Navigating Infertility at Work

When my son Holden was about a year and a half old, I started thinking about growing our family. Like many moms, I had a picture in my head of what I wanted life to look like. I wanted my children to be close in age. I wanted Holden to have a built-in best friend. And because getting pregnant with him had happened way too easy, I assumed the second time around would be similar.

It wasn't.

Month after month, I found myself becoming more consumed by the process than I ever expected. What started as excitement slowly became anxiety, disappointment, and a mental load that touched every part of my life. Eventually, I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) and began fertility treatments at RMA in New Jersey, entering a world that so many women know intimately but rarely talk about openly.

What people often don't see about infertility is how much of it happens while life is still moving forward. You still have to show up for work. You still have to lead meetings, answer emails, hit deadlines, support and be motivating for your team, and be present for your family. On the outside, everything looks normal. On the inside, you're carrying a constant stream of thoughts, calculations, and emotions that never seem to turn off.

Infertility treatment for me meant leaving home before most people were awake and arriving at RMA at 5 a.m. for monitoring appointments, blood work, and testing. By the time I got on the train into Manhattan, I had already been thinking about hormones, follicle counts, timing, and possibilities for hours. Then I would walk into the office and try to shift gears into work mode, often pretending that my day hadn't already felt emotionally exhausting before it had really even begun.

Looking back, I realize how much energy went into carrying it all privately. I felt too ashamed and made the choice to be alone and keep it private (even from my family and friends).

Over the years, I have worked alongside incredibly talented women navigating fertility challenges that nobody around them knew about. They were leading teams, growing businesses, mentoring employees, and delivering results while also managing doctor's appointments, treatments, and disappointments that they often kept completely to themselves.

Infertility can be an incredibly lonely experience, especially at work. You're often surrounded by pregnancy announcements, baby showers, conversations about growing families, and social media updates that seem to arrive exactly when you're struggling the most. You're genuinely happy for the people you care about, but that happiness can exist right alongside grief, frustration, and heartbreak. Those emotions are not mutually exclusive, even though many women make themselves feel guilty for experiencing them.

I remember how badly I wanted that second child. I wasn't just hoping for another baby. I was attached to the vision I had created in my mind of what our family would look like. I was focused on age gaps and timelines and all the expectations I had unknowingly placed on myself. The longer the journey took, the more I felt like I was falling behind a schedule that didn't actually exist.

After going through rounds of fertility treatment and IUI, I received “the call.” It was August 2017. (Hence Hayes’s middle name, August).

To this day, I can tell you exactly where I was. I was working at Hearst and stepped into an office on 18N to take the call from the nurse. The moment she told me it had worked (albeit only 6 weeks in) is permanently etched into my memory. After months of waiting, hoping, worrying, planning, and wondering (and the extremely bruised arm from blood work I was hiding), the news felt almost impossible to process.

If you are navigating fertility treatment, I want you to know something important: you don't have to carry the entire burden by yourself. In fact, I hope you don’t, and I wish someone told me that. So many people are in your position and we need to normalize it.

One of the biggest surprises for many employees is learning how many resources may already exist through their employer. Fertility benefits have expanded significantly over the last several years, and many organizations now offer fertility treatment coverage, family-building support, Employee Assistance Programs, counseling services, fertility coaching, and mental health resources.

While every company is different, it's worth taking a closer look at your benefits package or having a confidential conversation with HR to understand what support may be available. I was fortunate enough to have Progyny for insurance.

Just as importantly, consider letting someone in. Not everyone. Not your entire team. Just someone you really trust.

One of the lessons I learned is that asking for support doesn't require sharing every detail of your journey. Sometimes it's enough to tell a manager, "I'm dealing with an ongoing medical situation that may require some appointment flexibility over the next few months." Most leaders don't need your full story in order to support you. They simply need enough context to understand that you're navigating something significant.

As ambitious women, asking for help can feel uncomfortable. We are often the people everyone else relies on. We take pride in showing up, figuring things out, and carrying the load. But sometimes strength looks like creating space for others to support you, too.

Most importantly, give yourself grace.

The mental load of infertility is real. If you have ever sat through a meeting while waiting for test results, refreshed a patient portal between calls, or tried to focus on a presentation while carrying the emotional weight of uncertainty, you know exactly what I mean. You are distracted because you are human.

To every woman currently navigating fertility challenges while building a career, raising a family, or trying to become a mother for the first time: I see you.

I see the early morning appointments, the difficult conversations, the endless waiting, and the emotional balancing act of celebrating others while quietly managing your own pain. You are not alone, even when it feels that way.

And while I know how easy it is to tie your worth to timelines, outcomes, and plans that are not unfolding the way you hoped, please remember that your value has never been determined by any of those things.

Some of the strongest women I know are the ones who showed up every day while carrying a struggle nobody else could see. If that is where you are today, my hope is that you find the support, resources, and community you deserve and that you remember there are more of us walking this path than you may even realize.