By Casey Neill
Isabelle Silbery knew she should have been excited when she learned she was pregnant with her daughter.
Instead, her stomach dropped.
Izzy, best known for her eight-year stint on Gogglebox alongside mum Kerry and grandmother Emmie, had welcomed a son with her first husband 10 years earlier.
“I was working full-time in a pretty demanding job,” she said.
“The pregnancy wasn’t great and the birth wasn’t either. It was quite quick and traumatic.
“My waters broke at home and I was rushed to the hospital.
“I didn’t know if I was going to make it to the hospital.
“I was dropped at emergency while my husband got a park.
“Because it was all so fast and he was huge, I did have a big tear.
“I didn’t know how to breastfeed.
“He also had a tongue tie which wasn’t diagnosed for a week. I was breastfeeding through agony.
“My son didn’t sleep for the first year.
“My marriage broke down.
“We didn’t cope with it.
“I didn’t cope with it.
“I equated having a baby with a really bad time.”
Falling pregnant with second husband Alex Richards took Izzy right back to that time.
“When I saw the pregnancy test come up positive with Ruby, I felt my stomach drop and I thought, ‘That’s weird, shouldn’t I be happy, shouldn’t I want this?” she said.
“I’m in a relationship, I’m happy, I’m a different person now, and I’m older.
“Everyone was so excited but I wasn’t.
“I was faking it a lot.
“I confided in Mum and she said, ‘You went through a lot with your first, your marriage and the divorce, and do you really think you’ve resolved all of that? I think you should go and speak to someone about it’.
So Izzy saw a prenatal psychologist at a women’s clinic, who said it was no wonder she wasn’t feeling overly joyous.
“I said things out loud about being left a single mum and the challenges it had on me physically and mentally,” she said.
“You think you close the door on something…
“I just worked through all of it.
“I was really able to share that with my current husband. He learned a lot about me and what I’d been through.
“His understanding and support really helped me.
“It was also really good to be honest with my outer circle.”
At school pick-up she spoke about her therapy journey with other parents.
“I got on some safe medication as well as doing therapy the whole way through,” she said.
“We had a whole plan in place in case the birth was traumatic again, or if I was sleep-deprived.
“I had a lot more things put in place beforehand instead of waiting for things to go bad.
“Ten years ago they just didn’t value it.
“Women’s health in general is only now just becoming ‘we need to invest in that and talk about that’.”
At 39 weeks, her obstetrician said: “Let’s take control of this. Your first birth was quick, the second will be quicker. I think for your mental health and making it to the hospital, let’s induce you and do it as beautifully and as controlled as we can.”
Izzy’s labour with Rub lasted only an hour.
“She was a bit smaller and I had my mum there and my partner’s mum there and my partner holding my hand,” she said.
“It was in a room full of women who were holding me physically and mentally.
“I literally just breathed her out.
“It was empowering – f*****g painful – but just really good.”
She had a supportive partner and hands-on dad by her side after returning home.
“He’s a stay-at-home dad and he did all the heavy lifting,” she said.
“I got the opportunity to rest as much as possible and focus on bonding with her and feeding her.
“Food was in the fridge and other mums would help me with pick-up and drop-off – maybe that’s because I was really honest and open about the situation.
“Things were done so I could be the best possible mum in recovery.”
A few months in, she needed more support and spent a week at Homb.
The Elsternwick postpartum recovery centre nurtures and empowers new mothers, striving to prevent postnatal depression and anxiety.
Izzy described her stay as “real respite”.
“Every mother should be offered this service,” she said.
“In lots of cultures and lots of other countries, that’s what they do – they stay at home and they’re fed and their babies are looked after.
“They literally stay in bed for the first six months.
“It takes a minimum of a year to get back to normal, physically and mentally, and that’s okay.
“It is really important to make a conscious effort to reconnect with yourself and also reconnect with your partner.
“Just because there’s little kids that need you, it’s really important to make adult time and have adult conversations and do what brought you together in the first place.
“Nothing is more important than our relationship, first and foremost, and then you can be the best parents after that.
“I get so nervous about leaving them, but you can, it will be fine.
“Just to take a moment for your own mental health as a mother.
“Get a massage, get your hair done, read a book in the sun, just to recharge those batteries.
“And don’t feel guilty about it.
“We’re programmed to think we’re at this thing’s beck and call.
“But they need the best version of us, not the completely f****d version of us.”
As well as working through her own concerns about welcoming a new baby, Izzy needed to prepare her son for stepping into the role of big brother.
“I was scared. I was nervous and scared,” she said.
“My son was not happy about another baby. He made that very clear.
“So I spent the whole pregnancy coaching him and just being there for him and reassuring him.
“I was really worried about him, to be honest.
“I was worried he’d feel on the outer because he was from a previous marriage.
“He said, ‘Will you still love me?’.
“I took him to a child psychologist. I encouraged him to chat to my mum and me.
“The door was open for him to sit with his feelings.”
Izzy’s support for her first-born paid off.
“He was so besotted by her,” she said.
“He’s just been amazing.
“All the fear and anxiety was gone from myself and him, I think, when he saw the new family dynamic and it was working and there love was for everybody.”
Ruby was 13 months old when we spoke.
“He’s just so amazing with me and her,” Izzy said.
“He can see when I need help, he can get me stuff.
“It’s quite empowering for him as a child.
“He’s growing up a bit more and having that responsibility and being caring.
“I’m so passionate about raising emotionally intelligent boys into men.
“Having that little sister in his family life is really a good opportunity for him to engage in that softer, nurturing side.”
He told Izzy she was a great mum, and that taking care of him on her own would have been hard.
“I think it made him really reflect,” she said.
Reflecting on her own experiences, Izzy had some simple advice for partners of new mums.
“Just encourage her to be gentle on herself,” she said.
“Just say, ‘We’ve got this, we’re a team. We’re doing this together’.”
