Hi friends,
If you've been anywhere near the fertility conversation this week, you've probably heard more of it than usual. It's Canadian Fertility Awareness Week and, in the U.S., National Infertility Awareness Week, both running April 19-25. NIAW's 2026 theme is "More Than," and both of our features this week were built around it.
The first one sits with the data. A new survey of 1,000 women reveals a reproductive health system that keeps failing on the same fundamentals across three generations. The gaps aren't closing, and that pattern is the story.
The second one sits with the feeling. Fertility journeys are more than a diagnosis, more than a timeline, more than a women's issue, more than statistics, more than a medical problem, and more than the ending. We took each of those reductions apart.
Below, both features, plus the outside reading that made this week feel like a turning point.
Let's get into it.
In this Issue We'll Cover...
The Things 1,000 Women Weren't Taught About Their Own Bodies
More than half of the women in a new national survey were told by a healthcare provider that their symptoms were normal. They weren't. A new MyStoria report reveals a reproductive health system that has been failing on the fundamentals across three generations of women, and the Canadian company building what it takes to finally close the gap. One in four respondents had been dismissed more than once. Nearly two-thirds needed multiple providers to get an answer, and the pattern didn't change across three age cohorts. This is what a system-level problem looks like when you put three decades of it in a single chart.
What We’re Reading
The outside coverage that rounded out National Infertility Awareness Week 2026. Four pieces on where the field is, where it's going, and which barriers are finally starting to move.
National Infertility Awareness Week Highlights Record IVF Births, Growing Demand for Fertility Care : New national data show more than 100,000 babies were born through IVF in the United States in a single year, a milestone ASRM is framing as both progress and a call to action. Useful context for anyone wondering how much the fertility-care landscape has actually moved.
U.S. fertility rate hits historic low as women delay pregnancy and have fewer children: More of us are waiting longer, trying harder, and having fewer kids than any generation on record. NPR walks through what's behind the historic low in U.S. births, and why fertility care access is finally getting the policy attention it should have had years ago.
Half of Infertility Cases Involve Men. Why Does Care Still Treat It as a Women's Issue?: The direct companion to the "More Than a Women's Issue" question raised in our capstone. ASRM makes the data case: male factor contributes to roughly half of all infertility cases, and the clinical conversation has to catch up with that reality.
State Fertility Coverage Mandates Expand in 2026 Legislative Sessions: Over half of U.S. states introduced or carried over fertility insurance legislation in 2026, with California's SB 729 (now in effect) and Virginia's new bill leading the push. Worth reading if you're weighing treatment decisions against what your plan might cover next year.
More Than a Diagnosis
At some point on most fertility journeys, there is a moment when you realize your life has been reorganized around a chart. Not dramatically. Not in a cinematic way. Just a small, interior shift, usually in a waiting room or on a drive home, when you notice that the person sitting in your skin is making decisions the person you used to be would not quite recognize.
Six reductions the fertility conversation keeps falling back on, and why the 2026 NIAW theme is asking you to push back on each of them.
👉 Read: More Than a Diagnosis
If you enjoyed this issue of Path to Parenthood, be sure to share with anyone you know who is currently on a TTC journey ❤
