Madonna was not pregnant at 44

Feb 9, 2003 - Gossip magazine Heat broke the news that [Madonna] was carrying her third child.

Confusion reigned when only a matter of hours later Madonna's publicist, Liz Rozenburg, denied the story's veracity.

A complaint by Madonna to the UK press watchdog, the Press Complaints Commission, finally silenced the last of the waggling tongues.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the whole debacle is at the age of 44 her plans to have a third child aren't that, well, amazing.

Madonna is an old hand at late motherhood - she had Rocco at 41. Cherie Blair, Jerry Hall, and actress Caroline Quentin have all had children in their 40s.

This Pregnancy Over 40 story was found on PQarchiver.com
Read more: 44 reasons why Madonna with child shocked the world (Sorry, website no longer available)
Originally posted on Feb 9, 2003

UPDATE: Sorry, looks like this story is incorrect. Madonna only gave birth to two children - Lourdes at 38 years old and Rocco at 41 years old. Perhaps she was considering another child when she visited a birth specialist in London when she was 44 years old?

She adopted David and Mercy at 47 and 48 years old respectively. At 58 years old, she adopted twins, Estere and Stella.

In the picture above, Madonna is standing in front of a colorful mural in Malawi. The music icon, now 59 years old, is sandwiched between Lourdes, 21, Rocco, 17, Mercy James, 12, David, 12 and her five-year-old twins Estere and Stella. Photo Credit: Madonna/Instagram

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TODAY'S BOOK SUGGESTION:
The Empty Picture Frame: An Inconceivable Journey Through Infertility
by Jenna Currier Nadeau, Mike Nadeau

-- What has amazed me over the last four years is the ability for every person who learns about our struggle to provide us with the most well-intentioned, yet inane advice possible.

Have you tried timing intercourse? I've heard yoga can help - and of course the knife in the heart, If you stop trying, you'll be amazed at how quickly it'll happen. Just relax.

No offense to the fertiles of the world, but just because you have a child doesn't mean you have any idea how it got here. I'm sure in your 8th-grade science class you learned of fallopian tubes, ovulation, sperm, ovaries, and you might even have been witness to the frightening movie where the mother screams as the baby is being delivered in a horrifying display of excruciating rips and tears.

I'm sure you might have even been scared when you heard that a woman could get pregnant anytime, and that's why protection was crucial.

What you probably weren't told was that a fertile couple only has a 20% chance of getting pregnant in any one month, and that more often the window of opportunity isn't 28 days, but closer to 48 hours.

You probably missed the part of the lesson that explained how the thickness of the endometrial lining had to be a certain number of millimeters, and that how much fat your body was made of actually played a considerable role in the whole process.

The body is a remarkable thing and can compensate for many imperfections, and for most people, it is forgiving of the slightly tilted uterus, or a semi-closed fallopian tube, a weaker quality egg, or a few extra pounds.

But for the millions of other women in the world, conceiving a baby is a process that is truly a miracle; a precise combination of old fashioned faith and the most modern medical technologies.

Infertility is a disease that affects over 6 million people in the United States alone. What that statistic fails to consider are the people who are affected by those millions of infertiles; the people who don't know what to say or how to act.

These people can't conceive of the inconceivable because they have not faced infertility or they have not had the desire to raise children. On both sides of the disease are people who feel helpless; unable to fix the problem and incapable of eliminating the pain.

By picking up this book, you are opening a door to the life of an infertile. The journey of my husband and I may not be exactly that of your loved one, but I can assure you the worries, decisions, pain, and frustration will be similar.

Read these words and you may be able to view your infertile loved one in a new light, and with that light, you may understand and empathize with their struggle.

It is my hope that infertiles reading this will find solace in the words of a fellow veteran of this disease. You won't hear me suggest that there is a sure-fire method of fixing the problem. I don't necessarily believe that in the end, everything will work out as it should.

What you will hear is my deepest admiration for the path you are on. Perhaps you will find comfort in the words of an infertile couple who has been to hell and back, and has the bruises, both literal and figurative, to prove it.

Paperback: 196 pages
Click to order/for more info: The Empty Picture Frame

Category: 44