In Vitro Fertility Goddess

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Infertility and The Stars

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There was a moment, when I was at all time low and wallowing in the mire of infertility, that I was relieved to hear Courtney Cox had suffered a miscarriage.

To put it in perspective, I was rather obsessed at the time about who was fertile and who wasn't and the magazines in the supermarket queue were a form of torture, what with the never ending parade of famous Fertility Goddesses gracing their covers.

Every week there was a new batch of coiffed hair extensions and perfect teeth on the cover with at least one of them plastered with the words ‘Surprise Pregnancy!' or ‘Baby Bump!' as a revolving door of celebrities were apparently going out of their way to reproduce.

Most turned out to be false alarms but inevitably one who'd been dating a guy for a week or was just out of rehab would indeed be ‘up the duff', carelessly and easily.

Then there were those well into their forties, carefully orchestrating pregnancies between world tours or film commitments and presto! The next minute they'd be spotted with a new hairdo, wheeling a Bugaboo pram (the only clue that they'd had a baby) whilst talking on the phone to their agent about their upcoming project. They were effortlessly ‘having it all' and made it look as easy as picking up a latte from Starbuck's.

Meantime Courtney Cox, despite her meteoric success and committed relationship, was not only having miscarriages and embarking on IVF but talking about it. And I can't begin to say how refreshing it was.

I don't for a minute use these people as barometers for my own life but I sense there's a strong and false message coming from the celebrity world and that is, that no matter how old you are, how many times you're in rehab, how busy your life is, you can just fall pregnant effortlessly when it suits you. If these women are all doing it, what's wrong with the rest of us who can't?

If the truth were told, the fertility clinics in LA are as awash with desperate women as they are anywhere else, it's just that the rest of us don't have PR machines running around letting the world think that along with every other ‘achievement' we also happen to be fertility goddesses.

Jodi Panayotov