Infertile AF: Infertility and Modern Family Building through ART

What happens when two guys meet, talk for eight hours straight on their first night together, fall in love, and decide to build the family they've always dreamed of? Well, it's quite the story. And this week, Ali is getting all of it.

Ali is joined by George and Mike, husbands, dads, and the founders of Families Out Loud, a nonprofit family-building community and traveling conference dedicated to making the path to parenthood throug...

What happens when becoming an egg donor changes the entire trajectory of your life?

This week on Infertile AF, Ali is joined by Katy Encalade, President and CEO of Egg Donor & Surrogate Solutions, who has spent nearly 20 years helping more than 2,000 intended parents grow their families through egg donation and surrogacy. But Katy's connection to this work is deeply personal. Before she ever had children of her own, she became a...

This week on Infertile AF, Ali sits down with Jarret Zafran, Founder and Executive Director of Brownstone Surrogacy, whose path into the surrogacy world started not as an agency owner, but as an intended parent himself.

Jarret shares his personal journey to fatherhood through surrogacy and how experiencing the process firsthand ultimately inspired him to create Brownstone Surrogacy. He talks about meeting his husband, what it feels ...

In this special Listen Again episode of Infertile AF, Ali revisits her conversation with Savannah Bisby, the voice behind @infertilityfriends, whose journey to motherhood has included endometriosis, five IUIs, pregnancy loss, and years of navigating infertility.

When Savannah first joined Ali, she was still very much in the middle of her story, sharing openly about the physical and emotional toll of infertility, loss, treatment, and...

Today’s episode is a really special one because we’re taking you behind the scenes of Petri Dish Princess—the newest book in Ali's Work of ART children’s book series—and Ali is joined by the actual Petri Dish Princess herself, Elizabeth Carr.

Elizabeth was the first baby born through IVF in the United States, and for more than four decades, her story has been told in headlines, history books and news cl...

Today’s episode features the women behind SHOW ME THE LINE, a new documentary following the lives of four women in the aftermath of the 2024 Alabama Supreme Court decision granting personhood status to embryos. When the Alabama ruling disrupts access to IVF, acclaimed journalist and visual artist Abbey Crain has already been in fertility treatment for over 5 years. Overnight, her dreams of motherhood
— and her embryos&m...

Today’s guest is Yesenia Lemus, a three-time surrogate and the Director of Surrogate Services at Brownstone Surrogacy. Yesenia’s surrogacy story actually started on the sidelines of her kid’s swim team, when she met another mom who was pregnant as a surrogate and thought, Wait—I could do that. Her first journey happened during COVID, when she carried twins for intended parents in California. She talks about ...

Today's episode is a Listen Again favorite, and we couldn't think of a better one to bring back because Keri Croft is an absolute badass. Keri is an infertility, pregnancy loss, and surrogacy advocate whose path to parenthood spanned an incredible 16 years. Her story includes multiple miscarriages, IVF, a balanced translocation diagnosis, the heartbreaking decision to undergo a termination for medical reasons after learning her da...

Ali's guest today is Jess Mayhugh, a writer and editor who spent nearly a decade trying to have a baby before the arrival of her son, Cole. Jess's journey includes multiple miscarriages, rounds of IVF, several reproductive surgeries, and the unimaginable heartbreak of losing her newborn daughter, Lucy. On this episode, Jess opens up about navigating it all. It's a story of profound loss, incredible resilience, and massive love.

You might know today’s guest, Alease the Embryologist, from social media, where she somehow manages to educate, empower and entertain while breaking down what’s actually happening behind those mysterious IVF lab doors. Alease is incredibly smart and refreshingly real, and today, Ali and Alease get into ALL of it—including her own decision to freeze her eggs while happily married, because she’s still on the f...

Today, Ali sits down with Kate Ryan, founder of Story of Us, for a heartfelt conversation about infertility, resilience, and redefining what family can look like.

Kate shares her deeply personal path to parenthood, beginning with IUI, moving through IVF, and ultimately building her family through donor conception. She opens up about the emotional highs and lows of treatment, the unexpected twists along the way, and what it took to e...

With soccer on everyone’s mind right now, this felt like the perfect time to bring back one of our most unforgettable episodes.

This week on Infertile AF, we’re re-sharing Ali’s powerful conversation with soccer legend Carli Lloyd. Carli is a former pro soccer star, two-time World Cup champion, two-time Olympic gold medalist, and one of the fiercest competitors to ever play the game. And in this episode — whi...

Today's guest is Danielle Melfi, the CEO of RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association. Danielle brings such a unique perspective because she's not only leading the nation's largest infertility advocacy organization—she's also been a fertility patient herself. In this episode, she opens up about her own egg-freezing journey and how that experience continues to shape the way she advocates for millions of people navigating f...

Today’s episode is a really special one because Ali is sitting down with three of her favorite people in the world: Helen, Aaron, and Blake—the real-life family behind her “Work of ART” children's book, Beautiful Bird.

If you’ve read the book, then you already know a little bit about Jack Bird, the incredible boy at the center of the story. And today, you’re going to hear the real origin story. Th...

On this episode, we're talking about something that affects millions of fertility patients—but that almost nobody talks about until the bill shows up: reproductive tissue storage.If you have embryos, eggs, or sperm in storage, you know the drill. Every year, another invoice arrives. Maybe it's $600. Maybe it's $800. Maybe it's over $1,000. Most people just pay it because they assume that's the cost. But what if it isn't? Ali&...

Today’s guest is Cory Allen—a former police officer, longtime U.S. Secret Service Agent who spent years protecting Michelle Obama, author, dad, and advocate for LGBTQ+ family building.

You may know Cory from his memoir, Breaking Free, where he shared his journey as a gay Secret Service Agent. Now he’s written a children’s book called Dada Takes a Trip, inspired by the very real emotions that come with leaving...

Model, entrepreneur, and new mom Analicia Chaves (aka Ana Montana on socials) joins Ali to share the fertility journey that led her to motherhood—and the mission that grew from it.

Ana opens up about her experience with infertility and IVF, revealing how little she knew about fertility challenges before facing them herself. "I didn't even know infertility was a thing until it happened to me," she says. While her friends seemed...

Angela Rastegar knows firsthand just how overwhelming — and expensive — the family-building journey can be. Before co-founding Sunfish, she spent years working in healthcare and tech while navigating her own fertility journey, including egg freezing and later, embryo creation.

Now, she’s turned that experience into her life’s work. Through Sunfish, Angela is helping make fertility and family-building care mo...

LISTEN AGAIN

NBC News correspondent and former CNN entertainment reporter Chloe Melas joins Infertile AF for an incredibly honest conversation (from 2020) about the emotional toll of infertility, navigating IVF in the public eye, and the pressure so many women feel to “do it all” while struggling behind the scenes. Chloe opens up about her two-year journey to parenthood with husband, Brian, after diagnoses of low ovaria...