MY OTHER PROJECT • by Izzy Judd

My name is Izzy, mum to two children Lola (4) and Kit (3). I’m married to Harry who is a musician - we met whilst I was playing the violin on tour with his band. I’m a writer and have published two books, Dare to Dream (my story to motherhood) and Mindfulness for Mums (a dip in and out manual with tips and tools you can practice alone or as a family to help find calm in the chaos)

I married my husband Harry in 2012 and shortly after we started thinking about having a baby. Once we found out conceiving naturally wasn’t going to be straight forward due to PCOS (polycystic ovaries), what followed were some very hard and lonely years until we eventually conceived our daughter Lola through IVF in 2015. I experienced so many emotions from fear to frustration, desperation to anger, guilt to loneliness. My world stopped, it felt like someone had pressed paused on my life. 

I always believed that my diagnosis of PCOS never told the full story about our struggles to conceive and that actually my long-term issues with anxiety played a huge part. The body and mind are so strongly connected and it was only when I started to accept that our route to parenthood wasn’t going to be the way we had hoped that I began to settle into the challenge of infertility. I realised that the doctors would partly take over my body but I always had my mind and it was up to me about how I was going to manage expectation, disappointment and emotions.

Sadly, following our first round of IVF I had a miscarriage. This was a grief that I needed time to process. Harry and I took it in turns to be strong for one another, which is hard when you are both going through the same sadness. I felt very responsible and often wondered what I did wrong. There were moments when I believed I wasn’t meant to be a mother and that somehow by having IVF I was tempting fate. Along with the grief I constantly questioned why this was so hard and why every hurdle felt so high. 

We had two frozen embryos and so five months later we went back and Lola was conceived. During my first pregnancy with Lola and then with my son Kit, who I went on to conceive naturally, I wasn’t truly able to relax in fear that something might happen until they both arrived safely in the world. 

Looking back, I suffered in silence because it is so difficult to know how to start the conversation. I felt very lost and confused, so trying to articulate those feelings to others is difficult. EveryBODY is unique and each couple will have their own individual set of complications- the sliding scale of infertility is vast. I don’t know exactly what others go through, but I know the feelings that accompany so much of the struggle, the sense of isolation and failure, trying to manage the side effects from the drugs you have to take and the fear that surrounds so much of the struggle. Acupuncture, being around nature and surrounding myself with the people that I loved and made me feel better was really important. It is so difficult not to feel like fertility struggles define you, it is all consuming and it’s tough to manage all the different emotions so learning how to put yourself first was essential and to do the things that make you happy rather than trying to keep everyone else happy! 

Going through fertility treatment I didn’t give enough thought to the reality that motherhood would bring and the challenges you face daily. 

I know that as quickly as I can feel such love and compassion in motherhood, I can just as quickly feel impatient and frustrated. It is the greatest thing and the toughest thing all at once!

As a mum as I wanted to learn how I could enjoy time with my longed-for children without being distracted. How I could quieten my inner critic and switch from constantly doing to just being. I wanted to explore other options to help manage Lola’s and Kit’s meltdowns or their endless inability to share, that means I don’t end up shouting and then spending the rest of the day feeling like I’ve failed them. I wanted to be able to talk kindly not only to Harry and the children but also to myself, and I wanted stressful moments to feel more manageable. 

Mindfulness is something that has held my hand through so many anxieties and change so I turned to Mindfulness more than ever as a mum. Having lived with anxiety from a young age, I also wanted to learn more about how mindfulness could support Lola & Kit with their emotional development and to teach them the skills to take care of their own mental well-being.

I think we parents search for that place of stillness, that moment when the house is peaceful and we can hear ourselves think. A chance to pause and reconnect with ‘me’ – How as a mum can we still remain connected to who we are and what we need? 

I wrote a book, Mindfulness for Mums, and since then I have launched a wellbeing website called PAUSE. For all of us, this next chapter has added a heavy layer of uncertainty and worry that will test us in completely new ways. The hope is that PAUSE can be a place to escape the internal and external noise, a place to find space and time for you and a place to reconnect with yourself. Basically, a great big virtual hug!

Nothing can prepare you for becoming a mum, when I saw Lola for the first time we were both fragile, both vulnerable and both brand new in every way. My whole world changed fundamentally and even though we took our time to meet Lola, I wouldn’t change any part of our story.