21 Miles. Jessica Hepburn

ection>

      

      A Note on the Author

      Jessica Hepburn is one of the UK’s leading voices on fertility, infertility and IVF. She is the author of the book The Pursuit of Motherhood and writes and speaks widely in the press and media on the subject of assisted conception and alternative routes to parenthood. In 2016, following her ten-year tenure as executive director of the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, she founded Fertility Fest, the world’s first arts festival dedicated to the science of making babies.

       www.jessicahepburn.com

      Also by the author

      The Pursuit of Motherhood

      Dear Reader,

      The book you are holding came about in a rather different way to most others. It was funded directly by readers through a new website: Unbound. Unbound is the creation of three writers. We started the company because we believed there had to be a better deal for both writers and readers. On the Unbound website, authors share the ideas for the books they want to write directly with readers. If enough of you support the book by pledging for it in advance, we produce a beautifully bound special subscribers’ edition and distribute a regular edition and ebook wherever books are sold, in shops and online.

      This new way of publishing is actually a very old idea (Samuel Johnson funded his dictionary this way). We’re just using the internet to build each writer a network of patrons. At the back of this book, you’ll find the names of all the people who made it happen.

      Publishing in this way means readers are no longer just passive consumers of the books they buy, and authors are free to write the books they really want. They get a much fairer return too – half the profits their books generate, rather than a tiny percentage of the cover price.

      If you’re not yet a subscriber, we hope that you’ll want to join our publishing revolution and have your name listed in one of our books in the future. To get you started, here is a £5 discount on your first pledge. Just visit unbound.com, make your pledge and type swimming5 in the promo code box when you check out.

      Thank you for your support,

      Dan, Justin and John

      Founders, Unbound

      ‘To me the sea is like a person –

      like a child that I’ve known a long time’

      Gertrude Ederle,

      the first woman to swim twenty-one miles

      across the English Channel

      A Note from the Author

      The events and interviews in this book largely took place in 2014 and 2015. It felt important to remain true to the story as it unfolded so they are recorded as they happened in the knowledge that the world changes and people’s lives move on.

      CONTENTS

       Prologue

       A List

       Blue Monday

       Horizontal Walking

       Addicted to IVF

       Can Rolls, Can’t Hepburn

       Her Darling Child

       AGONY!

       Optimist or Pessimist?

       Half a Biscuit

       The Serpentine

       Does Motherhood Make You Happy?

       The Etiquette of Clothing

       The Charity Worker

       The Scientist

       The Old Woman of Coniston

       The Very Reverend

       Mother Tallulah

       The Ballerina

       Molly

       A Few Words on Jellyfish

       Team Toe Dip

       Frankenstein Dreaming

       The Polar Explorer

       Where’s the Manual?

       The Ray, the Jellyfish and the Macrobiotic Mother

       VO2 Max

       The Internet Entrepreneur

       Odi et Amo

       The Businesswoman

       The Solitude of Swimming

       The Filmmaker

       The Filmmaker, Part II

       The Right Way Round

       The Peter Pan Cup

       The Iron(wo)man

       The Politician

       ‘Ozymandias’

       The Ice Queen Foster Mother