Infertility Awareness Month comes around every year, and every year I notice the same thing. The statistics get shared. The graphics go up. The hashtags trend for a few days. And then it goes quiet again.
I don't say that to be cynical. Awareness matters. God knows it matters. But for those of us living with infertility, awareness month can feel a little like watching the world briefly glance at something we carry every single day, and then look away again.
I was 15 when I was diagnosed with Premature Ovarian Insufficiency. I didn't know what infertility was then, not really. It was just a word attached to a future I couldn't yet imagine. It took years for the weight of it to land properly, and even now, at 31, it still catches me off guard sometimes.
That's the thing nobody warns you about... Infertility isn't a moment. It's not a diagnosis and then done. It's a long, ongoing negotiation with grief that doesn't follow a neat timeline. It sits alongside you at baby showers and on social media and in waiting rooms. It shows up in conversations you didn't expect and in silences that stretch on too long.
And yet we're still not very good at talking about it honestly.
One in six people globally are affected by infertility. That number includes people with POI like me, people navigating endometriosis, PCOS, unexplained infertility, male factor infertility, recurrent pregnancy loss and so much more. It is not a niche experience. It is not rare. And it is not something people should have to face feeling invisible and unheard.
I spent years feeling exactly that. Dismissed by GPs who didn't understand POI. Handed a contraceptive pill instead of the HRT I needed. Told to lose weight, come back later, try not to worry. Only to be denied funding in the end. The healthcare system failed me repeatedly, not out of cruelty but out of ignorance, and that ignorance had real consequences for my health and my future.
Finding the Daisy Network changed things for me. Suddenly I was surrounded by people who got it. Who didn't need it explaining. Who understood the particular grief of infertility that arrives before you're even old enough to have thought seriously about having children.
That community gave me something I hadn't known I was missing: the permission to be honest about how hard it actually is.
Because it is hard. It is really, genuinely hard. And awareness month should make space for that truth, not just the hopeful outcomes and the success stories, as wonderful as those are, but also the people still in the thick of it. The ones waiting. The ones who've been told no. The ones who are exhausted from fighting to be heard.
If you're one of those people, I want you to know this month is for you too. Not just for the journeys with happy endings.
Infertility awareness isn't just about statistics and social posts. It's about making sure that when someone sits in a hospital room at 15 and gets a diagnosis they can barely pronounce, they don't spend the next decade feeling alone with it.
That's what I'm working towards. That's what the organisations I'm proud to support, the Daisy Network, Paths to Parenthub, Fertility Matters at Work, The Fertility Podcast, are working towards too.
We've still got a long way to go. But we're talking. And that's where it starts.
