Catherine Huntley, 43, turned to natural-cycle IVF at Create Health after being told by an IVF clinic that she would not be able to have her own child.

"I tried one cycle of conventional IVF at a leading IVF unit but it was abandoned because I had high FSH and I wasn't responding to the drugs," says Catherine, a writer from north London.

The doctor ruled out natural-cycle IVF as an option. "They said it is less successful than conventional IVF, so what chance would I have? I was told my only hope for a child would be through egg donation."

Huntley approached Create Health Clinic in London after reading an article about natural-cycle IVF. "At my age I had just a 5 per cent chance of a successful pregnancy," she says. "But I got pregnant after four attempts, which I thought was pretty good for someone who had been told to 'forget it'.

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TODAY'S BOOK SUGGESTION:
Boost Your Fertility: New Solutions for Conceiving Quickly and Having a Healthy Pregnancy as Soon as Possible
by Marilyn Glenville Ph.D.

-- The definitive one-stop resource for couples who want to have a healthy pregnancy as soon as possible.

Based on leading women's health expert Dr. Marilyn Glenville's highly successful program, Boost Your Fertility presents an 8-step integrative approach including nutrition, lifestyle, removing environmental toxins, and medical screening for getting and staying pregnant.

Dr. Glenville outlines in detail what may be hindering pregnancy, what you and your partner should be tested for and when, and how to tailor the program to you based on particular factors such as age, medical history, and lifestyle.

Paperback: 240 pages
Click to order/for more info: Boost Your Fertility

Start reading Boost Your Fertility on your Kindle in under a minute!

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Alexis Stewart, 46, welcomed her son, Truman, through a surrogate on March 7 a day before his sister, Jude, celebrated her first birthday, Daily Mail reports.

The daughter of Martha Stewart, Alexis spent five difficult years and more than $30,000 trying for a baby before a surrogate gave birth to her son.

After four miscarriages by surrogates, Alexis felt emotionless about the most recent pregnancy. “I refused to get excited about [the baby],” she says of the previous disappointment.

Alexis spent $27,000 a month for in-vitro-fertilization treatment with an additional $6,000 for the drugs that stimulated egg production to ensure her baby came to term.

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TODAY'S BOOK SUGGESTION:

A Matter of Trust: The Guide to Gestational Surrogacy
by Gail Dutton

-- Published in 1997, this book is a step-by-step guide to surrogate parenting.

It discusses finding and working with a surrogate, what a surrogate program provides, what to include in the contracts, recommended testing for potential surrogates, detailed costs for each item related to surrogacy, the medical procedure, medications and their side effects, embryo cryo-preservation, demographics of surrogates and surrogate couples and the effects of surrogacy upon children.

One chapter outlines the laws in U.S. states and in Israel, South Africa, Canada, the United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, France, Switzerland, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and Russia. Jewish law also is discussed, along with the views of several Christian denominations and other religions regarding surrogacy.

Paperback: 239 pages
Click to order/for more info: A Matter of Trust

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Miss Hawkins is due to give birth to twins – her ninth and tenth surrogate babies – three weeks before her 48th birthday.

And she is not planning to stop there.

Ignoring the potentially life-threatening health risks, the legal secretary is determined to squeeze in two more pregnancies before she reaches 50.

Miss Hawkins’s first seven babies were conceived using her own eggs and the fathers’ sperm via artificial insemination.

However, she is no longer able to become pregnant naturally and uses IVF.

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TODAY'S BOOK SUGGESTION:
Birthing a Mother: The Surrogate Body and the Pregnant Self
-- Birthing a Mother is the first ethnography to probe the intimate experience of gestational surrogate motherhood. In this beautifully written and insightful book, Elly Teman shows how surrogates and intended mothers carefully negotiate their cooperative endeavor.

Drawing on anthropological fieldwork among Jewish Israeli women, interspersed with cross-cultural perspectives of surrogacy in the global context, Teman traces the processes by which surrogates relinquish any maternal claim to the baby even as intended mothers accomplish a complicated transition to motherhood.

Teman's groundbreaking analysis reveals that as surrogates psychologically and emotionally disengage from the fetus they carry, they develop a profound and lasting bond with the intended mother.

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I would be honored to have you share my story. I was really inspired to have my tubal reversal at 45 years old, primarily, because of the wonderful postings I read on your message boards. I read them on a daily basis before my procedure and continued to do so after my surgery.

I sincerely hope my success story (giving birth 3 months before my 47th birthday) will be a source of inspiration to others. I hope the women over 40 years old will read it and continue to have faith miracles can still happen, even after 45.

Sincerely, Dawne S.

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TODAY'S BOOK SUGGESTION:
100 Questions & Answers About Infertility
-- Completely revised and updated, 100 Questions & Answers About Infertility, Second Edition is an indispensible resource for both the recently diagnosed infertility patient and the veteran of unsuccessful treatments. Written in an easy-to-read format, it provides authoritative, practical answers to the most commonly asked questions about infertility.
It covers a wide-range of topics including the etiology, diagnosis, and therapies available for infertility. Additionally, the appendix features key information from the CDC-SART IVF outcome.

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Leslie Leyland Fields has written an immensely important book, one that prods your mind, touches your heart, and speaks to your soul. Surprise Child is a small masterpiece that all pro-lifers should read and then read again and then share with others.

...her life firmly on track, wham, she's pregnant at 42. Seemingly a blink of an eye later, she is pregnant again at 44.

Surprise Child is written for women like Fields. As she writes resources for women in her circumstances were few and far between and none particularly helpful. She writes to convince these women that they have what it takes to carry their baby to term, regardless of circumstances or the siren calls to abort.

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TODAY'S BOOK SUGGESTION:
Surprise Child: Finding Hope in Unexpected Pregnancy
by Leslie Leyland Fields

-- Unplanned pregnancies happen to women in every season of life: the newly married, the never-married, the empty-nester, the teenager, the overworked mother, the career woman.

Yet we rarely talk about how lonely and confusing this experience can be.

In Surprise Child, Leslie Leyland Fields, who experienced two unplanned pregnancies in her forties, lyrically weaves her own story with the stories of other women who understand the isolation you face as expectations and plans are turned upside down to make room for a child.

Each year, more than three million women discover themselves pregnant–at a hard time, the wrong time, at a difficult place in their lives. I am one of those women...

Together, these women walk with you month-by-month through the physical and emotional stages of pregnancy, voicing with startling honesty their own anxieties and struggles.

Here you will find the companionship and hope you need to journey toward new life.

Paperback: 176 pages
Click to order/for more info: Surprise Child

Start reading Surprise Child on your Kindle in under a minute!

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

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Switzerland’s record for the oldest mother, according to Sonntags Blick, is a 66-year-old woman, a pastor, who gave birth to twins at the Coire, Graubuenden hospital.

The hospital confirmed the birth to Le Matin, but is respecting the mother’s wish for privacy.

She reportedly sought fertility treatments in Ukraine and she plans to raise her sons alone in the Graubuenden village of 1,300 where they live.

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TODAY'S BOOK SUGGESTION:
The Multiple Pregnancy Sourcebook: Pregnancy and the First Days with Twins, Triplets, and More
-- In the past 10 years the number of twin births has risen 52 percent and the number of higher-order multiples has increased more than 400 percent!

Written by a perinatal nurse specializing in multiple birth education, The Multiple Pregnancy Sourcebook explores the physical, financial, and emotional challenges of this high-risk condition. Included is an extensive list of support resources.

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March 1, 2011 - Lynette Venezia was walking on air Monday morning when she left Mercy Hospital.

Doctors had just given her a clean bill of health. She was five months' pregnant, and though in a high-risk category because of her age, the 44-year-old mother and her baby were doing well.

In explaining what had brought them to Mercy Hospital, Venezia said that because his wife has lupus, an auto-immune disease, smokes cigarettes and is 44 years old, her obstetrician-gynecologist insisted on a cardio stress test.

"We'd just left the hospital and Lynette was so excited she called her mother and was telling her she was doing well, when all of a sudden the truck hit her," Venezia said.

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Updated: June 6, 2011 - Lynette Venezia delivered by Caesarean section a 4-pound, 4-ounce girl just after 8:30 Monday morning, her husband told The Buffalo News.

Destiny, who was born at 33 weeks, probably will have to remain in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit for up to a month to give her time to get bigger and for her organs to develop more, Venezia said.

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TODAY'S BOOK SUGGESTION:
The Disabled Woman's Guide to Pregnancy and Birth
-- Thoroughly researched and informative, this book is a practical guide both for disabled women planning for pregnancy and the health professionals who work with them. The Disabled Woman's Guide to Pregnancy and Birth supports the right of all women to choose motherhood, and will be useful for any disabled woman who desires to have a child. The subjects covered include an introduction to the ninety women and their specific disabilities; the decision to have a baby; parenting with a disability; emotional concerns of the mother, family and friends; nutrition and exercise in pregnancy; a look at each trimester; labor and delivery; caesarean delivery; the postpartum period; and breast-feeding.
A list of references and a glossary will assist the reader in obtaining additional information and understanding medical terminology. Empathetic, balanced, comprehensive, and practical, this guide provides all the facts needed by disabled women and their families. It stresses the importance of informed communication among the pregnant woman, her family members, and health care professionals. It is the only book that answers critical questions and provides guidance for the woman with a disability facing one of life's biggest challenges.

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