’ll have heard most of it. She spends half the time with me, half with her dad and a lot of our weekends together she comes to a gig. Mainly sits at the side watching films but has probably heard a lot of the poems, or at least snippets. After she heard me read the story about her having a tantrum she apologised and I felt terrible! Made sure I told her loads of stories about me having tantrums too and that it was fine in the end. I’m sure the bits about sex and stuff she’ll likely flick over and ignore! (hopefully!)

@starlight36

Thanks for the book. I really enjoyed it - a while since I had read a poetry anthology. My eldest baby is about to turn four but reading these poems took me right back to the mixture of feelings rushing around me when he and his sister were young. The trials of public breast feeding and irritation over pink / blue baby clothes are all too familiar. My question: 'Is there a particular poem which you are most pleased with?

ooh – no-one’s ever asked me that. I enjoy reading some of the more soppy ones but I guess the one I’m most pleased with is Embarassed, for purely practical reasons in that it seems to have been the most helpful thing I’ve done, in terms of the amount of people that tell me they use it in classes or midwifery lessons etc. I’m a pretty practical person so if I thought that none of the poetry was in the least helpful I’m not sure I’d still be sharing it. Still writing I’m sure, cos I always have but not sharing.

@Mizuna

I really enjoyed reading this, the poems are both the raw and the cooked. Some read as more inseparable from the diaries than others, some stand alone brilliantly.

My DC is nearly 8 and only in reading this did I get back lots of memories of those early days and nights, because of the emotional vibrancy of the writing. It's been hard, sometimes, to feel a touch of those feelings again, they were so powerful. The writing describes the situations new mothers often find themselves in in a very evocative way.

I haven't finished reading it yet, I've not wanted to read a lot in one go, I think that's because of the power and emotions stirred. But I have a question for Hollie, not about any of that .

Do you think of yourself as part of a line of poets going back into history, and if you did, would that be more about being a woman writer or a poet writing about life experiences? I wonder if it's possible to think of oneself as a writer, a poet, without it being linked to being a woman, or if that is integral to everything you write.

Thanks.

I have never thought about it. I hardly really think of myself as a poet cos it’s such a small part of most of my days. And I’ve never put myself in a line of poets or anything like that. I don’t think I thought of myself as a woman writer until people started calling me that in articles and stuff. I just feel like one individual person writing about their experiences. So I guess I feel as much a woman as I do a Brit or middle class person, or person who lives in a village or person who likes sport or anything really. So I guess probably the second, though I’m fully aware those life experiences are from a female viewpoint. And I like being a woman a lot ,and a human, so happy with either description really

@merliquin

Thanks for the book - I've not finished it yet. This is a book that I want to read slowly - I think I'll even feel a little bit sad when I'm done.

There is so much of first-time motherhood that I'd almost forgotten and that feels like life on a distant planet that Hollie captures so well through her poetry. In the blur of intense love, exhaustion, fear that you could or should be doing things better, there is no opportunity for reflection - becoming a mother for the first time is all-encompassing.

Now that my first and subsequent children are out of babyhood, I read Hollie's poems and remember those early days (I've fed my child in a cafe toilet, more than once) and all the things that I accepted as 'normal' which, on reflection, shouldn't be accepted at all. Mushy Mummy Baby Brain really resonated with me. It made me feel quite angry about the way women are belittled and dismissed through such apparently harmless turns of phrase - language can be so powerful!

I would've loved to have read this when my children were babies and I think every new mother should read this book.

Hollie, you have a very distinctive 'voice' as a poet. Do you think the creative process is different when you are writing a poem to be read rather than to be performed, and if so, how? Do you write any of your poems specifically with performance in mind?

Thank you.

I have never thought about it. I hardly really think of myself as a poet cos it’s such a small part of most of my days. And I’ve never put myself in a line of poets or anything like that. I don’t think I thought of myself as a woman writer until people started calling me that in articles and stuff. I just feel like one individual person writing about their experiences. So I guess I feel as much a woman as I do a Brit or middle class person, or person who lives in a village or person who likes sport or anything really. So I guess probably the second, though I’m fully aware those life experiences are from a female viewpoint. And I like being a woman a lot ,and a human, so happy with either description really.

@SallySwann

A very interesting idea for a book. Hollie, are you always thinking of how you can make a poem fit into whatever situation you find yourself? And, did you ever give a name to Little One and wasn't Dee (as well as grandparents etc.) pressurising you into doing so?

Thanks – no not really, it was just the diary I was keeping at the time and then a few missing sections filled in later. I just get poems and ideas in my head and write them down (if I’m not chasing a child round the park or sth!). The book was already mostly written and i didn’t intend it to be published while I was writing any of the poems. Yeah, I gave Little One a name – but I didn’t want any names in the book as i feel that’s too personal to share. More personal than any of the very personal parts of the book!

@truetops

Thank you Mumsnet for introducing me to Hollie McNish she is brilliantly talented. "Nobody Told Me" hits the spot on pregnancy and early motherhood especially the taboos - breasts part 2 (yes, yes, yes)! I enjoyed reading your book but I have to say watching you performing your poetry is fabulous. I am mesmerised, hopefully one day I will see you preform live. After each chapter of your book I found myself watching you on YouTube (I hope that doesn't sound too creepy?)

Please don't stop writing about motherhood, I want to hear about the school run, the teenager years, etc.

If I'm not too late to ask a question I would like to know if there are and basic rules you adhere to when writing poetry?

It doesn’t sound creepy! It’s the whole point I read them online – cos load sof people (me included) have little time to go see live shows!

In terms of rules, not really. I’ve never studied creative writing or poetry so honestly, even if I wanted to, I don’t think I could adhere to any rules cos i don’t know what the hell they are!

Most of my poems rhyme, but I have no idea why. I’ve been writing since I was about 7 and at that age, I guess I wanted to copy the mainly rhying style of the kids;s poems I’d heard. After that a lot of music lyrics influenced me – I listened to way more music than I read poetry. I didn’t really read much poetry at all. So I guess again the simple rhyme scheme kind of stuck. Now I find it hard not to write like that! I think the lovely thing about poetry is the fact it can be so rigid or so free and experimental. I guess like any art form.

Thanks so much for this - it is so lovely to get feedback from people who don’t know me / haven’t seen a gig etc so are very honest. Really really great, thanks so much. Also - I loved the poems. It is so lovely reading other people’s experiences too.

The one that stuck out was the response to the train poem. I just loved that fact it shone this other side on the story, which is totally missing in a lot of art! It was really great. I found myself at the start thinking - come on! you can still crack a smile! - but it brought me back again by then end to feeling it and understanding more. So thank you!

Thanks so much to Hollie for answering the questions. We really hope you'll join us again in the future - maybe next time for a live webchat. Congratulations to Archaeopteryx - who has won a signed copy of Hollie's book (we realise you already have a copy but thought you could pass this on to a friend!) We'll be in touch to let you know how to claim your book.