In this week's Fitness Fertility Podcast, Maria interviews Karina DHiman who shares her journey of being diagnosed with breast cancer and infertility at the age of 33. Karina's cancer treatment led to heart failure at just 36 years old, but before starting treatment, she and her husband went through urgent IVF to freeze as many embryos as they could. They later decided that surrogacy was their best pathway to parenthood, and now have four children. Karina also shares how her experiences led her to start a blog and a platform called The Intended Parent, which provides support and advice for those navigating the surrogacy journey.
In this week's Fitness Fertility Podcast, Maria interviews Karina Dhiman who shares her journey of being diagnosed with breast cancer and infertility at the age of 33. Karina's cancer treatment led to heart failure at just 36 years old, but before starting treatment, she and her husband went through urgent IVF to freeze as many embryos as they could. They later decided that surrogacy was their best pathway to parenthood, and now have four children. Karina also shares how her experiences led her to start a blog and a platform called The Intended Parent, which provides support and advice for those navigating the surrogacy journey.
[00:02:28] Infertility after breast cancer.
[00:04:09] Fertility preservation in oncology.
[00:07:47] Infertility and cancer diagnosis.
[00:09:54] Fertility treatment funding battles.
[00:13:19] Infertility treatment difficulties.
[00:16:05] Surrogacy and cultural fears.
[00:19:17] Independent surrogacy and agencies.
[00:23:29] Surrogacy and unexpected connections.
[00:26:43] Surrogacy and donor conception.
[00:28:51] Known donation as a solution. [00:31:41] Sacrificing for Pregnancy.
Kreena Dhima contact details
https://www.kreenadhiman.com/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/kreenadhiman/?hl=en-gb
Maria, the PT who's on a mission to help women and couples achieve their baby dreams!
Website: Fitness Fertility
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DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website.
00:00 Kreena I kept saying to myself, what do you want? Motherhood or pregnancy? And the answer was always motherhood. I was willing to sacrifice nine months of pregnancy for a lifetime of motherhood.
00:10 Maria Hi, I'm Maria. And I'm Roisin. And welcome to the Fitness Fertility Podcast. This podcast is all about how improving your physical fitness can help support you on your very own fertility journey. I'm a personal trainer who specialises in training women with fertility problems. I myself have PCOS and have had two
00:30 beautiful boys, and I'm on a mission to help you do the same.
Roisin Before we get into it, we will be discussing adult themes such as where do babies come from, pregnancy loss and bereavement. We may also be sweary from time to time. We are optimistic, light-hearted girls, but we know this is a really
stressful time for some of our listeners. We respect that.
Maria In this week's episode of the Fitness Fertility Podcast, I am delighted to welcome Karina Diman to the show. Karina was diagnosed with breast cancer and then infertility at 33 years old. Her cancer treatment led to heart failure at the age of just 36, three years after treatment began. Before starting treatment, Karina and her husband went through urgent IVF in an attempt to freeze as many umbrellas as they could. And then when they were ready, they decided that surrogacy was their best pathway to parenthood. They now have four children, their eldest daughter Amala and triplet boys. From this experience, Karina's blog was born, with each entry addressed lovingly to Amala. She has also joined forces with Frances Simmons, and together they are founders of The Intended Parent, a platform designed to give you information, support and advice to navigate your surrogacy journey. They also have an award-winning podcast by the same name, The Intended Parent. Karina is also the founder of Karina Diman Changing Conversations, an organization established to change outdated narratives when it comes to breast cancer, infertility awareness and cultural conditioning. Karina is also a fertility ambassador for The Fertility Show and it was an absolute pleasure meeting Karina at the show this year. Karina, welcome to the Fitness Fertility Podcast.
Krenna Hello, hello, how are we?
Maria We are very good, thank you so much for joining us. I think we could say that your 30s were perhaps not what anyone would ever plan for, let alone expect. Definitely wasn't in the five-year plan any of that. Not in the five-year plan, not what you get taught at school. You experienced breast cancer, heart failure and infertility. I wondered if, did the seriousness of the infertility.
02:28 Kreena diagnosis really register with you at the time? Yeah, you know now when I look back I just think how on earth did I get through it? The enormity of my early 30s was just immense, you know, and the amount of life-changing things that happened in the space of three years was, it was astronomical and I do quite often talk about cancer and infertility and you know how brutal that space is and I hadn't struggled with fertility until I was diagnosed with cancer. So the whole IVF concept was so alien to me and you know in some ways it was a blessing and in some ways it was a curse because I think the blessing was that because I hadn't researched it or I hadn't been a part of infertility and I hadn't struggled with infertility, I didn't have the years and years of heartbreak and trauma that so many of us do have. What I did sort of feel was that I was unprepared. The lines from my oncologist were that his job was to save my life, not to create a new life. I remember those words and you know out of everything I've heard in oncology rooms for the decade that followed, those are the words that will never leave me because it was true, it was heartbreakingly true. He had to save my life but for me the question was if you save my life what's the quality of life after that if I don't have children? The sad thing is many of us are finding ourselves in that room with cancer occurrences being so much more prevalent. I definitely see a lot of young women being diagnosed with cancer before they've had the opportunity to start a family and when you're in the oncologist's room yes their job is definitely to save your life but you know I really am advocating and pushing for fertility specialists in that space as well because whilst I acknowledge that an oncologist's job is to save your life this is a part of a whole package of care and if our people being offered fertility preservation or even now as a mum of a blended family I have children who were donor egg conceived and my own egg conceived you know no one had the conversation with me on is there another way of you becoming a mum if we don't freeze your eggs. To put it into context I had an estrogen, a fully estrogen and progesterone sensitive cancer. My cancer was fully hormonal and it was feeding off my hormones. To go into IVF it's dangerous you know you know that the hormones you're going to pump into your body are the very hormones that are feeding your tumour but there was no counselling or no conversations around okay queen that that is a risk that your cancer will grow as you go through IVF. No one said that these are all the other options to parenthood it's literally like conventionally do it yourself with IVF assisted or adopt. In hindsight I just don't I don't really know how we got through it I feel like the IVF and the infertility was very much a by-product of cancer being the main event and I was on a train I talk about it all the time I'm just on a train and it's the cancer train and it makes multiple stops and one of the stops happen to be fertility treatment and you know you get on that train and you stop and you do you have a surgery and you have your breast removed and then you get told oh this is your treatment plan you get to the next stop and something changes and your treatment plan changes then you get to the next stop and someone says oh by the way you might be left infertile and you do what you have to do to deal with that and then you get to chemotherapy and then and you just deal with it and in a way I think because I was so uninformed about cancer as well as infertility I mean I had no clue what was going on the naivety maybe protected me a little bit but it also meant
I was immensely underprepared that meant that it was a very difficult path to tread.
05:58 Maria I find dealing with infertility alone hard enough and I just can't imagine being in my 30s you know doing my 30s thing dating getting married that type of thing completely normal one day and then the next day I think you said you find out was that a lump in your breast and the inverted nipple and was it your husband that encouraged you to go to the GP and then your GP kind of tried to turn
you away is that right?
06:23 Kreena It was I didn't have a lump I had an inverted nipple and I didn't know what the signs of breast cancer were at all despite it my grandmother had had it twice a part of important conversations that I have of being a South Asian in this space because culturally don't talk about ill health we feel that we have to wear this coat of armour and because of that we find it difficult to be vulnerable so I didn't know no one had told me so I didn't know what symptoms were my left nipple became inverted I literally thought I'd worn a bra that was too tight that was how naive I was and then after a while yeah my husband said to me look maybe go to the doctor that doesn't look normal as soon as he said it I was like yeah maybe that's not normal and I started googling it and then literally my stomach felt through the floor as soon as I put my symptoms into google but then I tried to get a doctor's appointment quite quickly and was told that it was nothing to worry about and I probably had a blocked milk duct because I was 33 and hadn't had children and fortunately by that time I was really afraid to settle I'm not leaving the room unless I get a referral and she wanted me to wait two months and let's see if it settles no one will ever know but I feel in my heart of hearts if I'd waited two months there's every chance I wouldn't be standing here because my cancer was that aggressive was diagnosed with stage three cancer but had quite a lot of lymph nodes involved stage three it's still a curable cancer as soon as it gets to stage four it's incurable it was really tough to go through a cancer diagnosis but then to go through infertility alongside it I had 14 days to get through IVF preserve the embryos and get into a chemo chair it's just immense this is one of the things I wanted to ask you about they refer to it as urgent IVF is that the right terminology I think that it can be called whatever your team call it you know fertility preservation urgent treatment whatever it is but it's basically a case of a person needs to start chemo pretty quickly how can we get her cycle in sync to get as many eggs harvested and embryos created as possible and for me it was bizarrely fortunate that the day I saw my oncology was like the 10th of October the next day was my birthday the 11th of October and my period arrived and that was my happy birthday Carina like you were starting IVF within 14 days I had you know been through the process and you know preserved the embryos and popped them on ice and then you
know within three weeks I was starting chemo
08:35 Maria oh my goodness I mean like you say most people have quite often months if not years to prepare for IVF you know they train with me they do the nutrition they do the reflexology they do everything and you were just straight in in and out basically in that 14 day period so after you you've had fertility preservation you knew it was always part of the deal that you would then be starting chemo for your breast cancer and I heard you say that you lost spirit when you were going through chemo and this next bit actually made me really emotional that you were thinking I've just made babies and I'm never going to live to see them would you mind just telling us a little bit more about that experience?
09:14 Kreena Yeah I think I was fully aware that the drugs I was on were potentially going to aggravate a cancer so it was very much for me the IVF process just had to be done there was no chance to connect to the process because mentally I didn't have the headspace to do it and then there was no chance to connect to the embryos or feel they were born from love because they weren't they were born from necessity and I had a real fear that if I was doing this and I created this embryo but then I caused myself to be even more sick like how did I feel about my my choices and how would I feel about those embryos like did they make me sick and it was really complicated and so I didn't connect with them and I also had this really frustrating situation go on where you're diagnosed with cancer then you're told you need to go have IVF you know that your employment situation is going to be turned upside down and you don't know where your money is going to come from in terms of jobs and I was hoping that I'd get funded for my IVF because I lived in a funded postcode so as soon as my referral went in I said to my GP can you put in a funding request for this IVF treatment because you know I didn't have loads of money and she immediately said you know she did it and then called me back like literally a day or two later and just said oh your funding's been rejected and I was what's happening here and basically I got rejected despite living in a funded postcode I got rejected because I didn't meet the criteria of having tried to conceive for two to three years before looking to get fertility treatment and I was a bit like you can do the IVF there'll be nothing for you to do because my ovaries would be damaged from the chemotherapy and then I was angry because when we were having to get credit cards out to pay for bills I was just categorically told that I won't be funded and so I went off and did my homework and found on the NICE guidelines that actually there's a separate protocol for people who are going to potentially lose fertility through chemotherapy and they should be funded at this point I've had one breast removed I'm looking at chemo coming up I'm about to start IVF treatment and now I've had to fight a funding battle and I had to go to my CCG I had to go to my MP I went back to my GP to get an appeal put in place and I just said look these are the NICE guidelines and so my GP was like well the appeal is not going to be successful there's no point in putting it through and I was a bit like what's the point of an appeal process if you've already made a decision so I wasn't kind of going to let that pass and I ended up finding two or three people who sit on the CCG wrote to them about my story and told them how it just didn't make any sense what they were saying and they just said that well we've got to take it away it doesn't fit protocol and we wouldn't normally fund blah blah blah and I went through the whole of my sort of medicated cycle and I got an email on the day of my collection to say they'll fund but we went through all of that and I just was like why is there another battle here you know as if there isn't enough going on that now we're going to fight about money and it was just ridiculous because I knew if I waited another two years they would fund me but the outcome would be probably really poor and you know as patients we just have to really self-advocate it was messy and therefore the connection to my embryos was really not there because I was just sort of clinging on by my fingernails at this point and when I was so uninformed at that point I didn't even know what day my embryos were frozen at until we tried to use them that I realized there were day ones and there was I didn't even know there was a thing like day one day five day three you know I didn't know what blast assist was I didn't know what any of that was when we eventually tried to conceive with these embryos and I you know my fertility clinic said oh we have to grow them to day five and you'll probably lose x percent oh well I was under the impression I had like 12 or 13 brilliant embryos and they said oh well when it's cancer related in fertility they freeze at day one and give you a high number so you're actually very hopeful about what the future holds. I did not know that. I guess there was a good thing because I did think we had a really good number of embryos maybe we did you know when it came to it we only managed to get the one that turned into my baby girl now I look back and I'm like I actually was really uninformed about what was going on with my own treatment.
13:14 Maria The process you went through it's really messy because there's so many people involved I'm imagining like a Venn diagram you know you've got like fertility here you've got cancer here you've got cardiology here and to be honest with you I just assumed naively that when going through this process all the different departments would talk to each other but it sounds like from what you're saying they were really separate it was not a Venn diagram they were separate circles they were not together.
13:37 Kreena What is lacking is just one point of contact that you could come back to or like one very compassionate nurse who can support you through everything you have your Macmillan nurse or your cancer nurse but then you'd also have a separate fertility nurse and they don't talk to each other and it's just a
lot of different people to manage and for anyone who's going through cancer and infertility at the same time your brain's scrambled egg.
I13:57 Maria know it's not funny but I quite like the analogy I get it. Yeah it's just a lot. Sorry to interrupt but do you know that I offer a two-week free trial on all my training plans? This means you have access to my fertility focused training plans, meal plans and accountability calls for the duration of your trial. For more information and to sign up to start your free trial get in touch at info at fitnessfertility.com and now back to the show. So you proceeded with your chemo you'd had the IVF you moved on to radiotherapy and again I didn't realise how brutal radiotherapy was but you you describe it leaving you with blisters and burns again sounds awful you knew you would then be in treatment basically for 10 years you obviously had these embryos on ice could you just talk us through the discussions you and your husband had and ultimately how did you end up deciding upon surrogacy?
14:53 Kreena At that point I was seeing my oncologist so once I finished treatment I was still seeing him every three months then every six months every time I went in I would be like what are the statistics if I want to come off medication and every time he'd say you've got to wait you know you've got to wait until at least year five if I waited five years I was going to be 38 or 39 and I was like can I wait that long to be a mom and you know do I want to go earlier and what would that look like if I don't want to wait until then and also if I'm honest my own mortality played a huge role in this so I was like if I break medication and I get pregnant and then my cancer comes back and that becomes a stage four cancer how do we feel as a family at that point you know and how do we feel towards the life we've created and would I resent that child because actually in bringing that child to life I paid the price of my own life these are conversations I had really in my own head before I said them to anyone I was like right Karina how are you going to feel I think throughout my treatment and the older I'd got the more sort of spiritual I'd become and the more connected to myself I'd become and I was able to look at situations a bit more pragmatically and I kept saying to myself what do you want motherhood or pregnancy and the answer was always motherhood I was willing to sacrifice nine months of pregnancy for a lifetime of motherhood so I think I decided on surrogacy before anyone else decided on surrogacy because of that and because of the statistics my oncologist kept throwing at me every time I went to his room he would say okay give me five minutes and I'll go and get the stats and the risk of recurrence was high if I came off my drugs and so I had to figure out what I wanted to do and then once I'd made my decision I sort of said to my husband like this is the only way I can see us becoming parents you know we've got the embryos if someone else carries for us we can still become parents but he very much wasn't on he wasn't on the page at that point in time he was a bit like bury his head in the sand think that it's all going to be fine and he some other miracle way of becoming a parent would deliver itself to us but I think I always knew that it wasn't going to happen the problem we had is I'd never seen an Indian girl become a mum in this way I still haven't seen an Indian girl go through what I've been through so the stories of hope were very sparse for us and therefore it was easier for him to believe like the hearsay and you know that oh surrogacy is going to go wrong and you know you can't afford surrogacy and you know she'll keep your baby and all of those things that the fears that we have which actually now I know are very unlikely to happen but at that point when you have no experience and no one to guide you they're very real fears so actually I would say for the first year if my decision to go through surrogacy he wasn't on the same page I remember just talking to one of my very good friends and she just goes well to me when you've got time what you'll need to do in that time is get yourself fully informed so that he comes along for the ride and that's what I did I spent the next year I think researching laws looking for people who'd done this looking at all our options like internationally at home all the different types of surrogacy commercial surrogacy altruistic surrogacy you know gestational surrogacy traditional just did so much homework and then I sort of eventually just said to him like you know now you know this is the only way you know once we'd come out of the real storm of cancer I was like you know we want to become parents we've been gifted life and then I took him to sort of some surrogacy conferences and we both realized actually that was not the world for us like agency-based surrogacy just we stuck out like sore thumbs we'd gone to a couple of meetups and again we were the only people of colour in the room and I had a real fear that a white surrogate wouldn't carry a brown baby you know that sounds ridiculous probably to a white person they'll be like oh no that's a stupid thing to be afraid of but actually when you come from a minority community you have these fears and apprehensions because of the society we've all grown up in and lived in like you know obviously we today we live in we live in a world where racism isn't as outward as it was in the 80s when I was growing up and people were shouting horrid things at you in the street but I grew up in that we were really targeted for the colour of our skin as I grew up and so that conditioning stays with you the fear is the fear and it definitely manifested at that point I was like no one's going to carry a brown baby and once we decided on independent surrogacy I remember going through the forums and scrolling scrolling scrolling just looking for a surrogate who was a person of colour and not finding one and and thinking that that was it our chances were automatically reduced yeah I remember even though it didn't feel right I'd written a check out to sign up to an agency because I was like well I'm gonna have to just you know put my emotions aside I need to just get through this and then a girl from a breast cancer forum that I'd been part of and I'd posted on there about how I've thought I made these embryos and I'm never going to be a mum to them she just said to me have you tried independent surrogacy you just use Facebook and you know see if you get to know someone as weird as it sounds it wasn't that weird to me because I'd already had a cancer community on private Facebook groups so I know how powerful these groups can be and the relationships you can form in them so it made it easier for me to then jump into online Facebook-based surrogacy forums in the independent space once I joined there's no looking back
20:01 Maria I am really glad that you explained the worries you had because one of the questions I was going to ask you what were your genuine fears about surrogacy and yeah as a white woman I had not anticipated what you were going to say about skin color and I'm being completely honest with that because you're absolutely right because it isn't something I've experienced the Facebook thing when
I first heard about that it blew my mind in my head it's more like a kind of more corporate one and then a more you meet people in a group is that kind of the difference between them there are different agencies out there some will bring you into their own chat rooms and forums and you find your own match and they'll do some sort of vetting of everyone who's in their community beforehand to make sure it's a safe space but it's very much up to you to still find your match some will bring you into their space and then if you want a matching service you pay a premium and then they'll help you find a match from their own pool of surrogates that they might have on their books and some will hold your hand through the entire process and you pay a different fee based on the level of service don't quote me because I don't know the latest sort of figures but I think the sort of the cheapest is about two grand to join and the most expensive is like 20 grand there's a broad spectrum and that's reflective of the level of support you get through your journey the one thing I realized at the fertility show when I was talking and I was explaining this to people is that there are a few different ways you could do this do independent surrogacy which means you don't join one of these agencies the emphasis is on you to find your match you go into chat rooms and you read introductory posts from other people you sort of put yourself out there it's a bit like dating that's that's the only thing I can say it's like you're not talking to people thinking you're the one who's going to be my surrogate you're talking to people so they get to know who you are as an individual and if they like who you are as an individual if they think you resonate with them then hopefully conversation flows and you form a match you know it's not going to happen overnight it's it's a long investment and that's the thing if you are doing it independently you do have to be willing to put the time in the rewards of independent surrogacy are reflective of the effort you put in you've got three options and if you're doing it on your own you've got an 80z and it's a paper 80z and you will get there you'll just have to read the pages and you'll have to make sure you go in the right directions and accept that you're going to make a few u-turns and jump on the wrong road and find your way back or you can go through one of the top end agencies where you literally just call an uber and let them drive you all the way and then you know that's going to cost you a lot more than the paper 80z and then i guess what we try to offer through the intended parent is like a middle ground and that for me is a bit like when you get in your own car you put google maps or ways on and they take you there so you're not on your own you've got someone guiding you we step of the way to whatever the fastest and best route is for you to get there but you're still going to have to drive the car on your own and you're still going to have to pay for the fuel in your car so it's more expensive than an 80z but it's cheaper than an uber that's what i wished i'd had when i went through it because you know we did the indie stuff on our own and it was really complex and there was so much to so much to get our heads around especially sort of with the nuances and the lore and stuff and it was it was a lot and i think Fran he's my co-host and myself we both sort of became mums and we were a bit god i wish there was something out there so we decided to put the podcast together and pay it forward it's been such a journey yeah i met my first match through independent surrogacy and you know i kissed a few frogs before i found my princess charming when i met you know i just knew i just knew that she was the one you know we had so much in common we were aligned in so many ways i'm very grateful that she crossed my path and actually weirdly she came into my life when i was almost dying from acute heart failure it was absolutely bonkers so in the years after my cancer diagnosis like the irony saty and i took a holiday to celebrate the end of life with cancer and our new beginning and on that holiday i felt very ill i struggled to breathe i couldn't i literally couldn't lie down a lot of sort of denying there was anything wrong ended up in a and e from a and e ended up in cardiac intensive care and was diagnosed with acute heart failure and was told i would probably die within 24 hours that my family should consider coming over to say that the final goodbyes and we couldn't believe how can life be so cruel how can we get through cancer to now be told i'm going to die from heart failure i don't know who or what saved me but i you know i definitely believe that i've got some angels up there who keep pulling me through we're stuck in vancouver i can't fly to england because my heart's too weak and in those moments ena messaged me just to say oh by the way i've seen everything you posted on surrogacy forums and i'd love to get to know you more and and i remember texting her going oh yeah i'm just on holiday i didn't tell her like i was in this hospital ward i was like oh yeah i'll talk to you when i'm back maybe and then after a while i was like look i'm really ill i don't know what's gonna happen and then she was like oh you're gonna be fine you'll be fine you can see some sights and you'll be back i've got every faith and when you're back let's meet up and i think what she didn't realize is she gave me so much hope when i might have been losing hope this complete stranger was just telling me that was gonna be all right and that i was gonna come back and she gave me everything to live for because she was potentially gonna make me a mom so you know we came back and was talking to ena and we we just kept chatting and you know i think it was really bizarre because i'd had an awakening that's the only thing i can call it in in the hospital room in vancouver that i wouldn't die and you know that i had a life to live and no matter what people were telling me i was like i'm still gonna be a mom like i i know it in my heart of hearts i know it so i'm gonna pursue this conversation with this incredible woman i'm gonna get out this wheelchair and i'm gonna i'm gonna get back on my feet and i did you know the um my heart failure was in 2016 by 2017 i you know i had a good level of fitness and you know i'd rehabbed myself and my cardiologist had essentially saved my life um and we were doing really well and the the work that i put in to look after my heart was immense and to get it ticking again and you know i'm sure there's some divine source of energy that is keeping me here there was a lot of blood sweat and tears from my end as well to get back onto
26:08 Maria this path to motherhood there is no doubt in my mind that you are an incredibly determined hard-working woman that does not take no for an answer not to cancer not a heart disease not to fertility you've just said no absolutely not i'm going to be a mom so your first surrogacy experience was with amala your daughter and obviously you have a genetic relatedness there which is amazing and then your second surrogacy experience because of all the health issues you've had you actually ended up doing donor egg conception and surrogacy which i just think is an incredible feat of
26:43 Kreena science and humanity and love could you just talk to us a little bit about that yes we went through amala's pregnancy and and we didn't have any embryos left to that transfer but actually that put massive pressure on ena when she was in her two-week wait because she knew there wasn't any embryos left so she was like this one has to stick and fortunately she did and you know we brought amala into the world in 2018 but i think my husband and i immediately knew we'd wanted more than one child we're indian and you know indian families are generally big families we're so close to our cousins i've never really envisioned a family with one child and i know that sounds selfish or ridiculous as someone who's been through infertility like be grateful with what you've got but we definitely both wanted more than one to have the second child we we had to find a second surrogate which was quite complex in itself there was a lot of guilt you know when i went back on the forum saying i want a sibling journey i felt so guilty for taking the surrogate away from someone who didn't even have a single child that was really difficult to navigate but you know i wanted to live out my story you know i just had to do what i had to do we had our second surrogate laura and we also had to find an egg donor when it came to egg donation we had looked at the uk some of the banks in the uk and we were told every time that south asian donors are very hard to come by and we could be waiting years to find a south asian donor and i guess i'd always had this vision that my family would look the same i've just been raised in a community where everyone looks like their parents and the same skin color and the same hair color and so it's really important that i have a donor who's got the same skin color and hair color as me so i had to cast the net a bit wider and in doing that i'd had a conversation with someone in the surrogacy community about egg donation and i'd sort of talked about how i was worried about the connection i would have given that i wasn't carrying the baby inside of me so i wasn't just losing genetics i was losing pregnancy and i was worried how i would feel about having a blended family and would i love a mile or more like those were all genuine fears and in these conversations i was having one surrogate said to me oh have you thought about known donation and i was like what is that and so you know she talked about such and such as looking into it in cyprus and he's got this agency and they share profiles of people in their adult life and you get to meet them and stuff and i didn't realize it but that was what i was looking for i was looking for connection much in the same way i'm connected to my surrogates and my surrogates know who my children are i kind of wanted a form of connection to my egg donor and it also meant that going through this route meant that there was a pool the agency i was working with the egg donor agency was from south africa and they had um indian donors on their books so it meant that i could get the donor i was looking for as well as the connection i was looking for so the triplets were honestly the air miles traveled to create them and i probably need to plant a lot of trees but basically we flew from the uk to cyprus our egg donor flew from south africa to cyprus we created embryos put them on ice we met our donor which was the most incredible experience i didn't you know we were told we'd have 10 minutes to have a chat with her and we ended up talking for hours spending the next day together and forming you know a really beautiful relationship with her and that's not everyone's experience it just happened to be mine we don't have day-to-day contact with her but when the boys were born i got a message to her through the agency and the agency sent a message back and it was just beautiful and it's something i have every intention of showing my boys when they're old enough like this is the lady who gave you life that journey was really really quite enormous and again something that you know as a south asian girl i've not seen or heard anyone talk about it or you know do it in that way and i was like well if i talk about it i might help someone else do it so so i've really shared the boy's story and i think the thing that makes me laugh and you know you know the universe works in mysterious ways is you know my husband is indian and he's brown skinned brown eyes and my donor was indian brown hair black skin brown eyes and our triplets are white skinned blue eyes ashy hair you know you just cannot predict it and they they were born and i started going back to a level biology and i'm like well hold on how do genetics work to get blue eyes both parents have to have a recessive allele and i'm like going to sati where was the blue eyes from you couldn't have scripted it but the fact that they look the way they look actually reminds me every single day of how wanted they were i always say on international women's day when it comes up that a surrogacy and egg donation are the most powerful expressions of women supporting women without my surrogates without my donor and without me none of these children would be alive and for years i've beat myself up about being someone who was not capable of being pregnant or not capable of having a child in the conventional way and i think as intended mothers sometimes society looks down on us a little bit you know we're like surrogates are on a pedestal because they do this amazing act of you know giving us a child and growing a child which is true but to sacrifice pregnancy and to sacrifice that connection to your child from you know cells to fetus to baby that's immense and that strength isn't always recognized and i think i've now realized that my children won't be here if it wasn't for me and the work i put into bringing them to life and we all had equal role to play you know some some roles were physical but some roles were sheer grit determination all of them were needed very loved children in this household very loved
32:09 Maria you're an incredible woman and you've done incredible things and one of those annoying people when someone wants to give up i'm like that person what are you talking about keep going but thank goodness you have because you've now got the intended parent which is your your support platform and it's a really really really important space for everybody we will put all links in this show notes i am very very grateful for your time and really thank you for sharing your story thank you
33:10 Roisin i find her story just to be overwhelming an incredible life an incredible story
Maria i agree and i think the thing that comes through is her absolute resilience and determination and the number of times she had to self-advocate in potentially life-threatening situations it wasn't just the fertility it was the cancer and time and time again she had to absolutely fight her corner and i think the thing that came through for me was she is such an intelligent dedicated committed woman who really stuck up for herself and
Roisin thank goodness she did very impressive woman what if she just complied with that gp and went away for two months heaven knows where we've been now and because she didn't a couple of things have happened obviously recognized that she had her cancer she also has four count them four new lives in the world and that's all because she was unwilling to capitulate to someone else's point of view she stood her ground
Maria the other thing is her children kareena's children are just absolutely beautiful and she's got pictures of the triplets when they were born with the surrogate she's got pictures of her eldest and they're just absolutely beautiful and i think not only did her determination resilience and self-advocating help her and her family she's also helped so many other families so she's got all of the work she's doing around culture which is incredibly important and the work that she's doing for the surrogacy community is massively important so she's just helped so so many people thank goodness for kreena i say she's done an incredible job the intended parent check it out
Roisin so maria what will we be talking about next week next week i am delighted to be speaking to David O'Rourke who is the founder of the fantastic platform that is pro fertility and he's going to talk us through all of the incredible work they do and i will be chatting about how I’m involved with all of that work and it really is something to tune into and not to miss so tune in next week to hear from David Maria thank you so much for listening to this week's show remember to subscribe to get a shiny new episode each week and please rate comment and really importantly share with your friends especially our trying to conceive sisters you never know who's struggling and they may need that little bit of extra help
Roisin this may come as a surprise but we are not doctors we strongly recommend that you consult with your doctor before beginning any exercise or nutrition program get everything checked out first your safety is our priority this has been a worth a listen production