Yesterday we announced that I am pregnant across social media and we’ve been overwhelmed with so many lovely comments and so much support. Thank you everyone!
It’s very exciting, although can’t wait until morning sickness is gone! It’s also why it’s been hard to make any content lately. But I will film a follow up video answering questions. The best place to leave a question over on YouTube. I’ll be talking about IVF, living in Korea and pregnancy in Korea in the next video.
We had planned to try last year, but obviously with the current state of the world we wanted to delay a bit. We had one embryo left so instead of full IVF, we just needed to do the preparation (the meds) and just one embryo transfer. We are very thankful it worked, as we’d have to start IVF all over again if it didn’t.
I’ll share more about it in coming videos. For now we just wanted to announce it and thank everyone for their support. Yul is very excited to be a big brother!
We have some exciting news! I have started a new comic series called ‘Either Way’. This is a series about endometriosis, infertility and IVF. It’s our real story so it’s also in the context of our marriage. These are big topics to cover but one of the major reasons why I wanted to start this comic is to start to break down the stigma around these issues, as well as injecting a bit of humour into the story.
At the moment I am uploading it on WEBTOON but will upload on other platforms as well soon.
Since these issues are to do with women’s health, there can still be a lot of shame and stigma around them. Women often feel like they can’t talk about them, and even when they do can often be met with blank stares and “What’s endometriosis?” or “What’s IVF?”
I hope this comic series can educate as well as entertain. The title refers to something Hugh and I would always say when discussing the future. We were told we might not be able to have children. This can be devastating news, but in order to maintain some positivity we would say that “either way” we would be happy together and build a wonderful life together.
When my other webtoon Nicholalala was ending I was given the opportunity to pitch this idea to WEBTOON. I was a paid featured artist for Nicholalala, which meant I was paid every month to create those episodes. While they liked that ‘Either Way’ was genuine and my own story, they concluded that it was too mature for their core audience. Unfortunately, I think these types of issues are often labelled “too mature” or put into the “too hard basket” because of the stigma around it. But the truth is that 1 in 10 women have endometriosis and most will first get it in their teens. A lot of the core audience at WEBTOON may already be suffering from some of the things I’m making comics about. Also, many will go on to deal with these things later in life. I think it can be helpful if they are introduced to these topics early and can feel confident to talk about them freely. Many women struggle to even get a diagnosis of endometriosis because of the ignorance of many doctors. READ MORE ABOUT ENDOMETRIOSIS HERE.
READ AN EPISODE HERE:
You can read one of the first episodes here and then check out more over on the WEBTOON platform.
Of course anyone who has been following us for a while knows there is a happy ending to all this, but there is a lot of cover that we didn’t share online when we were going through it. This is the first time we’ve been this open about what we’ve been through.
We share the story of our baby, Yul Theodore, arriving early.
He is currently still in the NICU, but was doing really well when we visited today. It’s a weird limbo to be in. We have a baby, but he can’t come home with us yet. At the moment our lives revolve around going to the hospital every day, and I’m also constantly pumping at home while recovering from the c-section.
We have been overwhelmed by the messages of support from everyone and surprised at how many people genuinely care about us. When we realised people would worry when we didn’t update on Instagram on some days we wanted to share more of our story, especially because many people have been through something similar.
We wanted to create a space in the YouTube comments where people could share their stories, not only about having a premature baby, but also being in an international relationship in situations like this. Since we were originally told Yul would only be in the hospital for 1 week to 10 days, my parents flew over from Australia to see him. Unfortunately, he has had to stay a lot longer, so they can’t see him much. They will be flying back over a bit later though.
When we realised how much Hugh has vlogged at the hospital we knew we could put together a video to share with you guys. We mentioned IVF in this video and that’s something we also vlogged so eventually there will be a video about our IVF journey too.
It’s been a very difficult and unusual time. We are excited and happy to finally have a baby, but it’s distressing and heartbreaking to not be able to take him home yet.
It was hard to put together this video but I’m glad we did because it’s a record for us, and something our families can watch too. We can film a lot, but if we don’t edit and put it together in a video like this then footage eventually gets lost and memories fade. I’m glad we have a record like this even though it can be hard to do.
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