Fertility in History - Happy Anniversary (to the Head of) Anne Boleyn
Ah Anne, I’ve been thinking 
about you a lot lately. Probably because this show is currently the reason I look forward to the ends of my weekends, my Sunday nights.
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.
Tags: , Ann Boleyn, childbirth, england, English history, fertility, Henry VIII, infertility in history, infertility treatment, miscarriage, pregnancy loss, Reformation, The Tudors, Tudor dynastyRelated Stories
POSTED IN: babies, celebrities, fertility in movies, living with infertility, motherhood, pregnancy
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