I Stopped Planning My Entire Life Around Bathrooms

What was most humiliating was not even the leakage, it was bladder urgency, that comes out of nowhere.

I’m Emma Skeates, and for the past 8 years I have been better known as the Menopausal Mayhem Mothers.

For about three years into my menopause, I was wearing big bulky pads, because every time I laughed or sneezed, there was leakage.

What was most humiliating was not even the leakage, it was bladder urgency, that comes out of nowhere. That feeling makes you desperate to do anything, and drop everything just to find a loo to go.

I'd been told there was nothing to be done

It's not that I didn't try. The meds worked for a bit but the side effects were terrible. I was told a referral would come. The referral never came, so I gave up asking. I did pelvic floor exercises and had some improvement in my leaks, but the urgency was still there. In the end I decided I'd just have to put up with the misery. My world shrank. I felt like I am a 58 year old woman in a 70 year old body. I had to say no to things I loved.

I gave Jude Bladder Supplements a go, here’s how I did my research

Jude kept popping up, my first thought was the obvious one: here we go, another gimmick after my money. But I kept reading the Jude trial results and their Trustpilot reviews. Not the glossy adverts, the actual reviews, from women my age using the exact words I'd have used myself. I was looking for people like me, women in their 50s who were just... tired of managing it. And fed up with how it impacted them.

Results and evidence

What actually got me to try it was the way they explained on their website. Jude was the first thing that talked about the bladder muscles itself, and supporting the muscles for bladder control, from the inside with plant extracts that have been studied for exactly this.

It's a food supplement, not a magic pill — and I liked that they said so plainly. Something you take every day and give real time to work with your body, rather than something that promises to fix you by Friday. In my head I started calling it my "inside job." Not catching the leaks. Supporting the bladder so there were fewer of them to catch. I am also impressed by their clinical trial results and the panel of urogynaecologists and pharmacologists behind it. I knew it’s real.

My honest verdict after taking Jude for 3 months

I'll be honest with you: I didn’t know if it is for me. The 90-day money back guarantee helped. If I don’t see results, I get my money back.

First 4 weeks

A little less of the 3am wake-ups. The urgency seemed to be subsiding and I felt I can hold for longer. It was still in the early days, but at night I started to sleep a little better. From waking up 3 times a night, I am waking up just once a night.

8 weeks in

The first thing I actually noticed was I went out for a walk with Fletcher the dog, and I didn’t have to think about going for a wee, at all! That simply hadn't happened in years. That was the week I knew my patience has paid off

At the 12 weeks mark

I woke up one morning at 7am, and it just dawned on me that I slept through the night. No waking up in the middle of the night, not even once. I didn’t get the urgency feeling at the front door either.

I drove to Cornwall with my daughter without mapping every service station. I went for a two-hour walk on a Sunday morning without "preparing." My sleep improved so much that other things improved with it. My patience. My energy. My mood. It's remarkable how much of your life is downstream from sleep.

I'm not writing this to tell anyone what to do. Bodies are different, and what worked for me might not work the same way for someone else. But I spent six years managing this alone, convinced it was just "part of getting older" and that the only options were exercises or medication.

For me, there was something in between. And I wish I'd found it sooner.