This week we have a bumper episode and have not one guest, but three! Our episode is all about the fact that infertility knows no colour, meaning that infertility doesn’t care about the colour of your skin – it impacts us all regardless but there are very unique challenges, and some similarities faced by differing communities.

First up we chat to Vanessa Hay

Talking about the issue of infertility within Black communities. Vanessa described how multi-layered up fertility issues were with other social-cultural things like faith

“When you are trying to build a family, you feel like everyone else is affected. Your whole family are invested and I felt it was too much pressure to go through, so it took me a while to talk about it. Then you have to deal with comments such as ‘Why you going through IVF it’s not something that we do’

Vanessa chose to only share her experience after she was pregnant, she was 27 when they were trying..

She spoke about how Infertility has no boundaries in terms of what you go through and how it feels and how she felt she couldn’t get anything from her community as she wasn’t sharing so she needs to go elsewhere. She went on chat rooms… and realising there was the Instagram community… However the nuances in her journey -such as how to approach nosey aunties and uncles / the faith-based / they weren’t being covered in this predominantly white community.

Vanessa spoke to Metro about her experience of going through IVF as a black woman had so much traction. People thanking her for sharing it. People saying they were also going through it.

Women were saying this is something I’m going through but don’t feel comfortable talking to my friends as it’s not something that happens with Black women - started the conversation to help us feel less alone.

Vanessa said how people talking back to her and she then seeing other black women bloggers starting the conversation helped her feel less alone. It was reciprocal and reassuring. She explained how ‘If there is already a perception in a community and you aren’t seeing people that look like you talking about it further breeds the idea that this isn’t the type of thing you might go through. ‘

There is still shame within Black communities assumption of virility

Vanessa spoke about Noni Martens who has been talking about how black women are raised to be Mother - which s something we spoke more with Christine about later in the episode. There is an assumption that black women are apparently ‘hyper fertile’ Vanessa also explained her concerns about celebrity - saying how ‘There is also the perception of IVF is also that people are choosing what babies they have due to the celebrity association. As people don’t understand it. If someone is choosing it they are guaranteed to get pregnant, that she has decided to now get pregnant… like you are trying to take matters into your own hands

She is now focusing more on Reproductive and Gynacolgical - having lost babies she has realised she still has work to do in the education she is sharing.

Next, we welcome back a friend of the podcast Dr Christine Ekechi. Christine is a consultant gynaecologist at Imperial College NHS Trust and a spokesperson for Racial Equality at the RCOG. Christine is passionate about tackling the healthcare inequalities of women. We last saw, and interviewed, Christine in a very busy and noisy British Library in London, just before lockdown.

We wanted to chat with Christine about the recent paper, shared by the HFEA, on the ethnic diversity infertility treatment and how using the term BAME is no longer acceptable. Christine is against defining women by... 

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