National Infertility Awareness Week Is Here: Simple Ways To Support Yourself or Someone You Love
If someone in your life is navigating infertility, or if you are, National Infertility Awareness Week, April 19 to 25, is a meaningful moment to pause, learn and show up better. Founded by RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association and a federally recognized health observance since 2010, this year’s theme is “More Than.” The message is simple: infertility doesn’t look one way, and neither does the community it affects.
More People Are Affected Than Most Realize
The WHO estimates roughly 1 in 6 people worldwide are affected by infertility, per RESOLVE and ASRM. That number doesn’t include LGBTQ+ individuals and couples who need assisted reproductive technology to build their families. The people around you navigating this quietly are far more numerous than most would guess.
The emotional toll is even less visible than the numbers suggest. Up to 40% of women experiencing infertility have a psychiatric diagnosis, most often depression or anxiety, yet fewer than 7% seek psychiatric help, per the American Psychiatric Association. A 2025 peer-reviewed editorial in PMC found that infertility profoundly impacts mental health, relationships and overall wellbeing, often creating a cycle of distress that compounds over time. Most people going through it feel alone in ways they don’t say out loud.
What Not to Say and What to Do Instead
Supporting someone through infertility doesn’t require having the right words. It mostly requires not saying the wrong ones.
Avoid “at least” statements entirely. “At least you can try again,” “at least you’re young,” “at least you have each other” — however kind the intention, these phrases tend to minimize what someone is actually going through. The same goes for unsolicited advice about diet, stress levels, adoption or “just relaxing.” Infertility is a medical condition. Treating it like a mindset problem is one of the most common and most painful things well-meaning people do.
What actually helps is simpler. A meal dropped off during an IVF cycle. A text that says you’re thinking of them without asking for an update. Being willing to sit with someone in the uncertainty without trying to fix it. These things matter more than most people realize.
The Moments People Often Miss
Infertility doesn’t only hurt in doctor’s offices. Mother’s Day, a friend’s pregnancy announcement, a baby shower invitation — these moments can be quietly devastating for someone in the middle of fertility treatment or loss. You don’t need to address it publicly or make it a big conversation. A simple “I thought of you today” goes further than most people expect.
Don’t disappear after a loss either. Miscarriage and failed IVF cycles are grief, and they’re often invisible grief. Friends show up immediately and then life moves on, but for the person experiencing it, the loss doesn’t move on nearly as quickly. Checking in weeks later matters.
How to Take Care of Yourself If You’re the One Going Through It
Protecting your own emotional wellbeing isn’t selfish. Skipping a baby shower or muting a pregnancy announcement on social media are reasonable boundaries, not avoidance. You don’t owe anyone access to your pain.
RESOLVE’s Peer-Led Support Group network connects people who genuinely understand this experience from the inside in a way that friends and family, however loving, often can’t. Community is one of the most consistent protective factors in infertility mental health research, and finding it can make a real difference in how survivable the hard stretches feel.
The APA also notes that psychotherapy and infertility-specific counseling can meaningfully reduce the stress associated with treatment. With fewer than 7% of people seeking that support, it’s worth knowing it exists and that asking for it isn’t a sign of not coping well.
Wearing orange this week, NIAW’s official color representing wellness, compassion and warmth, is a small way to signal solidarity to people navigating this quietly around you. Small things land when you’re in the middle of something that feels invisible.
This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.
