IVF stories once stayed private. Now creators are sharing the highs and heartbreaks online.

After multiple pregnancy losses and failed rounds of in vitro fertilization (IVF), Cheryl Dowling was in "one of the hardest periods of my life" when she started sharing her journey on social media. “Infertility was consuming every aspect of my life, yet no one around me seemed to see or understand the weight of it,” she tells Yahoo. "I realized I needed connection and a place to process everything."

Thanks to her health platform and community, the IVF Warrior, Dowling has since become something of a celebrity in the infertility space, writing a book on the topic (Unspoken: The Unbearable Weight of Infertility) and racking up 127,000 Instagram followers. “When I finally began sharing, the response was overwhelming,” she says. “I quickly saw how many others were struggling, often feeling the same complicated mix of emotions.”

Even though infertility impacts one in six people globally, 10% to 20% of pregnancies end in miscarriage, and nearly 100,000 babies annually are born via IVF in the U.S., there still remains stigma attached to fertility treatments and infertility. That stigma, and the silence that generally surrounds it, may be why so many couples, and in particular women, are now turning to social media and podcasting to find community, share their stories of IVF and inspire and bond with others in turn.

“When I started sharing, the conversation was much quieter,” Dowling notes. “Now there is much more awareness.”

“There’s definitely been a shift toward openness, which is encouraging,” says writer and creative strategist Kate Parfet, who has shared her struggles with endometriosis and infertility with her followers. “People are sharing details that once would’ve been brushed off or kept private. That visibility matters. But the stigma hasn’t disappeared.”

As for why those who share choose to break those stigmas and raise their voices, particularly during a moment of such vulnerability, the answer really seems to be about isolation and a search for connection. “It started really organically,” says Demi Schweers, who, along with her husband, Tom, has documented the couple's journey to becoming parents via IVF. “I was in the thick of it, feeling alone, overwhelmed and confused, and I realized if I’m feeling this way, there have to be others who are too.” The Schweerses now have more than 2 million followers on TikTok, many of whom are there for frank conversations about the often challenging road to pregnancy. “There weren’t many spaces where I saw other women who looked like me talking openly about infertility or PCOS. So I decided to create it.”

Abbe Feder and her husband started the award-winning IVF podcast Maculate Conception. “When we were in the thick of the hardest years of our six‑year infertility struggle, we didn’t intend to go public — it was more that we desperately needed a place to unload," she tells Yahoo. "We’d been through so many failed cycles, miscarriages, doctor visits, late‑night tears ... and even the people closest to us seemed exhausted. So we turned to our handy-dandy recorder. We had no intention of becoming voices in the infertility community. But as we kept documenting our experience — fear, fury, hope, heartbreak — it became clear that others were craving exactly that: honesty, validation, connection.”

Actress Laura Orrico began posting about her life a decade ago when her husband was diagnosed with brain cancer. He died in 2015; 10 years later, she is now in her second trimester at 48 years old, thanks to a successful round of IVF done with her late husband’s sperm. Her choice to share this next stage in her journey also came from a hope for connection. “Just a few days before I went for my IVF procedure, I decided I would share,” she says. “I figured, if I can help other women make this difficult decision, or inspire them to go through it alone, or at an older age, or after getting widowed. ... There's so many components to my story that I figure in some way, shape or form, it's going to help somebody.”

The anxieties around sharing

Having these frank conversations online comes with insecurity and anguish over how to share the lows alongside the highs. “In the beginning I felt a lot of pressure to constantly show up, even on days I was struggling," Dowling says. "I thought I had to be strong for everyone else, even when I was breaking inside. Over time I learned how to balance showing up with protecting my boundaries.”

Orrico worried about sharing more than she was comfortable with. “Getting through the first several weeks of appointments, I was nervous to post anything until I got to my next marker,” she says. “I promised everybody I would share this publicly no matter what happened or happens,” she adds.

“There’s a kind of grief and unraveling that can feel too raw to put into words, especially in real time. There were stretches when I didn’t feel steady enough to speak from inside the experience, only around it,” says Parfet, adding that finding the right care team helped her to move through those feelings and find her voice. “It reminded me that our stories don’t need to be sanitized or made palatable to be worth sharing.”

Having these candid conversations also often means sharing things you never thought you’d go through. “One of the hardest things we ever shared publicly was our experience with TFMR (termination for medical reasons), which is a clinical euphemism for abortion,” says Feder. After years of failed IVF procedures, Feder became pregnant with three embryos. “Because of serious health risks to me and to the other babies, we had to make the impossible decision to ‘reduce’ to two." That, she notes, was another euphemism. "It was an abortion. And it was heartbreaking.”

She says the decision to share that part of their story with her podcast audience was incredibly difficult, but it felt important to be transparent. “It was my husband, Isaac, who said, ‘We have to talk about this. People need to understand that abortion is part of fertility care. That it’s not black-and-white. That it’s health care,’” Feder recalls. “And he was right.”

For many creators, IVF does eventually result in having a child. Some of them worry that they're sending the message that overcoming infertility is inevitable. “Fertility stories often get flattened into neat arcs: pain, persistence, resolution. But that’s not how most people live them,” says Parfet, who is now a mother after years of trying to conceive. “Now that I have a child, I sometimes wonder if my voice is still one people want or need to hear. I question whether my experience feels too far removed from the uncertainty so many are still living inside.”

“People often see the highlight reel, the success stories, the ‘happy ending,’ but not the trauma, the cost or the long road that came before,” says Schweers, now a mom of two. “When I got pregnant or shared a moment of joy, I worried it might hurt someone who was still waiting for their turn. I never want anyone to feel like I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be in that place of waiting and longing.”

A caveat

Dr. Iris Insogna of Columbia University Fertility Center, a reproductive endocrinologist, says many of her patients mention IVF influencers and the positive impact they’ve had in terms of reducing the stigma of fertility treatment. That said, "I do caution people to interpret what they learn online carefully,” Insogna tells Yahoo. “Not every journey is the same, and each individual will have a different path. Ultimately, decisions about medical care should be made between the patient and the provider, not based on information from social media.”

Feder is also quick to remind her followers that she’s not a medical professional. “So many people are desperate for answers, they might follow influencers who aren’t medical experts and end up getting harmful or misleading advice,” she says.

The IVF landscape moving forward

While the conversations around IVF continue to change, the costs associated with the procedures are still prohibitive for many, if not most, patients. IVF is not universally covered by insurance companies, and in many cases is still highly politicized. Furthermore, fertility care often does not address how emotionally grueling the treatments can be. “Clinics and media often focus on the physical treatments and outcomes, while the mental and emotional impact is still overlooked,” says Dowling. “Many people, especially women, still feel blamed or judged for needing medical help to build their families.”

Creating a platform for this emotional care is at the heart of what so many of these influencers do. “Mostly, it’s about making people feel less invisible,” Parfet says about sharing her experience with both IVF and endometriosis.

“As a woman of color, I know firsthand how isolating and confusing it can be to navigate these spaces where our stories often aren’t centered,” adds Schweers. “I always come back to: Will this help someone feel less alone? If the answer is yes, I try my best to be brave and share it.”

Feder agrees, with an added reminder for anyone who is considering sharing their own experiences with infertility and IVF. “There can be a pressure to perform your pain — to package trauma into a neatly digestible narrative,” she says. “Social media often rewards vulnerability, but sometimes at the cost of boundaries. I remind people often that you don’t owe anyone your story — it’s up to you to decide what’s best for you.”