Shane Burcaw and Hannah Aylward are expecting their first baby, due in January 2027 — but the Squirmy and Grubs couple’s path to this pregnancy announcement involved years of IVF attempts, a heartbreaking sperm-count battle tied to Shane’s Spinal Muscular Atrophy medication, and a multi-year break just to recover emotionally. Hannah is currently 20 weeks pregnant, confirmed in September 2026.
The Medical Reality Behind the Announcement
Shane Burcaw was diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy Type 2, a progressive neuromuscular disease that causes spinal nerve cells to degenerate. He has used a motorized wheelchair since childhood. Long before YouTube, he built a public platform around humor and honesty — writing memoirs, founding the non-profit Laughing at My Nightmare, and consistently dismantling the idea that disability and a full romantic life are incompatible.
The medication Shane takes daily is what keeps SMA from progressing further. It is also, medically, the reason conceiving naturally was never on the table: one of its primary side effects is severe fertility suppression. To give IVF a real chance, Shane had to temporarily pause or adjust that treatment — a decision that came with physical consequences, including fatigue and heightened vulnerability. That is the trade-off at the center of this story, and the one the couple shared openly with their the growing conversation around disability and reproductive rights audience beginning around 2022–2023.
Initial fertility testing returned some of the worst possible results: periods where tests showed zero viable sperm. The emotional weight of that — after already accepting the risk of pausing protective medication — pushed the couple to step back entirely for a stretch of time before trying again.
How Shane and Hannah Built Something Worth Fighting For
It started with an email in 2016. Hannah, then a college student, came across a documentary about Shane’s life, reached out, and what followed was months of long phone calls and cross-country visits. By 2018, they had launched Squirmy and Grubs on YouTube — a channel that grew into one of the most visible platforms for interabled relationships anywhere online, drawing millions of followers for exactly the kind of directness Shane had always had.
They married in September 2020 in an intimate ceremony in Minnesota, during the pandemic, and kept building. Their content has never shied away from the harder questions: accessibility, ableism in medical settings, the assumptions strangers make about intimacy between a disabled person and a non-disabled partner. The pregnancy announcement — shared alongside sonogram photos and a message of solidarity to anyone else navigating infertility — is consistent with that same honesty.
The baby is due in January 2027. After everything it took to get here, that date carries a lot.
- the emotional side of IVF journeys shared online
