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It's easy to get down on celebrities for the things that they say about, oh, say, pregnancy and motherhood and the like. After all, they're so often saying and doing things that seem incomprehensible to us lesser mortals.

Two weeks ago I wrote about the way childbirth is generally portrayed, even mocked, in popular culture and how that often negatively colors women's beliefs about birth. Sunday, however, on the season finale of the E!

This weekend I was shooting a wedding when sometime during the reception, I farted. I was fortunate that the music was loud enough to mask it, but still. It was enough for me to feel paralyzed at the horror that the pregnancy farting has begun, and I can’t help it. You can’t unring a bell, and you can’t keep that molten air pocket from escaping my massive butt and releasing into the air. Even if it gets trapped in your pants and you have to shake it out because that air bubble is so obvious!

 On the news I heard a snippet of a story saying that scientists are one step closer to creating a birth control pill for men after finding a new human sex hormone that could be used to suppress male fertility. At first, I thought sure, that would be an excellent idea. Let men take responsibility from preventing their progeny from popping up all over the world. Why not have another alternative, besides a condom, for men to use, because we all know men use condoms ALL the time (rightttttttttttttttttttttttt).

Just as you begin to see pregnant bellies everywhere when you're undergoing fertility treatments, you also start to notice it as a plot device in pieces of fiction. Were characters always experiencing infertility and loss, but I never noticed until it was on my daily horizon, or has infertility exploded onto the page in recent years much in the same way it has made it's way to magazine covers and news stories?

Last Friday, Jan. 22, 2010, marked the 37th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, when the Supreme Court legalized abortion across the United States. This is not to say that abortion was not legal at all before Roe - it was legal in 1/3 of states before Roe, and it was legal in the US before the Victorians more or less ruined everything with their horrid morality issues. But don't get me started on the Victorians...

When Mackenzie McCollum was told she couldn't play volleyball at school anymore until she had a doctor's note she was upset for several reasons. First of all, she wasn't telling many people she was pregnant, the mother of a teammate called the coach and informed him. Mackenzie is only 17 years old and a senior in high school. She was also upset that the coach told the whole team that she was pregnant while discussing who would be the starting center in Mackenzie's absence. It gets even trickier.

What do you do when one spouse wants another child and the other does not? Add advanced maternal age and one fallopian tube to the equation and you have a recipe for disaster. I am an only child and in my ideal world would be the mother of two children. However, my desire may not be fulfilled. My husband is not too keen about having another child, I've heard every excuse from the economy to sleep deprivation and am honestly at my wits end.

A woman named Lynsee just gave birth online and I didn't watch. Perhaps it is a testament to how greatly I'm affected by the stories of loss I've read, but knowing what can go wrong in birth, I didn't want to witness a live-feed of emotional anguish. Also a testament to how greatly influenced I am by my own story and those of others in the community, knowing what can go right in birth, I didn't want to witness their enormous joy knowing how out-of-reach it is for 7.3 million Americans.

Here on BlogHer we have lots of discussions of the pressures women are under. Some of it from the the outside, and a lot of it from the inside. It's amazing the hoops we ask ourselves to jump through, leaving aside the pressures from our families, our employers, media messages, and the infamous "they". As in "they say".

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