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Actress Jess Impiazzi has opened up about her experience with the NHS after recently announcing that she's pregnant with her first baby through IVF. It was a long journey for Jess to fall pregnant, but the actress faced ongoing health issues before she was finally able to go through the process. Speaking to Express.co.uk ahead of her new film Jitters coming out, she explained that her medical concerns were not just IVF related. She said: "I was getting really, really sick. I had lupus and no one knew, I was overly stressed about a lot of things going on and my body just gave up."

However, nobody could work out why she was so unwell, she discovered that she had Primary Ovarian Insufficiency (POI) which is the loss of normal ovarian function before age 40, which affects around 1% of women. Jess explained that this can be caused through lupus.

She continued: "Nobody knew that, because the doctors hadn't checked me for that. It almost felt like a failing in working out what was going on, but at all my check ups I've got all different specialists, from a gynecologist to a heart specialist, so there's so many parts but I feel like I'm having to go to each one with the paperwork because it doesn't always get sent over.

"It is quite a messy field, in my experience, but I don't think I'm the only one to have that."

Jess continued: "You've got to advocate for yourselfn owadays I think, and really look into it. I think doctors need to get all your records and the first thing you want to do is look through everything and connect the dots, because surely that's the way forward. But it doesn't happen."

Jess explained that she was asked by one doctor how she knew she had lupus, despite it being in her medical files, because when she moved area her notes weren't sent over, so she's in the process of doing it manually.

She continued: "It's hard because the NHS are so stretched, I can't blame the doctors, but I think when you're in the room, when you have that 10-15 minutes, really look into it. I feel like in the beginning I was brushed off a lot, I was told, 'you're young, you're healthy," but I wasn't.

Jess added: "I'd like to see more budget put into women's healthcare, to fix problems like this."