LONDON: Two decades ago, I got a tattoo of an Akua’ba statuette on my inner right ankle. A female fertility symbol in Ghana, the disc-headed figure comes from the Akan legend of Akua, a woman who went to a priest for advice because she was having trouble conceiving. He instructed her to have a small wooden statuette of a child carved and to care for that surrogate baby as though it were her own. She was soon pregnant. Years later, as I was struggling to conceive, the irony was not lost on me that not only did I carry my infertility permanently around on my ankle but that I too needed a surrogate, albeit of a different kind, to help me become a mother. Read more
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LONDON–I call it my Wimbledon breakdown.
Tennis players Rafael Nadal and Thomaz Bellucci were doing a changeover during their first round match at Wimbledon in 2015 when I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. When I saw it was my gynecologist, I jumped out of my seat and raced down the stairs, hoping for good news. Read more