After learning she’s infertile, Marissa Rivera documents her deeply personal fertility journey, navigating egg freezing, donor selection, and the emotional realities of pursuing solo parenthood. Through vulnerability, humor, and expert medical guidance, the series explores reproductive health and the complex choices facing people building families on their own.
We approached the Marissa documentary with a clear North Star: to create a primary source for anyone trying to understand what an infertility diagnosis could mean in their own life. As a former fertility patient myself, I knew that much of the anxiety and fear surrounding infertility came from the unknown. Our goal was to make that journey knowable– to demystify the process and offer the audience the understanding I wish I had when I was unable to conceive.
Because we had no way of knowing how Marissa’s story would unfold, we initially planned a singular episode that would focus on the education and medical interventions available to people pursuing parenthood. But as her journey evolved over two years, so did our storytelling. As we filmed key milestones– her first egg count ultrasound, the search for a sperm donor, weeks of hormone injections, and the egg retrieval – we mapped out a series that highlighted each stage of the process. The project grew into a three part docuseries that mirrors the emotional and medical realities of fertility treatment.
With funding for only seven principal photography days, we adopted a flexible, multimedia approach. Marissa documented much of her day-to-day life herself over the two years. Once, when an important appointment was unexpectedly moved up because her cycle started early, I was filming another project in Dallas. Rather than miss the moment, we sent a production assistant with a phone to help Marissa capture the appointment where she learned how to self-administer hormone injections. Our filming stayed flexible and unprecious, knowing that reality and intimacy would register more with viewers than high end production. What mattered most was filming everything, including the in-between moments – the waiting rooms, the difficult decisions, the uncertainty between appointments, and the resilience required to keep moving forward.
We knew when starting the project that we could neither predict nor promise a happy ending, a story that ended in motherhood for Marissa. What we could promise was to be with Marissa through the conclusion of her fertility journey, filming each stage and sharing what was real. By embracing the uncertainty and giving the project the timeline it required, we created a documentary that serves as both an educational resource and an intimate portrait of one person’s pursuit of parenthood, offering our audience a window into an experience that’s often kept private.
We want this series to reflect the true experience of those who have undergone fertility treatment, and to offer both information and hope, in equal measure, to those who need to go through fertility treatment.
Our documentary brings visibility to a topic that is often discussed behind closed doors despite affecting millions of people. Infertility and medically assisted paths to parenthood can be emotionally, physically, and financially overwhelming, and, most frustrating of all, they remain surrounded by misinformation. By inviting audiences into her experience, Marissa offers an honest, accessible perspective that helps normalize conversations about reproductive health and empowers viewers to seek information, care, and support.
This series would not have been possible in any way without Marissa’s unflinching generosity in letting us into every doctor’s appointment and every weighted decision she needed to make. In one of the most overwhelming times of her life, she shared her story in order to offer others hope.
