Next week here at the Health & Wellness channel, we’re going to make it a little easier to focus in our your favorite TV star, movie actor, singer. We’re trying something out called “Celebrity Week” and each blog will have at least a few posts about celebrities in relation to their topic.

Just in case you can’t wait until tomorrow, here are a few Fertility Notes celebrity posts to tide you over:

• The Kentucky Derby – Contrasting Joy and Loss
• Who’s Your Baby Mama?
• Thoughts and Conversations on J.Lo (She Doesn’t Have Infertility Cooties)
• Did She or Didn’t She? Does It Matter?
• Screw You, Tyra
• Having a Baby – When the Old Fashioned Way Isn’t Working
• Breaking News: Teens Can Get Pregnant After Having Sex
• A Dixie Dialog

See you tomorrow!

Image: Newscom

Post from: Blisstree

“Celebrity Week” at the Health & Wellness Channel Begins Tomorrow

Today is a memorable day for you, Lady Anne. After a brief marriage and far too many miscarriages and missed chances to provide your husband a male heir, your long, elegant neck was relieved of its head. Accusations of adultery, incest, even witchcraft were the official causes of your demise. But we both know the real reason, don’t we?

Would you have been dethroned so quickly had your womb cooperated? Would things be different had you had access to the few tricks up our doctors’ sleeves that we now employ? A little Clomid here, some estrogen there. Oh Anne, would history be different save your losses? Your sorrow? Yes, your sorrow, because every mother grieves, even those fearing for their own existence.

Although it sometimes feels like we are alone as we struggle through our own issues with fertility, Queen Anne, I hope that you forgive us. I can’t think of any other era in history where infertility and pregnancy loss took such a center stage. Your husband’s quest for a male child and subsequent actions to try to gain one made it so. Not even bashful sixth grade history teachers in Catholic School could get around talking about miscarriage. They were forced to explain to pre-pubescent students that sometimes, no matter how hard we try, a baby simply won’t be born alive. Because those lost babies changed history.

I wonder, dear Anne, would the Reformation ever have happened if your predecessor weren’t as unlucky in childbirth as you?

I winced at recent episodes where you were chastised, then blamed, then accused for your pregnancies not being carried to term. (yes, yes, I know. It’s a TV show….) But dammit. The feelings are real and you, Anne, and your predicament, held a very real place in history.

So, here’s to you, Queen Anne, for raising this little’ girl’s awareness way back when. I wish some of those lessons were still just history.

Image credit

Post from: Blisstree

Fertility in History – Happy Anniversary (to the Head of) Anne Boleyn

I confess, gestational surrogacy is a topic that I have steered clear of until now. Mainly due to ignorance. Dozens of articles scream daily about the implications of surrogacy options in other countries, particularly those seen as less developed than ours. And perhaps I’ll delve into that here. Later.

For now, I’d like to share with you some blogs from real women who have chosen to be gestational surrogates. There is actually a section on “Baby Mama”s website entitled “True Tales” – tales from surrogates, couples choosing surrogacy, and others.  If you’re interested in more than a few paragraphs, check out Rayven, who is pregnant with her fifth child as a gestational surrogate, or the Bump Fairy, who is days away from a transfer.

And then tell me what you think.  Are you interested in learning more about gestational surrogacy?

Post from: Blisstree

Who’s Your Baby Mama?