Creators are drawing big audiences sharing their intensely personal medical journeys through IVF and egg-freezing. It’s helping them afford a shot at a family they might not otherwise have.her first miscarriage in February 2020. When the pandemic hit weeks later, she began using TikTok, where she was surprised to find content on little-discussed topics like pregnancy loss, infertility and other challenges getting or staying pregnant.
Startups are increasingly leaning on niche creators and influencers in the space to drive growth—seeing in them unusually high engagement rates that several creators attributed to their stories having a narrative arc that can feel like reality TV. “If you were a viewer watching it, it almost felt serialized, like a show,” said 30-year-old TikToker, who began IVF at CNY Fertility in Buffalo after a miscarriage and then an ectopic pregnancy that led to the removal of a fallopian tube.
HRC Fertility, an affiliate of USC’s Keck Medicine that has clinics throughout California, has partnered with influencers across the state. Dr. Rachel Mandelbaum, an obstetrician-gynecologist and reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist at HRC’s Los Angeles offices, said she views this as an important way for practices to both reach and educate potential patients, and to showcase the doctors’ high quality of care.
Despite the good intentions and awareness raising, some view clinics’ potential paid partnerships with influencers as problematic, especially when such financial relationships are not clearly disclosed as“This cannot be viewed as ‘information is power’ when there is most certainly a financial incentive for their decision to share—whether it be free services or a split commission based on future patients referred by said influencer,” one Redditor commented.
TikToker Leah Marie began fertility treatment in 2023. She delays her posts by one month so she can protect herself and allow time to process challenges like a recent failed IVF cycle., a 37-year-old creator near Philadelphia, has grown an audience of 27,000 on TikTok sharing her path through male-factor infertility . She said that one clinic in her area—where she was not a patient and had never been treated—asked her to promote their IVF services in exchange for money. She turned it down.