'I felt guilty for finding motherhood so difficult'

Izzy Judd knows all about the mental load of motherhood. When we speak, she’s overseeing her two boys in the skate park while her husband - McFly drummer Harry - is en route to A&E with their daughter who has a suspected broken bone after a fall from her scooter.

- LUISA METCALFE

But it’s just another day of juggling the needs of Lola, eight, Kit, seven and Lockie, three, along with her marriage, a home and all the other areas of life parents (often mums) must oversee.

It's very different to her life pre-children as a Royal Academy of Music-educated violinist who met Harry while performing in the string section during McFly's 2005 Wonderland tour - before going on to join the electric string quartet Escala who reached the finals of Britain's Got Talent in 2008.

While parenthood can bring the heights of joy, moments of magic and a deep sense of fulfilment, it can also be tiring, stressful, worrying and also relentless in our current culture where childcare is expensive and couples don't live near parents or extended family.

BOMBARDED

Add into that cocktail, sleep deprivation plus the flood of advice offered by other mums and influencers on social media and the well-meaning words of friends and family, and it's no wonder that many mothers coping with the physical and emotional extremes of caring for a newborn might find themselves needing professional help.

Izzy, 41, did. She recalls her early days as a first-time mum with Lola, conceived via fertility treatment. Lola was a much longed-for child, and yet the mixture of emotions that bombarded Izzy as she adjusted to life with a newborn were quite different to what she'd expected to feel.

“I'd gone through IVF and I hadn't really given enough thought to what would come ahead of me,” she says. “I was so focused on my baby arriving safely and I practically had everything sorted - the babygrows and the buggy - but I was very unprepared mentally and quite traumatised.