After almost two years of writing (and a few more years of planning on top), I finally submitted the draft for The Secret Science of Baby. I thought it would be a moment of pure elation, but instead it felt rather like an anticlimax. Maybe that is because all I did was press send on an e-mail and nothing really happened.

Most of the book was written during the pandemic, which brought its own set of challenges. Juggling homeschooling, the “day job” and then firing up enough brain cells in the evening once the kids had gone to bed to write coherent sentences was not easy (although it rarely is, to be fair).

On the other hand, doing something during the past year(s) that didn’t involve constantly watching dire news bulletins about COVID or doom scrolling on Twitter at least gave me something else to obsess about focus on.

I enjoyed (for the most) writing the book and hope that comes across in the final version once all the edits are complete. As the image above shows, it came in just shy of 82 000 words (93 000 including footnotes and references).

So, without giving too much away, below is a chapter outline of how it ended up.

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