I’m really happy to speak to Seetal Savla, a fertility patient advocate, writer and speaker on today’s episode of Period Story podcast.
In this episode, Seetal shares:
- Why she still struggles when her period arrives each menstrual month
- Her work around challenging fertility, menstrual and menopause stigma in the South Asian community
- Why some in the South Asian community can feel shame around these topics
- A few sentences to relay when dealing with overly inquisitive family and friends
- What it feels like to be on the other side of her fertility journey and why she dislikes the term ‘success story’
- How a South Asian therapist helped unpack the cultural challenges she was facing around her fertility journey
- What it’s like to raise a third culture child
- Why her and her husband decided to give away their embryos after six years of trying to conceive
- And of course, the story of her first period
Seetal says this is her purpose and she is in a privileged position where she can share her experiences of infertility, pregnancy loss and pregnancy after loss to help other people and hopefully be a part of the change we need to see going forward.
Thank you, Seetal!
Get in touch with Seetal:
Additional resources to explore:
HFEA: ‘Fear is what holds many South Asians back from being honest about their fertility journeys’
Women’s Health UK: ‘I’m pregnant after multiple losses – and it’s a mental and emotional battle’
Metro UK: Where are all the South Asian egg donors?
HuffPost UK: When you’re a woman of colour, infertility comes with extra stigma
Stylist: ‘6 lessons I’ve learned about surviving – and thriving – after pregnancy loss’
Tommy’s: Intergenerational experiences of miscarriage
Netflix documentary: Period. End of Sentence (explores the stigma around periods in rural India)
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SHOW TRANSCRIPT
Le’Nise Brothers: Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast.
I am really interested in diving into all of the brilliant work that you do around fertility and stigma. But let’s go ahead and start off with the story of your first period.
Seetal Savla: So first of all, thank you very much for having me. So much has happened since we last spoke about me coming onto the podcast and you know, I had a pregnancy using a donor egg, and then sadly that resulted in a missed miscarriage.
I conceived naturally and it’s been three years since my daughter was born in Berlin where I’m now based. So life, a lot of life has happened. So yeah, I’m looking forward to updating you.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Seetal Savla: In terms of my first period, I don’t actually remember. I have vague memory or vague memories of it, which is a bit strange considering that it’s a milestone event in a girl’s life.
And I thought that I was about 11 years old and that it started at home and I spoke to my mum just to get her version of events and she says I was around 14 and at school. So, uh, I don’t know where the truth lies there. What I do remember, there are some memories that are etched into my mind because I used to have very heavy periods, and the one that I really remember is when I was at school and I fainted.
I remember going to the toilet with a friend of mine. And she was in the next cubicle and then all of a sudden I was just on the floor with no recollection of what had happened. And thankfully she had gone with me because then she was able to check that I was okay, went to see the school nurse, et cetera.
But you know, I think I was only out for a few minutes, but it was a really destabilising experience. So that has stayed with me. And every month, because the periods were so heavy, my mum would know to expect a call on that day. I’d go into school and then the nurse would call her up and say, Mrs. Mistry, Seetal, she’s not feeling so well.
Could you come and collect her? And, you know, I’d go home, have a hot water bottle, get into my PJs, and just bring their duvet down, lie on the couch, and watch a bit of daytime TV. So when I think about my periods, those are the memories that come to the forefront.
Le’Nise Brothers: This kind of new normal of having a heavy period every single month and having to come home from school was, was there any kind of alarm bells ringing in your mind or your mum’s mind about, hey, this could be something else.
Seetal Savla: No, not really, because even though they were heavy, they were not so debilitating in the sense that I would have to take a few days off and that I couldn’t move from the couch or from my bed. They were manageable and my mum had had heavy periods. There were, there was no cause for concern at that stage and they were very regular as well.
Yeah, everything was okay because I know since then with the work that I do, heavy periods, obviously it could be a sign of endometriosis or any other issues, underlying issues that could go on to impact your, your health in general, but also fertility. But, uh, no, that wasn’t the case for me.
Le’Nise Brothers: Okay. Throughout your teenage years, you’ve had had these heavy periods where you’d have a day off school or had to come home from school, and then did those heavy periods continue through your twenties?
Seetal Savla: Yeah, they did. And again, they were manageable. There weren’t too many issues with leaks and, you know, just I could get about my day just, and they were so regular, I could kind of predict when they would arrive so I could arrange my, my days around them a little bit.
And just know when I would need to take things a bit easier. I would say I’ve always had a reasonably good relationship with my period in that sense. Like it was inconvenient. It was painful, but it didn’t prevent me too much, uh, from doing what I wanted to do. Of course, if swim classes fell on those days, you know, it would be very obvious because I’d have to sit out.
I didn’t start using tampons for a long time, actually. I was in my early twenties, and so up until that point it was just pads. And of course you can’t go swimming with that, you know, attached to your swimsuit. So, um, yeah, you’d sit out and then. Everybody would know you’re on your period. So yeah, that was awkward.
I remember my mum introducing me to tampons and so I knew about them and I just didn’t feel comfortable using them. Just the idea of inserting something into my body at that stage and I remember going through a box of them once, just in the bathroom at home, just trying to figure it all out with the applicators and everything.
And I just got so frustrated that I left it for a few years after that. And as a South Asian woman, you know, talking about tampons like that and just periods in general, you know, it’s, it’s quite a taboo subject still, and it’s, it’s great that my mum was able to educate me in this way, encourage me as well, and not just brush all these things under the carpet.
And it’s, I think part of that is because she was a young mother. She was 21 when she had me, and she was also shamed when she was younger. And so one of the stories that she tells me is that when she was on her period, her mum would take an old cloth, spread it out on the couch, and she would have to sit down on it so in case there were any leaks, that the couch would be protected and.
You know, it’s mortifying. Everybody knows about it. It’s not something that you want to share. And then because of that treatment, you’re made to feel that it’s something to be ashamed of when it’s a completely natural bodily function. So I think she wanted to avoid me being ashamed about it, wanted to empower me, my sister later on. And, um, I’m very grateful for that actually, because it never has been something that we’ve hidden. Of course, you know, we wouldn’t leave products lying around. It would be, I guess out of respect for my dad and my brother, but it was never a shameful secret, you know?
So there was a little bit of stigma attached to it in that sense. Like, we would go shopping and then just take the products and put them away. It was pretty openly discussed.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Seetal Savla: Alongside other things. And my mum had told me that she’d had a miscarriage between my brother and I. Um, we talked about a cousin of mine who used donor eggs to conceive her daughter.
So these things were just part of my normal life, really, which is something I took for granted. And it’s only when I had more conversations later down the line with other South Asian women, I realised this was quite rare.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. And that kind of leads into my next question around stigma and taboo because
Seetal Savla: Mm-hmm.
Le’Nise Brothers: You grew up in an environment that was relatively open, considering the time. Considering the cultural background. And then we, we think about the wider South Asian community where there can be a lot of stigma around, I guess it just really depends around the, on the family, but around
Seetal Savla: Mm-hmm.
Le’Nise Brothers: Menstruation and then certainly fertility and, you know, the usage of donor eggs, which I will ask you another question about this later, but can you talk a little bit about your work around stigma and challenging stigma, particularly in the South Asian communities?
Seetal Savla: Yeah, it’s a really complex topic and it’s very individual. Each family, handles it differently. When it came to periods, for example, you wouldn’t tell anybody, but it would be made obvious by the fact that, for example, you couldn’t go to the temple or attend religious events if you were on your period because you were considered to be dirty and inverted commas, and you, you’d stay at home for the duration.
And I always found that a bit strange, you know? And my mum had said, well, if you don’t tell anyone, how will they know? Why make it obvious by not attending the event then they’ll, they’ll know that something is going on. Um, again, that is quite a unique perspective, and I think it all goes back to just patriarchy.
Just we’re very uncomfortable talking about women’s bodies and health in general. Anything from menstruation to menopause, all of that is just uncomfortable, awkward, and, and it really shouldn’t be, I think because that’s where a lot of misinformation comes in and. We’re not really taught how to speak about our emotions and the problems that we face.
And a lot of the time it’s because it wasn’t encouraged by our parents and their parents. They don’t have the language for it either. For example, in Gujarati, we don’t have a word for breast. We would use chātī, which means chest. So you can’t even directly refer to body parts, which makes it even more challenging.
Yeah, it’s a very nuanced topic, I would say in general, but, uh, the work that I do is trying to break down those barriers around fertility first and foremost. But obviously that includes menstruation as well and the menopause. Because I don’t want anyone to feel ashamed about it. I don’t want them to feel lonely like I did at the beginning.
Even with a supportive network of family and friends, I was able to confide in them early on, which is not always the case because people don’t feel safe to do so. You are afraid of what others will say, and that’s a big thing in the South Asian community. We worry a lot about outside opinion, and I think part of that is because of the immigrant journey, and we come over to the country of the coloniser and we want to stick together, we need solidarity, and if we do anything that brings shame upon our family, our name, our community, we’re ostracised and nobody wants that. And so it’s difficult to find that balance of being true to yourself, being authentic.
And respecting your family as well. It feels very disrespectful to speak out about these things, and I was lucky that I, I had the support to do so.
It’s just very hard for people who want to talk about it and, and they can’t because you have to be mindful of first and foremost, your family, but then also your community.
Le’Nise Brothers: That word that you use shame is really interesting. And from the outside looking in watching programs with South Asian families and then movies, I’m just thinking about this particular scene in Bend It Like Beckham, where the mother, talks about bringing shame upon the family and it really evokes an image in your mind of what you’ve been talking about. Can you talk a little bit about the reaction that you’ve had to the work that you’ve been doing? Because you’ve been in this space for a while, your own personal journey, and then also the advocacy work that you’ve been doing.
Can you talk about the positive and also the negative reactions that you’ve had?
Seetal Savla: They’ve predominantly been positive. I was expecting some criticism when I first came out with the blog post, so I used to be a food blogger and I’d review restaurants in London and then from my travels, interview chefs from around the world and behind the scenes I was going through all these fertility struggles, and I just wanted to write about it because that’s the way that I process my feelings. And I wrote a piece, um, about what I’d experienced to date. So that was my early first, early loss, and then two failed IVF cycles. And I didn’t intend for anyone to see it, but then I showed it to my husband and he said, I think it would be a good idea to post that and share it with people so that we can support others.
I had also received a lot of support through the trying to conceive community on Instagram. And at that point I hadn’t engaged with any of the content. I was just reading the stories, listening to podcasts, and maybe quietly liking a few posts. And it just made me feel much less alone. Much less ashamed.
I was carrying a lot of anger towards my body about it failing me. The cycles hadn’t worked. We hadn’t quite figured out why, and I just didn’t want anyone else to feel that way. I also wanted to give back and, um, yeah, so before posting that I thought that I tried to brace myself, uh, in case anyone had said, why are you doing this?
Is it for the attention? Uh, you’ll be bringing shame on your, you know, family and, and your in-laws and the community. Uh, these matters are private. We don’t talk about these things in public. No one needs to know, what is the benefit. And actually none of that was directed towards me, at least, uh, not via DM or in person or in any other way.
Instead I got people contacting me from everywhere, you know, friends, family, acquaintances, kind strangers telling me, thank you so much. And especially as a South Asian woman, you know, we’ve been going through X, Y, and Z and hearing about your experience of loss and the overwhelm and the injections and the hope and heartbreak cycle each month, the intensity of it all just makes you feel part of a community and that you are not abnormal, really. I think especially in our community, there’s so much pressure to, to be perfect. And again, I think that’s part of, uh, our immigration history as well. We come over, we just want our parents’ sacrifices to be worthwhile and we are conditioned to sort of tick all the boxes and just stay small, don’t, don’t talk too much, just do what is expected of you.
We don’t want to stick out, you know, and so that means getting a good education, uh, finding a good partner, having kids, the big house, the car, all of that. And when things don’t work out that way, you are made to feel inferior and inadequate. Maybe the intention isn’t always that, I feel that these kind of comments, it’s just part of small talk, when you’re having kids.
You’ve been married a couple of years now, you know, but if you’re struggling to have to constantly hear that. It’s a very hard thing to deal with. And then because of our deference towards our elders, it just, the words won’t come out of your mouth. You won’t be able to say it’s a private journey. We’re on a journey.
We’re trying. You wouldn’t, you’d just kind of smile, nod, run away, hide in a corner, and I hope they don’t find you again. Um, so yeah, it’s, it’s a very difficult thing.
Le’Nise Brothers: So what would you say to someone listening who is part of the South Asian community and a couple of steps behind where you are now?
You know, going through that, what you call hope and heartbreak cycle, and also having to listen to the chatter around them. You know, the parents, when are you going to get pregnant? Is something wrong with you? You know, all those little comments. What would you say to someone who isn’t navigating that right now?
Seetal Savla: I actually just read an article about that for Happiful magazine that a friend of mine, a therapist’s friend has contributed to. And um, some of the tips were, have something prepared. I think if you’re in a situation, you go to a wedding, let’s say, or a community event or a baby shower, which can be especially triggering, those questions will come up.
And if you maybe just have a little sentence that summarises where you’re at. It, it alludes to the fact that it’s difficult. I think that might be helpful. So we’re on a journey, but it’s private and uh, when there’s something to tell, we will share it. You know, something along those lines. Whatever works for you.
I think it’s nice because then you’ve answered that question and you can move on. Hopefully. Yeah. Hopefully there won’t be any follow up questions to that. What kind of journey, you know?
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Seetal Savla: We suspected that you might be, uh, having some problems. Is it you, is it him? You know? You don’t want any of that.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. Because, um, people can be quite nosy. Mm. Especially family where, you know, yes. They want to, once you answer one question, then it’s like the door’s open to pry a little bit more.
Seetal Savla: Yeah. Sometimes I think it would be nice to just have a little printout, you know, that sentence, whatever it may be, and just hand it out, look, you know?
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Seetal Savla: Or make an announcement.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Seetal Savla: But I think also. Maybe I, I’d, uh, read somewhere about having something planned afterwards or just saying that you’ve got something planned. So to give yourself a certain amount of time, if you know that it’s, you are going into a difficult environment. So let’s say the event starts at five and at 7:00 PM you’ve got a food delivery or something, so I’m sorry, I have to go.
And then that way you can protect yourself a little bit as well.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. So now you are on the other side, do you, well, do you consider yourself to be on the other side? You know, that’s what I am saying.
Seetal Savla: Mm-hmm.
Le’Nise Brothers: But what, how do you think about your journey through infertility now your daughter is two, two years old.
Seetal Savla: Three, she just turned three.
Le’Nise Brothers: Oh, wow. Yeah, I know. And so how do you think about your journey now and where you’re at in this whole, I guess you could say process.
Seetal Savla: I think it never ends. I do consider it as being on the other side, and I prefer that wording to success story. You know, that leaves a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth because the implication is you, if you don’t end your journey with a baby, that you are a failure, that you didn’t want it enough, you didn’t try hard enough, you gave up.
And I, I hate that kind of terminology because it’s, it’s really not that simple at all. Life after IVF, after fertility issues. You know, it’s, it’s merely the beginning, I think, once the baby is placed in your arms. And actually going back a bit further, when I was pregnant, after loss, I, I fell pregnant about three months or so after the end of my lengthy miscarriage.
It was about two months, just back and forth with all the scans and the bleeding, and it was a big shock. Even in the moment when we got that positive test, we felt numb because no pregnancy had ever gone beyond a certain point. So we just thought, well, here we go again. And it was full of anxiety and fear at the beginning.
You want it so much and what a surprise, what a blessing. But you don’t believe that it’s going to work, but you want it to. So you’re trying not to get attached and it’s, I think it’s impossible to be disconnected from something like that.
Alongside all of those fears and anxieties, thankfully I was eventually able to embrace the pregnancy through therapy. I had a lot of help from, and guidance from my, my therapist who is a South Asian woman, which helped me just dive into the issues and, you know, she understood the cultural challenges that I was facing so I didn’t have to explain them. And I think there was a lot of liberation and acceptance in that. Um, and then my daughter was born and, you know, that feels like, it is such a difficult thing to describe. It’s wonderful. Your dreams have come true, but it took me a long time to connect that dream and that reality because I’d had an emergency C-section and everything went well, but I was recovering from that.
I was expected to be so strong at a time when I felt really physically and emotionally weak and vulnerable, and that was hard because you just have to do everything. And you know, we were living in Berlin at the time, as we still are. And you know, my, my parents and my in-laws were back in the UK and they had wanted to come over before she was born, but I’d actually said, give me some time because I don’t know how I’m going to be feeling after all of this.
I, I want to allow space for all these emotions to come up. And they really did, you know, all of that fertility, trauma. I also had, uh, a difficult episode in the hospital on. One of the evenings when a nurse basically criticised me for not getting up and dealing with my daughter. I couldn’t get out of bed.
I was on a drip. Obviously, I’d, I’d been cut open and, uh, my husband wasn’t allowed to stay over due to COVID restrictions at the time. This was, um, summer of 2022. And my daughter was crying and she just said, well, you haven’t changed a nappy. You haven’t fed her. My milk took a while to come in, and she just went on and on and I was so upset I couldn’t speak.
You know, when you’re crying so much, the words just won’t come out. And of course, this is all in German. I didn’t speak much German or understand it at the time. And thankfully I was sharing a room with somebody, uh, a British girl who defended me. It’s what I needed at that moment. And I, for a long time, for months afterwards, I kept replaying that incident because I thought, I’m a fertility patient advocate and I fail to advocate for myself.
You know what, what’s that all about? And I had to learn to forgive myself for that. You know? I was in a really challenging situation. I did the best I could. And once I’d sort of recovered and my emotions had settled, I did lodge a complaint. Um. What they did with that. I don’t know. But you know, so all of this, and then the years and years of trying to have a child, you know, you sort of don’t believe it’s going to happen.
The more unsuccessful cycles you rack up, you know, you still go through the process, but there is less and less hope and you actually do feel very hopeless at times, but somehow you keep going as long as you can and then the baby is there and it’s just surreal. You don’t think, or at least I can’t speak for others, but for myself, I hadn’t thought much beyond that point.
Even though I had nine months of pregnancy, I was just taking it one step at a time, dealing with what I knew in the moment and that that was hard and. You know, the misconception is that once you become a mother, become a parent, that’s it. You’re just happy and life carries on and you shouldn’t complain.
And, you know, no, I, I am beyond grateful. I will always preface my comments with that. You know, of course I am, because, you know, I’m still working in this space, you know, I know what I went through and I know what others are going, but that doesn’t mean it’s not hard. You know, it’s, it’s motherhood. It’s first time motherhood, you know, I was in my early forties.
It’s difficult. I don’t have the energy I had in my thirties, you know? With a difficult breastfeeding journey as well. And you know, I didn’t have a lactation consultant at the hospital ’cause she was on holiday that week that I gave birth, and there was no replacement. So I had to then source a private consultant who was very German, lived up to the stereotype, just no frills, but she got the job done.
And, you know, it’s, it’s just figuring out a whole healthcare system and everything while you are trying to figure out parenting. I would say yeah, the first, definitely the first three to six months were very, very hard and after that, I sort of was able to relax into it and figure things out and feel more comfortable.
Um, and it’s definitely something I want to talk more about going forward actually, because I think there’s definitely a lot of value, especially as a South Asian woman talking about the journey to give others hope, um, and to raise awareness and educate. But what about what happens afterwards? It’s, it’s not the end of the story by any means.
And I think there is a lot of work to be done in this space as well, especially from the comments that I receive on the posts that I, uh, publish, so.
Le’Nise Brothers: You wrote an article and there was a section, which speaks to exactly what you just said, where you said you felt like you almost romanticised what happened next.
And I kind of chuckled when I read that because you don’t know until you know, you know, as a first time mum. I remember doing that as well. Oh, when I have my son, he’ll be like this and we’ll do this, and then the baby arrives and it’s just like everything gets thrown out of the window.
Especially when you’re dealing with postpartum issues as well and healing from a C-section, you know?
Seetal Savla: Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: That’s just a whole other kettle of fish. And what I’m curious about now is with all of the work that you did prior to your pregnancy and birth, and the work that you do now, how has your lens changed on the subjects that you talk about?
Seetal Savla: It’s a good question. I think so I recently started hosting monthly support groups for South Asian Women through Fertility Network UK and I’ve been doing that for about four or five months now. And one of the things that I realised was that I also have a lot of bias towards my community, and I just assumed that I was one of the rare lucky ones who had a supportive family that I was able to confide in about all of these issues while I was going through them, and more so now, but that’s not really the case. A lot of the women I’ve spoken to have said, you know what, we’ve had great support from not only my parents, but my in-laws. And you know that traditionally, that’s one of the jokes, right?
You know, your mother-in-law, especially with women, you know. There are two types of people. I think if you’ve suffered, you either want to inflict that pain on your daughter-in-law because I, I went through it, so you will too. You, you need to know how it feels, or I’m going to do the complete opposite and I’m, I’m so happy that my peers don’t have such negative experiences like that, that they buck the trend, so to speak. And that’s been really eyeopening and insightful actually. And then learning more about cultural issues in general. So I just wrote a piece for Fertility Matters at Work about culture and the things that we’ve discussed.
Being shunned from or not invited to baby showers, for example, if you’ve had a miscarriage because you’re considered bad luck. And people assuming that the woman is to blame when her husband may have been diagnosed with male factor fertility. Just to raise awareness, I think about how difficult, you know, it adds an extra layer onto a journey that’s already very difficult. And through that, I started listening to more podcasts, uh, about my culture and, and why these issues may exist, where they stem from. And the, it’s been, so again, I use the word eye-opening because it, it, I felt the first, like the first time I listened to a fertility podcast and I thought, I found my tribe.
The people who get it, they just understand. I felt that same way when I listened to this particular podcast Brown Girl Therapy, it’s called by Sahaj Kaur Kohli and she’s a therapist and she really does a deep dive into all of these things. You know, we can’t, for example, expect therapy level dialogue from our parents who just were not raised that way, and we have such high expectations. You know, we are grappling with things that, uh, that they didn’t have to, and that they had their own experiences. So how we, how can we be compassionate? How can we learn from them? How can we teach them? You know, that’s, uh, the sort of stage that I’m at, at the moment because it’s, it’s hard to explore all of this in full detail when you’ve got an 800 or a 1000 word count.
And, and also, how much do people want to know? You have to tailor it to the audience. But I think it’s good to educate myself on all of these things as well.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. What you said there about having therapy level conversations with your parents. That’s a really interesting one because I think taking it out of the cultural context, I think, you know, when we look at platforms like Instagram and TikTok and the way that people are talking about interactions with their parents, I think people are taking, you know, that kind of therapy, that kind of, not pseudo therapy, but that therapy light that they get from these platforms.
Seetal Savla: Mm-hmm.
Le’Nise Brothers: And then applying them to parents who just don’t have that language and who aren’t thinking that way. And I think something that has really helped me is that, is also just remembering that it’s our parents’ first time parenting as well. Yeah. You know, whether they have one or two or three or four, you know, children that each child is individual and our parents’ first time doing life and it’s about giving grace, but not forgiveness might be too hard, you know, depending whatever issues you’ve dealt with with your family.
Seetal Savla: Mm-hmm.
Le’Nise Brothers: But just having that in mind and just trying to find a place where you can remember that, Okay you know, they don’t know the what they don’t know. That’s been really helpful for me personally. I really connected with what you just said there, but parenting now across cultures is an interesting one for you.
Seetal Savla: Very much so.
Le’Nise Brothers: You grew up in Leicester where you said that you didn’t identify a hundred percent as Indian and you felt like you were living a dual life. One is a Brit and then another as an Indian, and now you live in Berlin where people, a lot of people do speak English, but you know the main tongue is German and your daughter is now experiencing multiple languages and multiple cultures.
Talk a little bit about that.
Seetal Savla: Mm-hmm.
Le’Nise Brothers: You know, what you’re teaching your daughter and what you’re choosing to leave in the UK as well.
Seetal Savla: Yeah. Um, just while you were talking, before I get onto that, um, something that came up was the frustrations. Um, when you’re trying to explain how you are feeling to your parents, you know, you’re trying to open up and you try and find that right moment as well, which is a difficult thing sometimes, and they just don’t quite get it.
The support is there, but what you’re saying doesn’t quite land, you know, and they’ll say what they feel is comforting, well-meaning, things like, well just try again. You know, you need to be strong and that’s, that’s not the right mindset. Just be positive and it’ll happen. Then they give you a story about someone’s colleague or cousin or aunt or whatever who kept going and, and finally got their baby.
And I used to get so angry. They really wound me up these kind of comments because it’s like you’re just screaming at a brick wall and nothing is going through. And you are feeling vulnerable and really misunderstood. And over time I thought, you know what? Not everything has to be an educational opportunity.
You know, you have to decide which moments and which people you can confide in, who can hold that space for you. And some people just have that limited emotional capacity and, you know, that’s, that’s just how it is. You know, we are not any better because we can handle things in a different way.
I needed to get better at picking my audience. And so I learned who could offer me that safe space to vent without those quick fix solutions and the unsolicited advice. So something we discussed, uh, at the top of the podcast about, you know, some other South Asians, what advice I’d give if they were a few steps behind at the beginning of their journey.
Identify someone who can be there for you in the way that you need, and everyone else can get the headlines and then they can get the full story basically.
So yeah, about my daughter raising a bicultural, a multicultural daughter. The plan was never to come to Berlin and, uh, have a child here.
It all happened very organically after everything. And, it is challenging because we don’t have any family here. There’s a growing Indian community, but Indians from India and we are British Asians. So there, there are differences there, not just in terms of the accent, you know? Um. We’re not really part of that community.
Like I have a few Indian friends here, but, uh, we haven’t really explored it in much detail, like going along to religious events and Diwali, et cetera. And that is something I would like to do more this year, now that she’s three and she can understand a little bit more just to see how she responds to it.
But, uh, just this weekend, we had her third birthday party here in Berlin. The first one that we, we did. They’ve all been in the UK with family before. Before this, and I was thinking, which themes could I do? And actually I went to a festival and there was a henna artist and I thought, brilliant, you know, this is a way to introduce her to her culture. And it’s fun. And you know, kids love all those, like temporary tattoos and, and I thought we could have a little bit of music and introduce our friends to, to a bit of Indian culture and henna at the same time. And it was a, a big success actually. So small steps like that, just, uh, playing a little bit of Indian music.
We used to have Bollywood Bathtime beats, you know, when, when, uh, she was a bit younger. So I’d just stick a few, um, well-known tracks on and we’d kind of dance and sing along. And now that she is playing dress up a bit more at nursery and at home. So we, we put the binley, uh, binley, sorry, that was a combination of bindi and chandla.
So we put all of those on and, and she likes to copy how I looked on my wedding day. So she puts them on her forehead everywhere around her face, um, and then dresses up in my kind of wedding jewelry and the shawls and things. So it’s really nice to see. So she’s connected, I think as much as she can be in terms of language, it’s more challenging because she goes to a German nursery all day long. And so that’s her main, the dominant language. The dominant culture on a daily basis. Uh, she speaks English at home with her dad. French with me because my background prior to fertility is, uh, a love of, uh, languages and particularly French, and I studied that I have a master’s in, I lived in, uh, Paris and Montreal for a while, so I always said if and when I have a child, I would love to teach them French.
Hopefully I’m not teaching her too many mistakes, but at this stage it should be okay. I think. And she, she understands me. But, uh, she doesn’t always respond in French. Her main language is, is English at home, I guess peppered with French and German. And then that explodes when we go back to the UK ’cause she’s surrounded by so many English speakers.
It’s an interesting mix. It’s fascinating, I find.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. But that feels, that feels so European and it just feels. It feels so, it feels so modern to be able to navigate. She’ll be able to navigate across multiple cultures and
Seetal Savla: I hope so.
Le’Nise Brothers: Speak. Yeah, I think that that’s so brilliant.
Seetal Savla: Yeah.
In terms of Gujarati, just to touch on, uh, finish up with languages. My husband and I both went to Gujarati school. We were spoken to in Gujarati by our grandparents and parents, and that’s something that she doesn’t have right now. And we thought, should we get grandparents to speak to her in Gujarati? But in the end, we thought four languages is quite confusing and it’s not something that she necessarily needs to know right now.
We don’t have to lay the foundation for that. In the future, who knows? You know, the plan isn’t to stay in Berlin forever. So if we do end up going back to the UK, I think based on what I’ve seen, she might pick it up quickly in an organic kind of way, which would be nice. I think I’m quite scarred by having gone to Gujarati school for seven years.
I don’t want to send her, I think the same goes for my husband as well, so yeah, she, but we do obviously you used the old word here and there and it’s quite cute to hear her singing Gujarati nursery rhymes that her grand has taught her, so that’s nice. So we, we’ve, we’ve sort of got one toe in
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Seetal Savla: Indian culture at the moment.
And slowly we’d like to build on that.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. And thinking about the last part of the fertility conversation, where as you said, conceive naturally. But then you had these embryos and there’s been a lot of conversation about embryo storage and there’s limits.
And you wrote an article last year about giving away your embryos after six years of trying, and then
Seetal Savla: that’s right.
Le’Nise Brothers: Can you talk a little bit more about this, especially, in the piece, which is in The Times, if anyone wants to look it up, where you talked about the South, south Asian angle.
Can you say more about this?
Seetal Savla: In terms of, uh, wanting to donate to a South Asian couple.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah,
Seetal Savla: yeah. Uh, so we, oh, it’s a long story in terms of our donor conception journey, but, um, in a nutshell, we are a South Asian couple, but I personally didn’t want to have a South Asian egg donor, and part of the reason is the long wait.
We were told at that point that we’d be waiting for about two to three years in the UK and we didn’t want to go abroad. A lot of people do, but because COVID was kind of on the horizon and we were worried about costs and we just wanted to stay in the UK and, and simplify the process as much as possible.
We decided to use British egg donors from a Spanish and Portuguese background. Uh, in the end we had one Spanish and one Ecuadorian, uh, lady who kindly donated and. Another reason for remaining in the UK was that the donation would be, uh, non-anonymous. And so that way, uh, when our child turned 18, if we were lucky enough to have a baby, they would have access to the donors identifying information if they wanted to then contact them, they could.
And that was important for me. You can go abroad and have an anonymous donor, and that’s a very personal decision. Uh, and I, I respect that for, but for me, I wanted to be able to give that opportunity to our child. So, yeah. Uh, I didn’t want an Asian donor and we were lucky enough to be matched and, um, we did two cycles.
The first one was cancelled and so didn’t result in any embryos. Second one, we had one put back. Sadly, that ended in, uh, the missed miscarriage and had two after that in London and we were recovering from the miscarriage. We just felt so burnt out in every sense of the word after all these years of trying.
And you know, with the pregnancy we got so close, you know, we were two months in and uh, then we, you know, heard those horrible words. I’m sorry, there’s no heartbeat. So we were taking time out just to take stock. Do we want to go again? Can we handle another loss? You know, should we just accept that maybe our future is going to be childless, not by choice.
And as we were pondering all these questions, um, I got pregnant and then, you know, had my daughter. And so we just kind of paid for another year of storage. Just push that decision further down the line. And, you know, when the time came to renew again, we thought, okay, that’s just wasting, you know, we, we need to make a decision now and we thought, that’s it. We can’t, we need to close the door on, uh, the IVF chapter. Now, you know, we have our daughter, how blessed we are, and we want to focus on her. And so the options for us at that point were to let the embryos go and the options are different for everybody. You can also have something called a compassionate transfer where you try have them transferred at a time when you are unlikely to get pregnant, just so that you know, you complete that process in, in a compassionate way.
Uh, which I don’t think many people know about it, and I hadn’t found out about it until years down the line actually. And then donation is the other option, either to your clinic or to research projects or to another couple. And now, because, um, we’d used my husband’s sperm and him being South Asian and we know about the shortages within our community. We wanted to donate to another couple, and I sort of left that decision to him. Obviously, I had my opinions, but given that it was his genetic material, I wanted him to be sure of what he was doing and I’d, I’d support him either way. So I was pleased when, when he said he actually wanted to donate them.
We went ahead with that, but sadly, a few months later, we found that our donor had, um, withdrawn consent and for personal reasons, uh, we, we won’t know why, and we were able to donate them to our clinic for, um, training. And, uh, yeah, it was at the time I wrote the article, you know, they, they’d been donated or they were about to be donated to another couple.
So yeah, the, the story continues even when you think that, uh, you’ve reached the end of it. It was a difficult decision actually. Um, I understand why people don’t wish to donate because, you know, especially if they’re created using both of your eggs and sperm, and if you have a child that they will have a, a sibling elsewhere and you, you have no right, uh, to be in contact with them unless they decide to do so later on, and that, that’s very hard.
But yeah, for us, that felt like the right decision.
Le’Nise Brothers: Something I’m really curious about is in the advocacy work that you do, you share parts of your story, that’s kind of part and parcel of being a writer and writing about personal experiences, and you have had therapy, which you referenced earlier.
Can you just talk a little bit about that part of it, telling your story and telling parts of your story again and again.
Seetal Savla: Mm-hmm.
Le’Nise Brothers: Is that cathartic? Is there a point where you tell your story and you can have distance from it, or does it bring up emotions for you?
Seetal Savla: Is it cathartic?
Yes and no. In a way, yes, because. It helps me to evacuate all those emotions. It helps me to know that I’m helping other people. As I said earlier, I’m learning as well. It’s not just about me imparting my knowledge. Uh, it’s seeing things from a different perspective through different lenses and um, and I’m grateful that I have that opportunity as well.
But no, sometimes it’s very difficult to relive the story and relive the trauma. You, you become disconnected from it in a way because, you know, when I do a podcast, often they’re fertility podcasts. And so the first question is tell us about your story. And you condense it, you know, into about five minutes or so.
Um, and you get used to reeling off the facts. You know, you’ll say it was unsuccessful, um, it was a failure. And unfortunately, words like that. But you sort of become removed from them, I think. And there, there are then events that bring those emotions to the fore. So last year I was involved with Stylist’s Every Loss Counts campaign to raise awareness about baby and pregnancy loss and to help shape policies going forward to give everyone the care they deserve because right now there is a lot lacking in, in, in terms of care and awareness and, that’s a whole separate topic. There were a group of us nine advocates. We sat around in a circle and we just talked. We had the space and the time to really go into everything. No one stopped us and there weren’t any questions.
It was just say what you want to say, however you wish to say it. And there were a lot of tears and a lot of hugs. And I went round and I told my story, and it’s only when others were really going deep into theirs and, you know, the tears were flowing that it sort of evoked something in me as well. And I said, look, I, I’d like to just revisit what I said and, and go deeper into how I felt when, especially with the miscarriage, you know, having had that experience in Berlin, different country, different language, different culture. I was alone in that moment, you know? And I think for all the work I do, for all of the, the network, you know, the support that I’ve built up in the community, I was absolutely on my own in that moment.
And it was terrifying because I didn’t know if I would haemorrhage. I didn’t know whether to call for help. Part of me wanted to, and then I thought, oh God, it’s going to be in German. It’s going to stress me out even more. Let me just go on autopilot, go home and deal with whatever comes my way, you know, and these kind of things I have written about that, but I haven’t fully shared it because. As important as it is to raise awareness. I don’t also want to scare people. Um, I don’t want to trigger people, you know, reading that I have had people message me and, you know, they’ve had pregnancies after loss and they’ve said, you know, you, you talk about miscarriage and I think it’s wonderful.
It’s helped me, but right now I am pregnant after loss and it’s just too much, you know? Um, and I hope you understand that. And obviously I do. You know, I’ve been there. I’ve muted and unfollowed. So yeah, it does become hard at points and and being a parent now, and one of the things that has really surprised me that I didn’t expect, I guess you read about it, but like you said, you don’t know until you know, and you’re in the thick of it is all of the unhealed wounds that come up.
You know, all that inner child work you have to do about the way you were parented and forgiving your parents for the things they did. They did the best they could. You know, they wanted to heal themselves as well. The trauma that it, that we inherit, you know? And how you want to do things differently in the world that we’re in right now.
So, you know, I feel quite fragile sometimes, and I need to step back from it all because dealing with that, while talking about, you know, the IVF and you know, sharing photos of all the needles and then the bloodstained shoes and things, it’s as if you’re thrown back into that really painful moment.
Yeah.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah.
Seetal Savla: And yeah, I do. That’s when I feel overwhelmed like that. I do just sort of take some time out and, um, yeah, try to focus on myself, um, get back to where I need to be. And because it matters to me, I feel like this is my purpose. I went through all of this. And I’m in a privileged position where I can share it to help myself and help other people and hopefully be part of the change that we need to see going forward.
But it is heavy work. I’m not a trained therapist, you know, I don’t know how to process it myself. I guess I’m learning, you know, every time, especially with these support groups as well. And, and then the dms you receive outside of that, people. You know, I tell them that my dms are open, so then they tell me their stories and it’s a privilege to hear them.
But also, you know, they, they lay heavy on my heart as well, because I just feel so deeply for everything that they’re going through and all the suffering that they have to do often in silence, you know? So yes, it is cathartic, but also, no, it’s, it’s hard.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. I, I ask that because I think about that in my own personal experience where I don’t really share a lot of my personal story, but even the work that I do and what people share with me, I do find it quite heavy and I end up having to do a lot of clearing work where I have to just, you know, step away and just sometimes just read absolute nonsense just to kind of, but nothing that’s too heavy. And, um,
Seetal Savla: yeah, I watch more reality TV than I ever have done, actually, I started doing that in pregnancy because prior to that I loved heavy, especially French stuff. You know, the dramas, the books, you know, stuff that if you described it to someone, they’d be like, why do you wanna know more about that?
And now it is, you know, a lot of Love Is Blind.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah, yeah.
Seetal Savla: You know, Virgin River, like I love American small town dramas as well for some reason. Just, I guess it’s, you know, and even then you’re not. Free from those fertility plot lines. They kind of crop up when you least expect them. And they have really caught me off guard as well, which is great.
On the one hand, you know, we’re discussing it more openly, but sometimes God I just wanna, you know, watch something that has nothing to do with that. And yeah, that, that was a tricky thing when I was recovering from my miscarriage actually. ’cause I thought, what can I watch? I wanna get stuck into a series, you know, just lay in bed and drink wine.
And eventually I settled on um, Dawson’s Creek. And if I remember rightly, there wasn’t anything in that about pregnancy or nothing that really set me off. So for anyone who’s listening and going through a difficult time, I think Dawson’s Creek is pretty safe and you have a few seasons to get through, so that’s good.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. Oh yeah. And for any Dawson’s Creek fans, the actors who played Pacey and Joey, they’re actually filming a new movie, so
Seetal Savla: I saw that.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. Yeah.
Seetal Savla: I love them. I was rooting for them and I, you know, it’s such a shame the way things pan out. A big Joshua, Joshua Jackson fan. Actually, I love him in The Affair.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. Yeah. So what do you have going on now? What do you have going on next work-wise?
Seetal Savla: Oh, there’s a lot of stuff, I’m sort of pivoting into in-person events, so I experimented with that for the first time a couple of months ago now, I think in Berlin. And so having had that experience with the Stylist and having felt firsthand how powerful it is to connect like that and create that safe space.
I wanted to recreate that in Berlin. And so yeah, I got some women together and it was all very casual. Just, you know, tell me as much as you want to. I’ll tell you a little bit about my story. Let’s support one another. And it was so beautiful watching them open up to one another. Um, to me. And we cried and we hugged.
And then afterwards when we were leaving, they were just chatting away, swapping numbers and uh, giving each other tips and therapists and events and books and films. And I thought, this is just, you know, my heart felt so full and so warm, and I was, it was so rewarding to see that actually that I had made this happen, that I’d connected people who, strangers previously, so I’d love to do more of that, uh, if I can get some sponsorship. So, uh, if there are any, uh, potential sponsors listening, that would be wonderful. Continue with writing. Uh, that is where I started and, uh, I find. I find it easier to arrange my thoughts that way and then just kind of put it on the page, come back to it, tweak it, you know?
I also enjoy speaking events. I’ve done a lot of, uh, podcasts as well, and it’s nice to see where the conversation flows. You know, we have our list of questions, but then it always goes off in a, on tangents, which is great. This year, as I do every year, I went back to The Fertility Show to be a host, a seminar host, and then also host panel discussions, which I love doing.
So more of that and speaking at the Birth Better annual birth trauma summit as well. Just sharing my experiences of fertility trauma and how that impacts the way I parent, you know, it would be great to do more of that, uh, more often. Yeah. And some exciting partnerships in the pipeline as well with brands and, uh, clinics.
So yeah, it’s, it’s all happening right now.
Le’Nise Brothers: What are some places that people can find out more about what you’re doing and, and get in touch if they want to?
Seetal Savla: So LinkedIn and then Instagram. I live on both of these platforms. That’s kind of how I feel these days. My handle is @seetalsavla, just my name. I am also present on Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter. Now Twitter used to be my favorite platform actually, but then it became a bit of a cesspit.
So yeah, it’s, yeah, Instagram definitely. And uh, LinkedIn, and then email as well.
Le’Nise Brothers: Great. And all the links will be in the show notes. What’s the one thought that you’d like to leave listeners with?
Seetal Savla: Not really sure how to answer that. Actually, while you were talking, there was one thing that we didn’t cover and that was sort of my relationship to my period now, and we talked about how it was then that, yeah, they were heavy, but it didn’t negatively impact my life. Not too much anyway. And going through a fertility journey, you know, every month when you see that your period has started and I have such a feeling of resentment towards it. I think it, you know, ’cause it represents failure, you know, another month where your dream hasn’t come true. And I feel that even now, three years later, you know, three years after my daughter was born, you know, I still see it and it still for a moment catches me and I’m like, ugh.
And then I think, no, I’m not trying to conceive, but you know, the, the scars run deep basically. And you know, even if the wounds heal as they say.
What would I want to leave people with?
That whatever you’re feeling, I think there, there is support out there and that’s the wonderful thing, that you can educate yourself, you can take control of your journey. Wonderful podcasts like this. So many books, films, events, panel discussions. You don’t have to be left in the dark.
You can connect with people who understand how you’re feeling and self-advocacy. You know, we hear more and more about this, it’s a difficult thing because there are so many barriers and you yourself can know that there’s a problem and then you go to your GP and you’re dismissed, repeatedly dismissed.
And it takes a lot of energy, a lot of drive to, to insist that you get referrals and things. But keep persisting if you feel that there is something that’s not quite right.
Le’Nise Brothers: Yeah. Thank you so much. Those are wide wise words and all the links for everything you’ve talked about and the platforms to get in touch with you will be on the show notes.
Thank you so much for your time today and for everything that you’ve shared.
Seetal Savla: Thank you so much for having me. It’s been wonderful.