Watching her eight-week-old baby struggling for breath, Izzy Judd found herself in a complete state of panic .
The 35-year-old violinist was home alone with daughter Lola (now three) and son Kit (now two) when, moments after returning from the GP with a diagnosis of bronchiolitis, Kit went downhill.
He was clearly in need of urgent medical care.
With husband Harry, drummer with McFly, uncontactable in media interviews and no family nearby, Izzy phoned for an ambulance. It arrived within minutes.
“I was not able to think clearly at all,” she remembers. But, with Kit admitted to hospital, Izzy’s natural instinct was to protect him. She felt she had no other option but to stay strong.
Mercifully, Kit began to get better and was able to go home after three days.
But for Izzy, Kit’s recovery allowed the repressed anxiety , something she’d struggled with since childhood, to return with a vengeance.
Izzy’s issues with anxiety began when she was a little girl. Otherwise confident and happy, she was plagued by worries at bedtime, unwilling to be alone and waking during the night gripped by panic, heart racing, legs shaking.
She’d creep into her parents’ bed for comfort and safety.
When she was 12, Izzy’s older brother Rupert sustained devastating head injuries in a car accident.
To Izzy, the accident confirmed what her anxiety had been telling her – there really was reason to worry.
She also felt that her own struggles paled into insignificance compared to those of her brother, keeping quiet about her anxiety for fear of adding to her parents’ worries.
Things came to a head when Izzy was in her 20s and Escala, the electric string quartet she performed with, reached the 2008 finals of Britain’s Got Talent, netting them a record deal and gigs around the world.
“I’ve had really, really difficult times with anxiety since I can ever remember,” says Izzy.
“It really hit a very low point and I couldn’t leave the house. My mum was absolutely amazing but it gets to a point where you can’t carry on like that.
“I had the traditional treatment of antidepressants and cognitive behavioural therapy, which work really well together.”
But Izzy was keen to find a long-term solution and, after years of struggling, she finally stumbled on something that worked for her.
“I came across this book, Calming Your Anxious Mind by Jeffrey Brantley, which is basically explaining what mindfulness is: just to be present, to be ‘right now’. I realised I hadn’t ever lived right now. My brain had always been thinking forward or back, never present. I just thought, this could really help me.”
Izzy continued to use mindfulness, coming off antidepressants before her 2012 wedding to Harry. There was a bumpy road ahead but mindfulness sustained Izzy through fertility issues, IVF treatment and a miscarriage.
Lola was born in 2016 followed by Kit 19 months later. But, with the new pressures of motherhood, Izzy says mindfulness was sidelined.
“I had practiced all the time but when I had two children, I just stopped,” she says. “Everything was consumed by
the children.”
She didn’t realise pressure was building up. “Prior to having children, I had a long fertility struggle, which I think is all linked up to my anxiety. Then eventually, the struggles of motherhood add up. You’re tired, you’re depleted and there’s very little time left for you.”
Eventually, Kit’s “traumatic” hospital stay tipped Izzy over the edge.
“My panic attacks came back in the night,” she says. “If one of the children would wake, I would think something awful was wrong. It was Harry who said, ‘Why have you stopped mindfulness?’ He put me into this course specifically for mothers and it was amazing.”
Izzy’s now written a book, Mindfulness For Mums, full of advice and techniques for motherhood.
“The reason I’ve written this book is because I just wasn’t coping at all,” she says. “When Lola was born and was lying next to me, I was thinking, ‘I just want you back in my tummy where I know you’re safe’. Lola was actually an easy baby. I was the nightmare. People would say, ‘Is she a good baby, does she sleep?’ Well yes, but I didn’t! I was up in the night, worrying was she hot, was she cold…
“I remember going out with my NCT friends very soon after Lola was born and sobbing the whole way home thinking, ‘They look like they’re nailing it and this is just really hard. I don’t actually want to leave the house yet. I don’t feel ready to do that’. And breastfeeding was really tough. I remember feeling so alone – and in those moments thinking, I’ve wanted this for so long, so much focus had been on becoming a mum that I hadn’t actually thought about how much it was going to change our lives.
“Then Kit basically cried for the first year of his life with reflux. Having two children 19 months apart is hard. People always say, ‘You need to enjoy it, it goes so fast!’ and I was thinking, yes, but how? The anchor that has kept me strong has been mindfulness.”
Despite its title, the book isn’t only for mothers. After her childhood struggles, Izzy is determined to give Lola and Kit the tools they need to cope with mental health worries so she also shares exercises she’s adapted to introduce the concept to children.
Izzy is the first to admit that she doesn’t have it all sussed – McFly’s upcoming tour means Harry will be overseas for weeks at a time and while she has a good support system in place, it’s been worrying her.
Izzy says: “Somehow when Harry’s in the UK, it feels OK, but to think that he’s a plane ride away can really get my anxiety going. Last night I said to myself, ‘OK. It’s December, this isn’t until April. Are you going to spend the next three months worrying? Because when you get to it, you will manage’.
“I try and change my thoughts or let them pass, let it go. I’m not saying I’ve got this sorted and I use mindfulness all the time. I’m a work in progress.”
- Mindfulness for Mums by Izzy Judd (£14.99, Michael Joseph/Penguin) is out on January 9