Why Traditional Advice about Infertility Feels Flat When You’re Waiting
- Hopeful Dads
- Feb 27
- 3 min read
There’s a particular kind of advice you start collecting when you’ve been dealing with infertility or waiting a long time to build a family in a nontraditional way, such as through adoption or surrogacy.
“Just breathe.”
“Stay positive.”
“Everything happens for a reason.”
“Have you asked them to move faster?”
We’ve received all of it.
Some of it from people we love. Some of it from well-meaning strangers. Some of it from ChatGPT.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth: Most of it doesn’t help.
Not because it’s wrong.
But because it misses “the itch.”
Why Traditional Advice about Infertility Misses the Point
We talked about this on a recent episode of our podcast:
— the difference between unsolicited advice and the kind of advice you go looking for when you’re exhausted.
Because when you’re in a prolonged season of uncertainty — infertility, adoption disruptions, surrogacy delays — you don’t need productivity hacks.
You need to not feel crazy.
Breathing exercises are good.
Meditation is grounding.
Gratitude lists can be powerful.
But when an adoption match falls through… when a surrogacy transfer fails… when another month passes without progress towards building our family…
“Just breathe” feels like being handed a tissue for a broken bone.
The Real Itch of Infertility
The real itch of infertility isn’t anxiety.
It’s disorientation.
It’s the feeling of moving 100 miles an hour while standing still.
It’s pulling every lever you can find — switching adoption agencies, changing protocols, rewriting profiles, rearranging finances — and realizing eventually there are no levers left to pull.
That’s when traditional advice for infertility starts to fall flat.
Because what you’re actually asking is:
Am I crazy for feeling this way?
And the only people who can answer that properly are the ones standing in the same storm.
Fellowship Scratches the Itch of Infertility
We learned the hard way how to scratch the itch of infertility.
When we were building our house, we thought our builder was uniquely incompetent.
Deadlines slipped.
Materials were delayed.
Warranty promises evaporated.
We thought we were the only ones.
Then we started talking to other people who had built houses.
And every single one of them said the same thing:
“Oh yeah. It’s like that.”
Suddenly, we weren’t crazy.
Nothing changed about the builder. But everything changed about how alone we felt.
The same thing happens in this family-building journey.
When you talk to other intended parents experiencing infertility— people who are also waiting, also calculating timelines, also living in future-tense — something shifts.
You move from:
Why is this happening to us?
to
Oh. This is just hard.
There’s relief in that.
Two Things Can Be True for Intended Parents
This process of becoming intended parents building a nontraditional family is unfair. And it’s biologically and logistically complex.
We can be frustrated. And we can acknowledge the miracle-level orchestration required for adoption or surrogacy to work.
We can want it to happen tomorrow. And recognize we’re asking multiple humans, such as biological mothers, egg donors, or surrogates, and a lot of biology to align perfectly.
Understanding that nuance rarely comes from hearing traditional advice.
It comes from shared experience around infertility in the family-building journey.
What Does and Doesn’t Help Intended Parents Dealing with Infertility
Here’s what has helped us as two dads on the family-building journey and struggling with infertility:
Not fixes.
Not timelines.
Not motivational slogans.
People willing to sit with us and support us through the discomfort.
People who don’t try to solve the problem for us.
People who understand that sometimes we just need to vent until the anger turns into laughter — the kind of laughter that says, “This is absurd and hard and we’re still here.”
It doesn’t change the outcome.
But it changes the weight.
How Fellowship Can Help Intended Parents
To be clear: we still meditate.
We still pay.
We still lean into practices that build steadiness.
If something is working for you while dealing with infertility during the family-building journey — keep doing it.
But if you’ve ever found yourself thinking:
Why does all this advice about building a nontraditional family feel so thin?
It might not be you.
It might be that what you actually need isn’t a coping tool.
It’s fellowship.
Comments