My experience with surrogacy and donor conception as a British Asian woman by Kreena Dhiman

One of the toughest things about being a Mum after a long and gruelling infertility journey is the invisible scars that we carry with us every day, the hairline fractures in our hearts and the triggers that we contend with daily.

For women from ethnic minorities, those scars sometimes run a little deeper. As a South Asian Woman found that Culture, Conditioning and Colonisation played a huge role in my infertility story.

I was 33 years old when I was diagnosed with breast cancer; a diagnosis that ultimately left me infertile. The tumours in my breast were hormonally sensitive so alongside chemotherapy, radiotherapy and a double mastectomy, my treatment involved being placed immediately into a ten-year-long medical menopause, shutting down my ovaries and crushing my hopes of ever falling pregnant naturally.  Three years after completing chemo and radiotherapy I was tragically admitted to A&E whilst on holiday in Canada.  I was unable to breathe and struggled to move my body, the eventual diagnosis was acute heart failure, secondary to chemotherapy.  The very drug that saved my life from cancer, unfortunately, damaged my heart beyond repair.  I was left fighting for my life and my family were advised that my prognosis was incredibly poor.

I had been mindful of my potential struggle to conceive since the words ‘you have breast cancer’ rocked my world.  I’d used forums, searched social media and looked within my community for a girl like me experiencing the same predicament as me, but I struggled to find her.

I eventually learnt that self-advocacy was going to be key to navigating this minefield.

After lengthy discussions with my oncology team, we were permitted to undergo an urgent round of fertility preservation before I began chemotherapy. We knew that the drugs I was going to be given could permanently damage my ovaries, but we also knew that the hormones I needed to inject could aggravate the cancer growing inside of me.  Balancing the act of saving my life alongside creating a new life was mind-blowing, it’s a journey that many young cancer patients go through, but one that is given so little airtime or support.  I couldn’t find it in me to celebrate the embryos we created during those incredibly dark days; all I could think of was whether I’d wiped precious time off my life by going through the procedure. I signed consent forms to allow my husband to use our embryos if I passed and found a perverse comfort in the fact that if the worst were to happen, at least I had potentially found a way to leave a little piece of me behind on planet earth before my time was up.

My entire team agreed that breaking my hormone therapy would be incredibly risky and would increase the chances of my breast cancer returning – something that none of us wanted.  I knew however that if I survived cancer, I wanted to have a family, I wanted to be a Mum.  Procreation in the South Asian community is not just a given, it’s an expectation. Infertility is rarely spoken about and alternate paths to parenthood are rarely discussed.  Traditionally, females in South Asian households are seen as a burden, in some parts of South Asia, women are still married off with a dowry and sons are celebrated whilst daughters are commiserated. This narrative has evolved in recent times, however, the imprints of the past still remain, and the requirements for many South Asian girls to be the smartest, prettiest, most successful and certainly fertile still exist.  These behaviours stem from a community torn apart by colonialism and are the aftermath of a community suffering from poverty and scarcity.  Survival of the fittest became paramount and these ideals of what women ‘should do’ were unhealthily perpetuated.

Whilst I was raised as a modern British Indian, educated in the UK and integrated well into Western society, the conditioning of the generations that came before me massively shaped the woman I became.

In many situations, the conditions were helpful. I’m resilient, I’m well educated, I’m driven and have a strong faith, but in more subtle ways, conditioning, particularly cultural conditioning made my journey a lonely one, and one that very few brown girls like me truly understood.

When I embarked on my IVF journey, I couldn’t find any South Asians sharing their experience, and when I acknowledged that Surrogacy would become my only path to parenthood, I struggled knowing that I was the only brow girl in the room.

The diagnoses of breast cancer and heart failure confirmed that not only would I be unable to naturally conceive, I would also be unable to carry a pregnancy – the health implications were simply too severe.

After much soul-searching, we embarked on an Independent UK Surrogacy journey.  There was so much to learn, so many obstacles to overcome and so much educating to do on this route to parenthood, but we took it on and decided to be the change that we wanted to see in this space.

After meeting with a handful of ladies who ultimately were not our perfect match, in late 2016, we met with an incredible woman, Ina, who went on to become our first surrogate.

The journey was long and complex, there were a million bumps in the road, however, in April 2018, 9 months after our very first single embryo transfer, we became parents for the first time to our daughter Amaala. Amaala was conceived using one of our pre-chemotherapy embie babies and is the light of our lives, she’s the Laksmi (Goddess of wealth, power and prosperity) in our home.  In Arabic, the name Amaala means hope and our darling girl was the hope we needed amidst such adversity.

Following Amaala’s birth, I set up a podcast along with a fellow Mummy through surrogacy Fran to help girls just like us. For me, the drive was to provide free advice to infertile couples on this path to parenthood without any shame, stigma or fear.  It just so happened that it also became a huge educational piece for many of my South Asian sisters, and our story became one of hope for so many girls like me who struggled to find another brown person in this space.

Shortly after Amaala’s birth, we looked to become parents again. We had always dreamt of more than one child and having navigated surrogacy once, the prospect of a second journey felt achievable. However, we had two major roadblocks. Our first surro was unable to go on another journey and our pre-chemo embryos no longer existed.

So our next step was to find an egg donor to start bringing our dream baby number two to life. In my community, there is so much narrative around being loyal to family, about blood being blood and about shared genes being the definition of family. So, this part of our journey again wasn’t plain sailing. After much research, and in the knowledge that the South Asian UK egg donor banks were almost non-existent, we embarked on a known egg donation journey.  We found a donor, an Indian girl who looked just like me in South Africa.  We worked with her agency to fly her to North Cyprus, where me, Mr D and Amaala met her, and created embryos using her eggs.  This was an absolute honour, to know the woman who would one day be pivotal in my journey to Motherhood was humbling and soul nourishing.

By the end on 2019, we had also met and built a strong relationship with a second surrogate, the amazing woman who went on to make me a Mummy again.

Laura was a dream, she was an experienced surro and completed our family in more ways that we could ever have expected.

In February 2020, just weeks before international borders closed due to the covid-19 pandemic, Laura and I flew back to Cyprus for our embryo transfer, and by March 2020, just as the world fell into silence, it was confirmed that we were indeed, pregnant again, our prayers had been answered.

Navigating a surrogacy pregnancy through the pandemic was difficult. We weren’t able to be at our babies scans, we weren’t able to feel them kick and we weren’t able to support Laura in the way we would have liked to. Fortunately, she was superhuman and took it all in her stride.

In August 2020, after a very short, 6 month pregnancy, our TRIPLET sons entered this world.  Tiny 3llb babies, 10 weeks premature they fought daily to stay earthside.

We spent 8 long weeks in the neonatal units, the boys were tiny and fragile with so many complex needs. We relocated for a short while to be close to them, allowing us more bonding time and precious moments with our beautiful surro Laura.

Fast forward to today and the triplets, Aanav, Arvaarn and Anaayan are 3 and Amaala is 5.

The boys have fair, white skin and Anaayan had piercing blue eyes – their appearance – a constant reminder that families can be built in many ways.

Our story is one of tragedy and hope, of grief and gratitude, of surrender and fortitude.

I don’t believe that any of this was luck or coincidence, I firmly believe that every member of our family was put on this planet for a reason.  To change mindsets, to provide hope and to inspire others to keep going, even when the seas feel uncertain because one day, the tides will change and your dreams will come true.

I’m so proud to be an Ambassador for The Fertility Show for a second year running and hope that anyone reading this article, finds the courage they need to keep going.

With love, K x