A Hindu priest came to visit my grandmother and as we sat she mentioned to him that I was trying to have a baby and he proceeded to tell me a story about chickens.
He explained that there are two types of chickens, black chickens and white chickens. The white chickens are the lean ones that produce the eggs and the black chickens can’t produce the eggs and they’re just used for their meat. Moral of the story, fat people can’t have babies. It took everything in me to not leap over the table and knock him to the ground.
After a few years of IVF and IUI with no success, I looked into other options. I started looking for an egg donor that would have a similar color. I started asking my minority neighbors how dark they were when born.
Mother said “don’t tell anyone” just do what you need to do and don’t tell.
Couldn’t adopt , the issue was bringing a non-Indian child into the family or a child as I was told by an aunt, that didn’t have the same blood-line as the rest of the family. A child that may look different. She even went so far as to say that she didn’t know if she could love a child that was adopted.
I was nearly ready to pay the one Indian egg donor that I could find online nearly ten thousand dollars for her egg. My husband freaked when I told him to take out a second mortgage on our house for the donor. Luckily my doctor talked me out of it and encouraged me to try acupuncture. I started treatment and after six weeks I was pregnant naturally without even knowing it. Since then I have been blessed with two beautiful sons.
But the stigma remains for some Indian women. Being barren is almost like curse in our culture. Your role in life as a woman is to cook, clean and make a baby for your husband. The mindset of the older generation is that he will leave you and find another woman who can give him children. Fortunately things are starting to change.
Being the black chicken of the family, I decided to scream it from the mountain top. Yes, I’m infertile and I bet there are at least five other people in this room that are going through the same thing! I can’t tell you how many times, someone would come over to me at family functions and whisper in my ear that they wanted to talk to me later.
For those that know me, I speak my mind. In doing so I’ve come out of the dark ages and I’m helping others. I may not be feeding hungry and homeless, raise money for shelters, but in my own small way, I’m changing a life. I’m opening up conversations that may not have happened if I didn’t share mine.That's why I started my own company to help educate and empower others through education to overcome infertility with A Family of My Own Fertility & Adoption Conference featured around the country. My business partner Elizabeth Carellas and I both went through our own painful journeys and today we're on a mission to make sure others know they have options.
When I get a call or an email from someone I met that felt inspired to talk to someone about their fertility and they are now parents, my heart gets a little warmer and I know that I’m now realizing the answer to the question that I asked for five years: “Why me?”
