“There’s power in advocacy, power in our voices, and power in our community.”
Andrea Syrtash
Andrea Syrtash, an author, journalist and the brains behind Pregnantish, decided to turn her fertility challenges into a survival guide. Actually, her experience is in the form of an online magazine to help those struggling with infertility. However, before creatively working to destigmatize infertility, her story begins during her teenage years. That’s when Syrtash experienced heavy menstrual periods. She was also diagnosed with endometriosis at 14 and later told that conceiving a child would be a challenge.
“As a fourteen year old, the last thing on my mind was motherhood,” said Syrtash who didn’t realize that the road to motherhood would be a roller coaster ride.
By the time, Syrtash met her husband, she casually shared that it could take them a few years to have a baby. To her surprise, it took the couple much longer.
“The long story short is, I now have a two year old that took me almost a decade to have. It took me eight years, 18 fertility treatments, open stomach surgery to remove a fibroid tumor, pregnancy losses and a whole host of other things,” said Syrtash who eventually took the surrogacy route, when a relative became her gestational carrier.
In 2019, Syrtash and her husband were blessed with a daughter and through her fight to become a mother, empowering others was always at that back of her mind. Just a few years before becoming a mother, Syrtash decided to launch Pregnantish, a family building website to support those on the non-medical side of infertility.
“I was five years into my struggle and frustrated that all the content that I was finding was medical related or personal blogs. I wanted to create an online space with content that was sourced, creditable, fact-checked, and was much more than my story,” Syrtash expressed.
Since 2017, Pregnantish has been committed to educating and supporting a community of folks who often suffer in silence. According to RESOLVE, the National Infertility Association, one in 8 couples struggle with infertility. Through its network, Pregnantish connects some of those people and host “live” events that have been temporarily suspended due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, Syrtash continues to move forward with her mission while many try to adapt to the “new” normal of social distancing. She’s currently working on a state-of-art fertility app that will further help and represent a diverse set of voices.
“Infertility has taught me that there are setbacks, but you have to stay present! There’s power in advocacy, power in our voices, and power in our community.”