Fertility
10 infertility blogs to follow – for real-time, empathetic support
Eloise Edington | 11 Nov 2021
Infertility can feel isolating, especially since this is often considered such a taboo topic. Blogs can be a great way for the infertility community to empower, inspire, educate and unite those who are struggling with infertility.
Fertility Help Hub has sought out a good and inclusive variety of helpful infertility blogs which we think speak to all – some especially to women of colour and the LGBTQ+ community – with the hope that there will be something for all of our readers to connect with in this article.
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Our favourite infertility blogs, packed with insight and support
Al and La, a married couple, tell their tale of conceiving through IVF on their joint blog account. They go through the ups and downs of conceiving. “Herein lies an adventure of queer infertility and making a family without biology on your side,” the couple write.
They also cover topics of family life, parenting, work and society as a whole. They list useful resources and blogs that they recommend and follow, including the blog, Raising Race Conscious Children (listed below).
For those of you who are undergoing IVF and are looking for a detailed step by step guide, this is the blog for you. As a plus, they include memes in their content because who doesn’t need a good laugh every now and then?
The Broken Brown Egg blog is founded by Regina Townsend, whose intention is to share her experiences of infertility as a woman of colour, in order to empower, inform and help to advocate for women of colour within the infertility community.
For almost ten years Regina has dealt with infertility struggles involving PCOS, Type 2 diabetes, IVF and much more. Throughout her TTC journey she has tried foster care and kinship placements.
Regina and her husband, Jahbari, have looked for ways to maintain a happy life full of enjoyment and the hope of one day expanding their family.
Regina’s blog seeks to educate and inform, enlightening readers on valuable facts such as the statistic that black women are almost twice as likely to suffer from infertility as their counterparts and yet are the least likely to seek medical treatment. Likewise, conditions such as PCOS, endometriosis and fibroids also affect women of colour disproportionately. Regina’s blog seeks to inform people of these disparities and of how the TTC journey is bad enough on its own, without the addition of racial bias, stereotyping and negligence from medical professionals and society as a whole.
This blog may be a great help to black women who are seeking advice from someone who has walked in their shoes and to whom they can relate. It is also a great resource for anyone looking to educate themselves on deeper issues within the infertility community and about how women of colour experience infertility differently as a result of systemic racism.
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Lori Duron is the author of Raising My Rainbow: Adventures in Raising a Fabulous, Gender Creative Son (Random House, September 2013). This is the first parenting memoir about raising a gender fluid and nonconforming son and Lori’s blog continues to tell the tale. It presents the amazing person that is her fourteen-year-old son, CJ, whilst also discussing the things she has learned from him about being a parent. Lori also chronicles the saddening discrimination CJ has endured in environments that are not LGBTQ+ friendly, which for CJ, and many others, has been his experience of school.
With school an unsafe space for CJ, being told to stay home due to COVID felt like a positive for him as he could stay where he felt most safe. CJ and other like-minded children shouldn’t have to feel that the only place that is safe is home. In order to protect CJ and others from discrimination, learning and accepting is the way forward. Lori’s blog is a great place to start.
If you have children who are nonconforming or a part of the LGBTQ+ community and you are trying to learn how to support them, this blog may be the one for you. Besides this, if you would simply like to learn some great LGBTQ+ friendly parenting advice before conceiving, this blog has been repeatedly named one of the best.
Raising Race Conscious Children is a blog focused on enabling parents to discuss topics of race openly with their children. They want to remind parents that speaking about race does not reinforce racism but instead works towards dismantling the ‘colour-blind’ narrative that is all too often used. This blog works to encourage children towards challenging racism and seeking racial justice.
While this blog post is open to all, it is primarily geared towards white people as they approach addressing the issue from the root cause. However, they often feature guest posts from different people with a variety of approaches and intended audiences which may benefit all readers. These guests will also discuss intersectionality and topics of class, gender, sexuality, disability and religion.
If you would like to start initiating open discussions with your child about race and justice, then this blog may help to inspire some ideas on how to approach the topic. This can be a great and invaluable resource for those who are looking to raise race conscious children.
5. Defining Mum
Author, Becky, writes on her blog (Defining Mum) about her rollercoaster infertility journey, donor conception and parenting, focusing her attentions on the emotion of it all. Her aim is to validate how others feel and to unite them with a community.
Becky has been TTC since she was 27. After being off the pill for six months and with no luck conceiving, she went to her GP. She was turned away, ignored and dismissed multiple times as her age indicated no issues. When she finally persuaded a doctor to run some tests, he reluctantly agreed and then misinformed her regarding the results, stating that she was in good health. Trusting her gut instinct, she requested a copy of the results and found that this was far from the truth…
To learn more about Becky’s story and to join a community that is here to validate and listen to your concerns, visit the Defining Mum blog.
Writer and infertility survivor, Lisa Manterfield, continues to write on her blog, Life without Baby, with the mission to provide resources, compassion, support and a community for women who are dealing with infertility and struggling with living a childfree life.
For the first five years of her infertility journey, she found humour in every place she could, in order to make light of it. However, when a life without children was becoming likely, she took a more serious approach to her narrative. As a result, in 2010, she published ‘I’m Taking My Eggs and Going Home: How One Woman Dared to Say No to Motherhood’ .
This led to her finding her community online through her blog where she continues her story for all her readers who are struggling with the same issues. She found that many women had come to terms with the idea of being reluctantly childfree and she realised there was a great lack of resources for women who, by either waiting too late or having a medical issue, had to accept a childfree life. She writes to support these women and to educate others about their reproductive choices sooner rather than later.
Many women can find themselves childfree whether by choice or not. Some may have waited too late without realising this would impact their fertility, others have been through gruelling fertility treatments that simply aren’t effective and they find they need to walk away, others are simply born with conditions that make conceiving nearly impossible. If you find that you are looking for advice on how to cope with the anticipation of being childfree, perhaps Lisa’s experiences and knowledge can be of use to you.
This blog is written anonymously by an intended parent who has been TTC for over five years and is writing about her experiences along the way to a family. One ovary unfortunately does not function as well as it should while the other was completely removed when she was just 10 years old due to a cyst and appendix rupture. This has made conceiving extremely difficult and she wanted to have a space to share her story and help pull others out from their isolation.
She is awaiting the day she can write an update on her blog that announces her pregnancy but, until that day comes, all who read her blog can join her on this hopeful journey.
Life Abundant is written by Jessi, a Christian woman who has struggled with infertility throughout her marriage. Initially, this was as a result of being diagnosed with PCOS, however over time she has also developed Hashimoto’s and Hypothyroid syndromes and is working with these conditions to try to manage them and be able to conceive.
It took a few rounds of IVF for Jessi to conceive Zoey Liz. She survived a vasa previa pregnancy and premature birth with a NICU stay. Jessi and her husband intended to grow the family but Jessi’s reproductive health conditions made this challenging. She covers infertility, motherhood, pregnancy and miscarriage, adoption and embryo adoption, health tips and lifestyle.
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Mel Johnson is the founder of the blog, The Stork and I, and is based in the UK. She had always wanted a family of her own and decided to pursue parenthood as a single mother. She believed one day she would have family of her own naturally but by her 30’s she was still single and realised she may need to explore other fertility options.
She writes about her experiences with IVF using donor sperm and about her baby, Daisy. The blog is primarily focused on what the journey of fertility looks like for a solo woman, both the highs and lows. She is also a certified life coach so you will find a few sprinklings of life advice throughout her posts. She is also open to others with whom her story resonates reaching out to her for advice or support at: mel@thestorkandi.com
The Stirrup Queens blog is written by Melissa, better known on her blog page as Lollipop Goldstein. With her husband, Josh, Melissa conceived two children via fertility treatments, namely IUI with injectable cycles. The couple are also TTC a third child through treatment but are taking a break for the time being. Melissa has written about her fertility journey and her break from fertility treatments.
Melissa’s blog is inclusive and open to all, as she states on the ‘about me’ section of her blog, ‘I firmly believe that everyone is welcome here and anyone in need of support will receive it here.’ If you are looking for some advice and shared stories of the IUI process and parenting, this may be the blog for you.
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