In the System

I wanted to briefly talk about this as it's been such a huge thing in my life in the past couple of years and affected my mood massively, but if you don't want to read about something a whole lot more personal and nothing really to do with art, feel free to pass on this post. ♥ It's a heavy subject.

My partner and I have been together for eight years and for long we've wanted to start a family. The last two and a half years have been fruitless and as time has gone by, extremely disappointing. We're not the most traditional pair anyway and talking about this is difficult. 

Last March we started the process of trying to get through NHS' convoluted system into fertility care. It was a long wait and involved a ton of hours of sitting in dingy and sweaty waiting rooms, messed up blood tests, monthly disappointments and more and more tests. In December we finally got our first appointment at the clinic.

And it was just another blood test. But it was a start, we were finally in the system.

I'm a fulltime Illustrator and Mark works in bereavement. So stress levels are quite high in general. His colleagues and work have been very understanding as has our family. I recently discovered I wasn't the only one in my family who was going through this. I found more people in my group of friends who had also gone through the same thing. 

It's been hard, tiring and I often feel very lonely. I feel very forgetful and distracted. I'm lucky to have such a supportive family and friends.

The clinic so far hasn't been a terribly positive experience. We're well informed and aware of the risks and we're not going into this expecting to bring a baby home at the end of it. It's just a slightly higher chance of it happening. But right now I don't feel very well cared for there. There's been a lot of mistakes already and we haven't even started the hormone treatments yet. At least the clinic has been made aware of our concerns.

All of it feels a bit negative at the moment. There's a plethora of stuff that goes on behind the scenes, especially mentally and socially. I've found it very tiring. Part of it might be the missing Vitamin D, but we're exhausted. Fed up with the tests and mistakes that we can't do anything about.

I don't want to give up, but I've got to that point where I want to go 'whatever' and toss my arms up. I'm kinda not sure if I want to go through the treatment anymore because it means a whole month of injections, pain and time off work. All of this effort has affected my work so much.

I just want us both to be healthy and happy and draw without extra worry. We both want to continue doing Tistow so badly and I've also got the really exciting and special project coming up this year and I can't wait to talk about it more. ♥ Even with all the stress and negative nonsense, there's a whole lot of super positive stuff we can look forward to this year.