8
A whole new me
IT WAS SPRING 2014 and I’d reached a point where mentally and physically I needed to stand back, reassess and do things differently. After all the medications, I’d ended up miserable, frustrated and apprehensive about the future – I didn’t like anything about myself at that time. I wasn’t happy and I’d lost all faith in the process.
There had to be a better way; I needed to make a change. And so I made the decision to stop taking all medication, for a while anyway, and even stop trying to get pregnant until I’d given my body and mind a chance for a complete rest and cleanse. The first thing to do was a complete detox and I really meant complete: mind, body and spirit. Growing up, my mum had always told me to ‘make things happen’, so I got the bit between my teeth. If things had to change, I was the only one who could make that happen.
I was determined that I didn’t want to be examined, scanned or quizzed for a little while. I was so fed up that mentally, somehow I found I was able to park the idea of getting pregnant. It felt right. In fact, with hindsight, I should have taken this breathing space at the start of the process, before getting in a panic, seeing doctors and agreeing to interventions. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. The past year had been a constant cycle of anticipation and disappointment; of wondering what the future might be, then being heartbroken when it didn’t bring what I wanted. I’d been frantic, wearing myself out by watching, waiting, hoping and wondering. Now, I knew I needed to stop it all and say, ‘I’m not doing this any more.’
It was May 2014, a year and a half after the wedding. I was thirty years old. I decided to set aside six months and use all of my willpower to get myself into the best shape possible, mentally and physically. My plan was to draw a line under everything that had happened, and go forward with a whole new mindset. At the back of my mind I knew that if I was in optimum health I was more likely to conceive, but my motivation for doing it was not solely that. I wanted to rid my body of all the drugs I’d taken – the Clomid, the metformin, the Gonal-F – because I’d developed a very negative attitude towards them. I hadn’t become one of their many success stories. Instead, my body seemed to have resisted them and I’d experienced every side effect going. I felt as if they were still in my system, clogging me up, holding me back and keeping me the unhappy, insecure person I’d become. I’d also begun to consider the way in which my anxious mind was perhaps affecting my body, and knew that it was time to try to enter a calm, relaxed, positive mental state. Easier said than done, but I was going to try my absolute hardest.
I wanted to do it for Harry, too. During our fertility struggles, I sometimes felt like I was neglecting him and our relationship. You become so focused, so obsessed with one thing – getting pregnant – that you forget the person beside you, the person who is on this journey with you. I wanted time to reflect on the good things: the fact that Harry was my world no matter what else happened or didn’t happen.
Living a clean, healthy life was within my control. It was something I could do myself – I’d hold the reins and make the decisions – unlike the fertility treatments, which were almost entirely in the hands of my doctors.
I felt excited about what I was going to do, and energized in a way I hadn’t been for so long by the prospect of doing something proactive and giving myself a different focus. Several years earlier, I’d begun to look into what causes spikes in adrenaline, because of the effect this has on anxiety. I’d already learned a great deal about the links between sugar and caffeine and the endocrine system, and as a result had reduced my sugar intake and cut out caffeine completely.
I carried on down this road and began to do even more research into diet and fertility – I learned so much from Marilyn Glenville’s book Natural Solutions to PCOS. When you suffer from PCOS and anxiety it’s really important to keep your blood sugar levels steady and some sources I read recommended following a sugar-, dairy- and gluten-free diet to help with this. I began to eat only fresh food that I’d prepared myself, plenty of vegetables and lots of oily fish. This wasn’t only to improve my PCOS symptoms (and in turn hopefully my fertility) but also for other health benefits.
I started to take some supplements too – a fertility-support multivitamin, magnesium to boost my reserves and help reduce my body’s stress reaction, omegas 3 and 6 to help the quality of my eggs, vitamins D and C because they can help to regulate hormones, and a probiotic to improve my tummy health, especially after all the medications I’d been taking. I wanted to give my whole system an MOT, and by taking these supplements and following a sugar-, gluten- and dairy-free diet I felt I was able to do this.
I’ve always been into exercise – before the wedding I worked out a lot because I wanted to look my best on our day – but now I began to do more gentle forms that help the mind as well as the body. It was important for me to keep calm and therefore I didn’t want to put any burden on my adrenal glands with excessive exercise. Yoga, swimming and walking all allowed me to relax, which really helped to improve my mood, and because they were all things I enjoyed anyway, I made time to do them more often. In the beginning, I had to force myself to an extent, but very soon they became such a huge part of my day, something I looked forward to. Again, it wasn’t about losing weight, but, bit by bit, I began to feel good about myself again, and even about the situation I was in.
I also began to practise mindfulness. Shortly after the wedding, and because I still struggled with anxiety, I’d read a book called Calming Your Anxious Mind by Jeffrey Brantley and Jon Kabat-Zinn. The message of the book, of mindfulness generally, is to be present. To keep bringing yourself back to the present moment, to ‘now’, rather than allowing yourself to spiral off into the future or dwell in the past. I’m sure this seems a very simple concept to some people but it was something of a revelation to me. Maybe I’d been told to do this previously but the message hadn’t clicked. Reading this book, though, I could suddenly understand and relate to the idea much more. I began to try it, just sitting quietly, allowing thoughts to come and go, and I found it worked. It didn’t cure my anxiety – I don’t suppose anything ever fully will – but it certainly helped me to feel better and get a handle on my mind and the way it can spin out of my control.
During the six-month detox I got into the habit of meditating every morning. I’d get up and spend some time before breakfast breathing and quietening my mind. I’ve always been someone who gets up as soon as they wake up. I don’t hit ‘snooze’ or struggle to get out of bed, and often wake to the feeling of adrenaline running through me, my heart and mind racing. Just by breathing consciously, I’ve discovered I can reset this, taking time to calm down and focus before the day runs away with me.
On warmer days, I’d go outside to the garden to practise; if it was too cold, I’d use the bedroom. In the beginning, I could only manage five minutes at a time because my mind whizzed so much, but gradually I improved and increased my concentration span until I was able to do twenty minutes without even noticing the time go by. I even went on a one-day meditation course and downloaded an app to my phone, Headspace, that provides guided meditations and mindfulness training.
I soon found I could tap into the feeling of peace more easily at other times of the day when I needed to. If I was confronted with a fearful situation, it became easier to get to a place where I could stop my mind from racing and just focus on my breath. And really, it’s amazing how getting up and just breathing for a few minutes, before you do anything else with your day, changes the way you feel and respond to demanding situations. There’s something quite spiritual about being able to connect to the world around you like that, and bring yourself to a state of calm.
Meditation isn’t for everybody; that’s not how everyone’s mind works. Different things work for different people, whether it’s going to the gym, running, just being outside – the important thing is to find something that works for you, and to stick with it. Like most things, I discovered that it takes practice!
Once I was meditating, exercising and eating well, I felt that my mind and body were mending, but I wanted to think about my spirit, too, and connecting to myself on a deeper level. I knew that was an important dimension to what I was doing, and I began to look around for inspiration, new ideas that attracted me and appealed to me, ways of thinking about my situation from another perspective. I’ve always liked quotes and sayings, combinations of words that offer a different point of view and feel as if they have the power to change your way of thinking. I wanted to find things that helped my mental outlook, that meant something to me.
During the one-day meditation course I went on, the teacher put a lot of emphasis on starting the day with a positive quote or an affirmation. That practice really appealed to me because I was beginning to understand just how much you can actually alter a situation simply by changing the way you think about it; that there is no such thing as ‘reality’, only the way we choose to see it. That was very comforting, reassuring and positive for me.
I found the idea that I didn’t have to accept something as it initially appeared to me – that I could make it whatever I needed it to be – to be very empowering. I didn’t have to feel helpless, or like a failure. I could look at my life, and myself, differently. As a result, I began to feel that I could reach acceptance of the situation I was in – emotionally and physically – rather than constantly fighting it, rejecting it, and wishing it was something different.
The funny thing was, as soon as I was open to the idea of finding messages that spoke to me and sparked my imagination, there they were: in shops, on Instagram, all around me. Some of the ones that helped me the most can be found on the inside covers of this book, in the hope that you might take something away from them too.
One of the first that I discovered was on a card that read ‘amazing things will happen’. I think it came with something I’d ordered online. I opened the box and it tumbled out of the packaging. It was such a simple statement, and it was everything I now believed. As I’d started to feel better in myself, I’d begun to believe truly that I’d get pregnant some day, I just had to be patient. If it didn’t happen immediately, that was OK because it was going to happen.
I felt that everything was leading towards a happy outcome, and that it would take as long as it took; I just had to keep trying and believing. Harry and I had always said to each other, ‘We won’t give up. We’ll keep going, together, until we get there.’
Another affirmation I felt strongly about was one that read ‘today is your day’, which I found on a postcard and really identified with. Saying it made me believe that it could be my day because some day, it would be my turn.
I no longer looked with envy and bitterness at pregnant women and women with small babies. Instead, I actively wished something good for those women I saw. I’d think, ‘I hope you have a healthy pregnancy and I hope your baby is safe’ rather than ‘Why is that not me?’ And in doing so, I felt a thousand times better! The resentful feelings left me and I understood that we all have different paths in life. I realized that I didn’t know what path had brought those women to this point, how hard it might have been for them. Now don’t get me wrong, I still had my moments and it was tough, but I worked really hard to change my thoughts, and the affirmations helped enormously.
I’d started visiting an acupuncturist after our wedding but before we started trying for a baby, because I’d heard many times that acupuncture could do good things for both fertility and anxiety. I initially went for traditional acupuncture treatments, which I found relaxing and helpful, but then I heard from a friend about a guy called Gerad Kite, who I discovered had an amazing reputation in helping with fertility issues. He practises Five Element Acupuncture, whereby a patient’s health is looked at not only as a whole but also through the lens of five elements: Water, Wood, Fire, Earth and Metal. Determining the weakest element in each patient is crucial for diagnosis. In other styles of acupuncture the needle is placed and left in an acupuncture point to sedate or calm for around 20 minutes. In five element acupuncture the needle is inserted to the depth of the acupuncture point and immediately removed.
I looked Gerad up online and found he’d also written a book called The Art of Baby-Making, which I read and really enjoyed while I was on holiday the summer after the wedding. It was interesting, very informative and left me feeling positive.
So during this time of detox I decided to book an appointment with Gerad and found him to be both spiritual and incredibly practical. He’s treated so many women who haven’t been able to get pregnant – often because of an underlying cause such as stress or trauma – and many times these women have fallen pregnant naturally following treatment by him. That wasn’t my story, of course, but I did find the sessions with him extremely powerful. I’d feel a surge of energy during the treatment, as if things inside me were being unblocked, and would leave his clinic feeling on top of the world, or wonderfully calm, depending on what my body needed.
I went to see Gerad every six weeks or so during my six-month time-out (and also continued to see him during the IVF treatment and my pregnancy with Lola). Acupuncture was a therapy I chose to invest in during that time, and Gerad is someone I feel everyone should see once in their life. My wellbeing improved hugely whenever I’d been to visit him and he was also somebody I could talk to. He was a wonderful and important piece of the puzzle.
As part of my detox, I also asked myself the question, what is going to make me happy? The answer was, as it always has been, music. I’d left Escala before getting married because I was planning on having a family, but also because I felt I’d done as much with that career as I wanted to, and was ready to move on. I’d achieved more than I’d ever expected to and knew I’d always be able to look back and be proud of that time. But I was ready for something different.
It would’ve been very difficult to go back to being a professional classical musician after my time with Escala. I hadn’t played classical violin for ten years – with Escala we performed on electric instruments and our repertoire was all crossover – so I didn’t feel anywhere near the standard I would have needed to be, and it would’ve taken a lot of hard work to return to that calibre.
Also, it’s very difficult to get back into the world of professional classical music once you’ve left it. It’s highly competitive, with only so many opportunities to go round, and fundamentally it wasn’t what I wanted. Harry’s career was unpredictable and involved a lot of time away on tour – if we’d both been living that kind of life, we’d barely have seen each other, or been able to plan anything at all. In fact, I wanted to do something completely different and keep music as a hobby. So I joined amateur orchestras and was able to play my violin again, which I loved. My dad also played in these orchestras, and it was a real pleasure to be able to share that time with him.
The effect of changing my diet, of exercising more but gently, and of meditating and repeating positive affirmations was wonderful. It completely changed the way I felt, both mentally and physically. I went from being unhappy and in despair, to feeling bright and energetic. But there was one more thing I needed to do, and in a funny way it was the hardest thing, because it wasn’t a question of willpower, it was a matter of changing something fundamental about myself.
I realized that, for a short time, I was going to have to reverse my natural instinct to put everyone else first and myself last. I was going to have to be ‘selfish’, even though I firmly believe that’s the wrong word because it sounds so negative. I was going to have to prioritize myself for a change, and save my energy for me and the baby I so badly wanted.
It wasn’t easy. I’ve always wanted to give – it’s what I’ve done all my life. My mum is an incredibly generous, warm person, who has always thought about others far more than herself, and I’d seen her do that for as long as I could remember; it was my normal. I was determined, though, that this time off was for me, and was what I needed to do in order to have a baby. Instead of running around after other people, falling in with their plans, doing things for them, I needed to step back. I needed to learn to say ‘no’.
Of course when you’re not working – and by then I’d closed my online gift shop, Izzy’s Attic – everyone thinks you have all the time in the world. People can take advantage, even when they don’t mean to. Often, I wasn’t even able to give a reason for not meeting someone, or helping with something, because only our families and closest friends knew what we’d been going through. I just had to tell people I was having a busy month, which most of my friends were fine with, but it must have seemed a little odd that I was never around as I’m usually the person who always says yes. I suppose real friends just know that there’s something happening in your life, even if you haven’t specifically told them what. They instinctively understand and leave you be, they don’t pressure you.
Saying no to people was liberating and refreshing, and when my six months drew to a close, I began to fully reap the rewards of the changes I’d made and the time off I’d given myself. I was now at a point where I knew I was ready to move forward.
Despite feeling so well, my periods hadn’t come back – they’d stopped again as soon as I finished taking the Clomid. So I still had no menstrual cycle to speak of, and therefore, in my mind, it felt that conceiving naturally wasn’t going to happen any time soon. After a great deal of thought I told Harry that I wanted to have IVF.
I knew that it was something I wanted to try – and sooner rather than later. Initially, Harry wasn’t keen. He thought I was leaping ahead too much, that we didn’t need to go that far, that we should wait a little longer. He’d always been more inclined to see how things played out because, as he said, ‘We’re both young, there’s no rush.’ He was right, but I wasn’t willing to give it any longer.
He listened to me as I explained why I didn’t want to wait. Didn’t dare to wait. Nothing was happening and I didn’t believe I had any chance of falling pregnant naturally. Also, I wasn’t just thinking about having one baby, I was thinking about a family.
I suppose Harry was nervous that I might revert to the panicked state I’d got myself into during the first year of trying for a baby. He didn’t want me to undo all the hard work I’d put in to feeling calmer. As usual, he was trying to be rational for both of us. I reassured him that my frame of mind was different now – I was keen to move on to this next stage, but with more understanding and patience. I was mentally and physically prepared.
As a cautious first step, in September 2014 we went to see my gynaecologist for a chat about what IVF would entail. Harry and I both agreed that we wouldn’t commit to anything there and then, but would take the following month to think things over carefully.
I still remember the day we decided, together, that we would go ahead with IVF. It was just over a month later, in November, and having made our decision, Harry and I went for a beautiful walk in Richmond Park. As we walked, I looked up to see the sun shining through the clouds and I felt so full of hope. Harry took a photo of me, and when I saw it, I realized that the clouds behind my head had formed the shape of a stork. I knew in that moment that we were making the right decision. I felt as if the universe had spoken to me.
I kept that photo with me throughout our IVF treatment and had it with me when I injected myself with the fertility drugs. I even took it into the clinic. That photo, for me, signified hope.