I Shared My IVF Journey On TikTok. Here’s What I Learned. 

“I’m not saying there’s anything funny about IVF — but I am saying that sometimes, you have to laugh about it,” says motherhood and fertility influencer Alexis Cole — for whom, TikTok has become an essential coping space. “Making TikTok videos with my husband helped us introduce a little levity into our fertility journey — which wasn’t always easy.” 

As a pair, Cole and her husband Brian have been shooting and posting videos about their family since 2018. And they’re hardly coy about delving into the realities of married life — whether it be family planning, IVF, couples counseling, or any number of other intimate subject matters. “When we were starting IVF, we felt like there weren’t a lot of spaces to talk about it freely, and we were having trouble finding community. So we decided to start a YouTube channel,” says Cole. “Our reasons for undergoing the IVF process actually had to do with some of my husband’s health concerns — and we just couldn’t find any other folks out there who were having a similar experience since it wasn’t the typical, traditional IVF narrative.” 

Unsurprisingly, they weren’t alone — and soon after posting a handful of initial YouTube videos, people from across the country were reaching out to connect over their own fertility journeys. Shortly after, the couple expanded onto Instagram and developed a presence there, too. And as TikTok emerged as a major player on the social media landscape, they decided that was worth a shot as well. “I wasn’t totally sure we were going to love being on TikTok, but we figured, why not?” she says. “And within days, I was having so much fun. I think finding joy in putting out content is incredibly important.” 

The couple posted their first TikTok right after their daughter Aza was born. In the video, you’ll see an immediate drop cut from Cole’s pregnant belly to the child in her arms — and in no time at all, the clip went viral. “It was only our first video but people loved it so much,” she laughs. “It was definitely good encouragement to keep up with the platform.”

But content creation isn’t the only time-consuming portion of the job. It’s also about building community, maintaining relationships with followers, and operating as an ally for those looking for kinship, advice, or just a sympathetic ear. And in that regard, Cole takes her job very seriously. “I don’t like to call my viewers ‘followers’, because they’re part of a real community to me,” she explains. “When people reach out, we definitely spend time helping them find resources, setting up Zoom calls, meditating with folks, praying with them. We really are building real relationships. It’s a huge part of why we do this in the first place.” 

That said, boundaries are crucial. Cole says that she and her husband have found ways to set boundaries and maintain a healthy work/life balance by allocating specific days of the week and blocks of time for shooting and editing. And when they’re not creating content, they try to spend time off screen as much as possible — working out, meditating, praying, stretching. But ironically enough, their social media presence, in a lot of ways, actually helps to keep them accountable when it comes to prioritizing their relationship offline. 

“In our videos, we talk about things like maintaining our morning routines together, making time for date nights, or working through stuff in couples counseling — having those conversations in front of an audience keeps us true to ourselves, and it pushes us to continue to do what we think is right for each other even when we’re feeling exhausted, or lazy, or burnt out,” explains Cole, who says they wake up together each day at 5 a.m. “Our mornings are our time before we even get Aza up. We spend some time just to relax — to slow down together before the day gets busy. Even for content creators, that kind of private time is a really beautiful thing.”