00:07:19.520The algorithm may also give you videos of pregnant women, of women giving birth, of women trying to get pregnant, of women taking pregnancy tests.
00:07:29.560Like Abra said, if you're someone actively trying to get pregnant, this can be a really triggering and completely shitty thing.
00:07:38.580Fertility influencers have become a real corner of the socials, and people who've never tried to have a child might think that this is niche, but it's not.
00:07:47.800And it's in your face even before most women think about having a baby.
00:07:53.100Which is why I do see value in fertility influencers talking about this.
00:07:57.340Even if they're adding to the noise, even if there are some people that are just batshit insane and giving you crazy information, it's still helpful that it exists.
00:08:11.520In the past few years, more and more women have been telling their own infertility stories publicly.
00:08:16.320One of those women is my friend, Dori Shafrir. Dori's a writer. She and I grew up in newspapers
00:08:24.220together in New York City, and she is the host of the podcast Forever 35, which I know a lot
00:08:30.120of you listen to. She also has an incredible new newsletter called Now We're Talking. Dori's been
00:08:35.620really open about her struggles with fertility, and she actually turned a lot of those conversations
00:08:40.180into a podcast with her husband called Eggcellent Adventure.
00:08:44.560That's egg, like egg, E-G-G, adventure.
00:08:48.800Eggcellent Adventure, like Bill and Ted.
00:08:52.120Matt and Dory's show and the community they've built around it
00:08:55.640is proof that people need a place to talk about fertility struggles openly and honestly.
00:09:01.700It really is one of those things that I do think, unless you have been through it,
00:09:06.940It is really hard to conceive, no pun intended, of how isolating IVF can be.
00:09:16.380If you are a person of child-bearing age, let's say kind of roughly, you almost definitely have a lot of friends who are getting pregnant very easily and sharing it on social media.
00:09:31.480And it is very easy to feel like you are the only one who is struggling.
00:09:36.940And I know a lot of people feel that way. And IVF can also be so isolating because for a lot of people, you know, who have been healthy their whole lives, it's their first real, and this was true for me, it's their first real encounter with like the medical establishment in a way and like feeling like you have no control over what happens.
00:10:02.660And obviously people who suffer from chronic illness or who, you know, have a disease or whatever, like they encounter this all the time.
00:10:10.160But I think for people who have not to to be confronted with this and go go into it thinking, well, it's IVF, it's science.
00:10:21.760Yes, it's expensive, but I'll pay a bunch of money and then I'll have a kid.
00:10:25.140And it's like, well, it's not that easy.
00:10:27.120And that is like very isolating and very frustrating, I think.
00:10:30.860Yeah. Yeah. I remember when I first had two miscarriages before I had Charlie. And I just remember feeling like my body had done something wrong. And I unfollowed all of my friends. And this is so dumb. But I unfollowed all of my friends who had babies or who were pregnant because I couldn't look at it.
00:10:55.900I just couldn't look at it. And all I wanted to look at at that point was, I wanted to look at1.00
00:11:03.340old pictures of Diane Keaton. Understandable. Yep. And I wanted to hear stories from people
00:11:09.980who did not have babies or who were trying to have babies, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. You wanted
00:11:16.580to find your people. And honestly, that was one of the reasons why I started the podcast. Like,
00:11:22.860I wanted to know who else was out there. And I wanted people to commiserate with.
00:11:29.400And that is the reason that so many women turn to the internet when they're struggling with1.00
00:11:33.220fertility. Someone to commiserate with. Someone to share information. Someone to just see you1.00
00:11:40.080or to see them and to know that you're not fucking alone. It's a different kind of village.0.94
00:11:47.060Dory didn't follow a lot of fertility influencers during the two years that she was doing IVF0.89
00:11:51.720before she got pregnant with her son, Henry.0.54
00:11:53.980But that was also about five years ago.
00:11:56.900And the fertility influencing world was much smaller then.
00:12:00.780But Dory recently checked in to see what the landscape looked like.
00:12:05.000And it is really fascinating to see the sort of the turn that that has taken.
00:12:11.240I mean, we're talking like letter boards with egg retrieval results.
00:12:16.180and, you know, just like all the sort of tropes of influencing are now happening in the infertility
00:12:24.020world. And it's like fascinating to see. The other thing that I personally find jarring
00:12:30.380is infertility spawn con. Spawn con means sponsored content. And yes, for fertility
00:12:38.260influencers, that can mean advertising specific procedures or clinics or giving away free rounds
00:12:44.160of IVF. There's one influencer couple who actually gave away sperm, donor sperm, in a cup for
00:12:51.540someone. And yeah, SponCon, as it's called, does add a whole new layer of complication to this
00:12:58.980kind of content. This is a little bit of a hot button topic because like on the one hand, like
00:13:04.340sure, get that money. You know what I mean? And like we run ads on Excellent Adventure. It's not
00:13:09.840like that is a, you know, nonprofit enterprise. Um, but like there, to me, there is something
00:13:17.860just, and maybe I just haven't gotten used to it, but I was looking at, um, an account of two dads
00:13:26.480who had a baby via surrogate and they were doing spawn con for a fertility company that like helps
00:13:35.020women know, like, like helps women get pregnant. And they were basically like, obviously like we
00:13:39.820didn't use this but they were like doing the spawn for it and i was just like that's weird i do think
00:13:47.040to your point it does speak to the overall sort of commodification of this space and seeing
00:13:54.080fertility as just another space to be commodified is like i think a little bit or infertility is
00:14:01.080another space to be commodified i think is a little bit jarring for people um yeah so yeah
00:14:07.100that's been an interesting kind of evolution for sure. I, I have a friend who is, uh, an IVF
00:14:14.640specialist. She's real good at her job, especially at getting, getting the olds like me pregnant.0.98
00:14:21.480And she had an influencer, a reality television show star approach her and ask for completely0.88
00:14:29.820free IVF if she would document her journey. And she didn't say no. I probably should talk that
00:14:42.860much more about it. But she's like, I think this is probably a good idea. And that's one of the
00:14:49.260things that inspired me to do this podcast. I didn't even remember that because it happened
00:14:53.060three years ago until just now. And we started talking about it. But I think there's something
00:14:58.840there's something kind of icky about everything when money gets involved0.86
00:15:03.600yeah for sure but at the same time IVF is so fucking expensive fertility every every kind
00:15:12.260of fertility treatment is so fucking expensive that yeah if you can get paid then get paid
00:15:18.940girl I don't or guy right but you know I think I think it does like raise the question of0.73
00:15:27.220of objectivity. Like, you know, if, if your friend was documenting their IVF journey with
00:15:33.000this doctor for free, like what happens when something goes wrong or like she doesn't get
00:15:36.920the results that she thought she was going to get, like, does she document that as well? Or
00:15:41.080does she just sort of quietly stop? You know what I mean? Like there is an element of like, where
00:15:47.380can you trust what these people are saying if it is, um, sponsored. And when it's something
00:15:53.880as like sensitive as infertility it's like i do think it has a net positive effect i think the
00:16:00.200more people who are talking about it the better um and i think the more places those conversations
00:16:06.380are happening the better so if they're happening on instagram maybe they're also happening in real
00:16:11.860life and you know whatever it kind of takes to get people to lose the stigma and the shame of
00:16:18.800doing ivf if it takes them seeing their favorite influencer going through ivf then like
00:16:23.740great you know that's awesome one of the craziest things that I've learned while reporting
00:16:30.280is that now fertility doctors are following influencers to try to find out what their
00:16:37.420how their patients want to talk about things oh that's so interesting yeah right and what they
00:16:43.700may already know coming into their offices they're completely changing how they kind of their bedside
00:16:49.960manner in response to the fertility influencer industrial complex that's really interesting i
00:16:58.400mean i know on excellent adventure we've heard from nurses and doctors and med students who have
00:17:06.280said that our podcast did help them understand the patient's perspective better um you know i
00:17:14.940actually, I think that's a good, that's a really good thing if doctors are looking at these,
00:17:19.440at these accounts. Totally. Yeah. I feel like it's improving a medical experience that for a long
00:17:28.040time has been really difficult for the patient. If the, if the patient can become much more humanized
00:17:35.440because these doctors follow these influencer accounts and read all of the comments, that's
00:17:40.560pretty great. It's pretty great the doctors get to see their patients and understand their patients
00:17:47.560in a whole new way by following these fertility influencers, seeing what they're saying, seeing
00:17:52.540how people are commenting on their posts, seeing how people are interacting. It's also shocking to
00:17:58.000me, and it makes me wonder what comes next. How influencing and social media could eventually be
00:18:04.860integrated into medical studies and even medical school. Seriously. But more on that after a quick
00:18:13.480break. Because fertility influencing has become so pervasive, OBGYN and fertility specialists
00:18:32.380now have no choice, no choice whatsoever, but to pay attention to this world.
00:18:38.040And sometimes it even alters how they do their own work.
00:19:48.880And yet a thousand years ago in social media years.
00:19:52.660What did you see was happening back in the way back years?
00:19:57.160The biggest takeaway that we found is that there are infertility influencers out there. And at the time, most of them were not physicians. And the large majority were actually patients sharing their own stories and sharing what was happening in their lives and kind of creating, just like you said, like a community.
00:20:14.480so since then since you guys first started looking at it in 2018 the world has just blown up it's
00:20:20.360expanded all of social media and influencing has yep how has the world of fertility and I don't
00:20:27.900I'm not sure if I should call it fertility influencers or infertility influencers
00:20:31.620well we I mean in my I like to think about it as fertility you know like everyone has a different
00:20:37.520level of that aspect but I think infertility in and of itself could potentially have a negative
00:20:42.580competition, but both correct, I think. Both correct, right? So how has that world and the0.92
00:20:48.760impact that it's having on patients affected what you guys do? There was one study done a couple of
00:20:54.800years ago that said almost 80% of patients who were surveyed in a fertility center or fertility
00:20:59.360clinic felt that social media benefited their patient experience to give them questions to ask,
00:21:04.920to give them opportunities for knowledge, even pre-discussion with their physician or their
00:21:09.440healthcare providers. And additionally, that 40% of Americans would actually further their
00:21:14.640conversation or ask more questions about their medical care professional opinions when it either
00:21:19.580conflicted or supported with their own findings on the web. I think now that social media has
00:21:24.460continued to explode in a very positive way, I think it's teaching us all from the healthcare
00:21:29.880side that we can do probably way more than we expected to if it's harnessed the right way.
00:21:36.200So the flood of fertility content on Instagram makes complete sense.
00:21:40.500In fact, it's almost inevitable, given that good resources for the topic have for a long
00:21:45.400time been largely inaccessible to most human beings.
00:21:49.260But of course, in the unregulated landscape of social media, this can all go wrong very
00:24:24.520For healthcare professionals more so than anything else is to think of the impact.
00:24:28.360You know, I meet with patients on a daily basis to try and help educate them and, you
00:24:31.540know, move forward with their journeys.
00:24:32.720But if I could do that on a mass scale and help people even before they get in the door
00:24:36.980that it can help de-stigmatize, take away the fear and help, you know, enable people
00:24:43.000with all the tools before they even get to a healthcare professional.
00:24:46.860So I think that's the biggest takeaway for me.
00:24:49.940The one kind of funny anecdote I always like to throw in there is that I never thought I would say this out loud.
00:24:55.000But I think now physicians doing like TikTok dances and a little like funny, you know, hand signals and other things people do are really catchy and are really helpful for people to remember things that are potentially helpful for them.
00:25:06.880Wait, I have not seen physicians doing fertility TikToks.
00:28:10.320That was the exact tone that I got to. And I was so confident.
00:28:15.600So they started trying. It wasn't happening. Then they moved from New York back to Dublin.
00:28:20.800And we had been trying, but I guess not like very aggressive.
00:28:24.040Like we didn't really, I didn't use the ovulation sticks or whatever.
00:28:27.400We were so young, kept thinking it would happen.
00:28:29.200then it was like 2017 and like I had never been pregnant actually my dad took me out for dinner
00:28:34.700it was like you should be pregnant I'm going to make you go to a doctor so I did and we had all
00:28:42.200the usual fertility tests again so we were still only 33 at this point we were the youngest people0.96
00:28:46.680in every waiting room and I guess in a way that's kind of like almost more of a reason that something
00:28:53.420was weirdly wrong because we weren't just old. You guys weren't old at all. And we didn't have
00:28:59.780any health issues at all. So we did our first round of IVF, which was, it's horrific. If anyone's
00:29:07.300gone through, it's just really upsetting. And Anna Joy didn't respond very well to the IVF
00:29:12.960drugs. They didn't get as many eggs as she would have liked. Then when they tried to fertilize0.99
00:29:18.200those eggs the next morning they didn't phone me and then like I went to yoga and I went to brunch
00:29:24.300and I was so like it's fine they're just busy they're like they're not busy it's a Saturday
00:29:28.340there's a reason so they rang me late the man was just I'd never heard from him before he was just
00:29:36.820so upset he was like it's only two eggs are fertilized he's just and he literally was just
00:29:40.440like I've never seen this before so that's great we had one blast assist but that's still shocking
00:29:47.020for like someone my age my profile to have just one they just were like come on we're just gonna
00:29:51.960do it again we're gonna change the drugs you're fine anyway they did it at the exact same results
00:29:57.020again I think it was like 10 eggs this time like that time my like expensive doctor rang me from
00:30:02.540the car not just the embryologist and he was just like I think it is here in his voice he was like
00:30:07.480I just don't want to say I don't know if you should even do this again with us I don't know
00:30:12.440which is really devastating to hear because you're just I don't know I didn't know enough
00:30:19.180about IVF I guess when I started this but I don't think a lot of people do I think there's an
00:30:22.820assumption in the way people discuss it as like it's like your backup plan it's going to work
00:30:27.420especially if you're young if you're not 40 there you go there's your answer but it didn't
00:30:31.920obviously work for me. Anna Joy told me she got sucked into fertility Instagram pretty early on
00:30:38.680in the process. Unlike Abra, she really loved it. She wasn't triggered by seeing IVF injections
00:30:45.760or live readings of pregnancy tests. She was psyched to find this community of women going
00:30:51.320through a similar experience as her. You do get so sucked down. And I think that like,0.73
00:30:56.420you know, that's a really rare example of it functioning as I think all the women that are
00:31:01.920posting on wanted to be like there's such a pattern to so many IVF Instagram accounts and
00:31:10.300like I got really good at like reading them because I got really addicted to them when I
00:31:13.520was trying to get pregnant so you'd hit on one and if they're public they usually have had a baby
00:31:18.200so like go to the baby and I scroll all the way down all the way down find out go back to their
00:31:23.240saddest point where they started the account and I would like read it like it was like a narrative
00:31:27.740to myself like and then they go there and it fails and this sad thing and thing then the
00:31:32.660breakthrough and then the scan and the baby and the cry like it was just you get like hooked on
00:31:38.860it and it's like it creates a narrative a positive story in a place of in a like a situation where
00:31:45.320you have no control. Anna Joy had also been a lurker on fertility reddit another thing and
00:31:52.480one of those Reddit threads mentioned in an Instagram account called IVF Explained.
00:31:58.180At that time, we're talking in 2017, it was completely anonymous. It was just someone was
00:32:04.540uploading photos of embryos, of eggs being fertilized, of like kind of sort of watching
00:32:12.180how they grow videos. It was just really kind of like hypnotic. And when you're going through it,
00:32:16.940you're just like oh this is good and so i dm'd that doctor i didn't know who who was i didn't
00:32:23.160know their gender or anything at the time i was like i just kind of ran down what happened to me
00:32:28.000i was like is there anything you could suggest like i don't know where to go and he wrote back
00:32:31.940the next morning i woke up and there was a dm from him that was really kind like really kind
00:32:38.460in his in their tone like it was just like i'm so sorry that is really unusual that you know
00:32:45.460can you tell me a bit more? So I explained to him like the exact drugs that I had been on
00:32:49.820and what had happened and like my AAMH, which is my egg count and all of this. He was like,
00:32:56.080it seems like if you get fertilization, you have a high blastocyst rate because of that first round.
00:33:02.180So you need something that's going to trigger the activation of the cells inside your egg.
00:33:07.400It's like so technical. Oh my God, it's so technical. Yeah.
00:33:10.360So this anonymous doctor or person that Anna Joy just assumed was a doctor was now DMing Anna Joy and asking her the most personal and technical questions about all of her lady parts and her fertility and her husband's man bits.
00:33:27.480And she was just answering them, just blindly, blindly telling this stranger things because she was so desperate for any kind of help.
00:33:35.240and then he was like there's a substance called calcimoanophore and there's a process called
00:33:41.620AOA which is artificial oocyte activation it's totally experimental it's not legal but it happens
00:33:48.080in kind of like research labs so not in fertility clinics and where I live in Ireland anyway we're
00:33:54.300like the only EU country that doesn't have um government funded and run uh IVF so everything
00:34:01.080is like an unregulated, not unregulated, but like they're not, it's not run by the government. So
00:34:06.380like from our European perspective, we'd expect all of our medical treatment facilities to be
00:34:11.980like audited by the government, by our National Health Service. And because it's not, it's a
00:34:16.220little bit Wild West-ish. Anna Joy was sent to find a doctor on a website called Fertility
00:34:23.480Friends. And she was also told to find someone who knew about a very specific procedure. This
00:34:30.620was not easy because this procedure is illegal in certain countries because it has not been
00:34:35.840properly tested for birth defects. But eventually, because the internet can do almost anything,
00:34:43.500Anna Joy found an embryologist in Belgium who was an expert on this particular thing.
00:34:47.940She took the chance and her journey began. So we flew there and saw them and it was like
00:34:56.000really experimental they put on the treatment they washed them in the solution they injected
00:35:02.800them with the calcium the same time they inject the sperms and the next day we had like 50 percent
00:35:07.480fertilization and then on the fifth day we had like a perfect blastocyst and i got pregnant i
00:35:15.540have my daughter 2019 in july it never would have happened if you hadn't stumbled on this one
00:35:24.300anonymous instagram account yeah never now since he's become unanonymous and he is a very expensive
00:35:31.840doctor in san francisco everything he gave me was so vital to having my daughter it cost me nothing
00:35:39.760i would have conversations with the doctor that i was paying here and just if they were on the
00:35:47.740phone i'd get a bill and it's just staggering to think that you could have access to that kind of
00:35:54.040help information and like a goodwill for free through like a social network it's just bizarre
00:36:01.380i do think that creators on instagram and i don't want to say that it's instagram doing it because
00:36:10.300it's not them it's the creators but the creators are filling a gap we have a gap in information