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Celebrity Week Continues…

by Gabrielle on June 11th, 2008

Just a few days in, and I am ready for Celebrity Week to be over. I click on the latest celebrity stories as much as the next person; I thought this would be easy. But lists of who did what to get a you-know-what (or two) have already been done. And I hate being late to the game. Look, here’s just a sampling:

• Celebrity Baby Blog lines them all up for you: Celebrities Who Have Struggled with Fertility Issues

• NoBabyonBoard.com has a similar list, a bit more current, and ending with a request to sign a petition to make fertility treatments affordable for non-celebrities,

• An Egg Donation Directory tallies up celebrities that have used surrogacy or egg donation, and

• Babyfruit even compiles a list of celebrity miscarriages

But there’s something else that’s bugging me about Celebrity Week, and I couldn’t put my finger on it until I found Lynn Harris’ 2006 article in Glamour entitled, “Infertile in a Baby-Crazed World” which sums up my malaise when she talks about reading the celebrity rags and mags shortly after her own failed pregnancy:

And then there was Katie. And Angelina. And Gwyneth. They got to watch their “bumps” grow after a doctor removed from mine the tiny being that would have been my baby. They got to shop for cute Liz Lange maternity camisoles while I had to slink, defeated, back to the fertility clinic. When they finally gave birth last spring, it was relatively speaking, a relief: It felt to me like they had all been pregnant for years.

Harris continues to say:

It’s not that people are having more kids; the national average is still two per family. It’s that kids seem to have become a Really Big Deal. You know what I mean: celebrity magazines featuring belly-bulge updates, designer diaper bags and million-dollar photos of Hollywood newborns.

For those of you trying to conceive, are you empowered by celebrity pregnancy stories? Particularly by those who are open about using assisted reproductive techniques (ART)? Or is it all too much? Do you feel like you’re being beaten over the head with big bellies?

As painful as the fuss over babies and pregnancy may be for infertile women, some experts believe it’s not good for any woman, infertile or not. For one, breathless profiles of movie-star mothers and their new tots overshadow the fact that these women have other accomplishments—you know, like Oscars and $50 million opening weekends at the movies.

So, I guess my question is are we going in the right or the wrong direction equating motherhood with Oscars and $50 million opening weekends?

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POSTED IN: IVF, babies, celebrities, infertility treatments, living with infertility, motherhood, pregnancy