If anyone is new here and wants to get caught up on this story I recommend going back to read my entry One and Done.
Let’s take a trip back to the pandemic summer of 2020. Fertility treatments had started up again which seemed like great news after everything was shut down for months, but in reality our clinic was operating at a strange (and seemingly inexplicable) diminished capacity. Because of various factors and hindrances on the part of our clinic, we opted to wait for our regular treatment to resume and in the meantime we thought we may as well try a more “natural” (i.e. ineffective) treatment known as “timed medicated intercourse.” Yes, it’s exactly as fun as it sounds!
The funny thing about fertility treatment, in my opinion, is that the least invasive procedures are the most difficult. They somehow take much more emotional work for less than a 10% chance (in my case) and very little insight or answers. For these summer of 2020 treatments I was going into a pretty unpleasant offsite ultrasound clinic for 5 - 7 days in a row to monitor my follicle and endometrial lining. It sounds tolerable when you hear it in words, but several months in a row of getting daily vaginal probes by a PPE-d out technician who barely acknowledges you as a human being makes you feel… like a piece of meat. A piece of weepy, infertile meat that has to get in the mood for old fashioned baby making when the time is right. I regret wasting time, money and emotional resources with these treatments. They completely depleted me.
It was during one of these rounds of treatment where I sprained my knee in an attempt to take better care of my body and mind by taking up jogging. The day I sprained it I had woken up to take a pregnancy test as instructed by my clinic. It was negative. I ran angry and sobbing and didn’t pay attention to how sloppy and hard my feet were hitting the concrete. The next day my knee was hot with swollen pain and I could barely walk. Up until this point, even though I had come to terms with my infertility diagnosis, I still had a fairly optimistic approach. But this knee injury, combined with bad access to shitty treatment and various other spicy flavours life was serving at the time (including a little global pandemic) really started to break me.
So I did what every therapist has always told me to do when they find out I’m an artist: “why don’t you make some art about how you’re feeling?!” In all honesty I loathe this suggestion because the well meaning therapists don’t seem to understand that art is my profession and tied to my income and generally not just something I do to simply service my immediate emotional needs! But at this point, with the world stopped dead in its tracks and having absolutely no where to go and existing as a total mess, I felt the need to get some of my pain outside of me somehow. I’ve never made comics before, but it was a nice way to tell little no-pressure stories while killing some time with doodling while the world was on pause.
I wasn’t sure if I would ever share these. I started an IG account for them but never used it. I thought I would leave it there just in case I needed to open up more. I felt like I wanted to find some connection but have pretty complicated feelings about aligning myself with the infertility community at large… I was always on the fence with that world. But it was nice knowing it was there. It’s deleted now but I’m still proud of the handle which is @myunexplainedlife named after my diagnosis of “Unexplained Infertility.” Pretty good, right?!
Sharing these feels very raw and vulnerable to me, both because they’re a style and format I’ve never worked in, and because of the content, but also because… they weren’t ever made to be “good” but more to serve as a tonic for a personal ailment. This was a raw time and looking back at these feels like looking at an old wound. I was struggling and desperate to find a voice for very big feelings. As I’m moving on from this chapter in my life, I wanted to honour the pain that went into these little picture stories that don’t have an actual place in my art practice. I hope they might mean something to someone. Thank you for witnessing them.
You might have noticed I’ve added an option to show me a bit of support by buying me a coffee. It will be there from now on as a cute option for if you feel like you’re loving the entries and want to help me keep going with this. My next newsletter will be my last ceramics drop announcement before the holidays!
Hi Anna,
I really appreciated your story. I haven't experienced infertility myself. However, my mum's two sisters couldn't have children and there were heart-breaking miscarriages, IVF treatments in the early days followed by the wonderful news of a pregnancy followed by the devastation of an ectopic pregnancy. One of these aunts was a Karitane-trained children's nurse, which just seemed too cruel and the other one ended up being a stepmother which was a blessing in many ways but also a hard road. I also have friends who have lost children and continued in their careers and nobody knows their private anguish. It's really good that people like yourself put your stories out there and connect with people and your story now offers hope. Having a baby is still possible against all kinds of odds, and yet that is never guaranteed.
I had a parallel experience to you with being a young person diagnosed with hydrocephalus or fluid on the brain in my 20s which had been there since birth and in my thirties being diagnosed with a muscle-wasting autoimmune disease where I spend 9 weeks in hospital mostly with people over 80 and they'd tell me they wished they could move like me and I was dying inside. I write and do photography and my husband brought my camera and laptop into the rehab hospital and I wandered around photographing the trees and even the grass. It helped a lot.
I personally think it's important to acknowledge and talk about the dark side of life and our disappointments. Not all the time, or to everyone but to someone or someplace.
I am very excited to find your blog as I've just started a freelance writing course and will be starting my own small business which is both exciting and incredibly daunting.
BTW I blog at www.beyondtheflow.com and I thought you might appreciate this post on forgiving the unforgivable ie your health issue etc: https://beyondtheflow.wordpress.com/2016/01/22/forgiving-the-unforgivable/
best wishes,
Rowena