Hollywood Moms Highlight Infertility

It is refreshing when Hollywood is open and honest about infertility. The best known example of this is Brooke Shields who has become an advocate for women struggling with infertility. She went through numerous IVF cycles and a miscarriage and became increasingly frustrated. "Everyone around me was getting pregnant. I was starting to feel bitter," Shields said. "Maybe I really wasn't meant to have kids….I didn't want to be happy anymore for the many other people who were having kids. I knew that their blessing had nothing to do with me, but it felt like a slap in the face." She finally went on to conceive her daughter Rowan who was born in 2003. Shields was also very open about her struggle with post partum depression and wrote a well received book about her experience called Down Came the Rain.

Another well known actress, Courtney Cox, used IVF to conceive her daughter CoCo and suffered several miscarriages. Cox says that she will use IVF again in an attempt to conceive a sibling for her daughter. Cox is also considering adoption.

More recently, Desperate Housewives star Marcia Cross was so focused on starting a family that she apparently skipped honeymooning altogether to concentrate on fertility treatments. The 45-year-old actress had already been through infertility treatments and knew how difficult it would be to get pregnant at her age. After undergoing an IVF cycle, Marcia became pregnant with twins, Savanna and Eden, whom she gave birth to in February 2007. The star admits she regrets leaving it so late to become a mother. "It's costly and tough on your body and your relationship. I wish that I'd had my girls in my thirties. Then I could be around longer for them. But they're an incentive for me to stay healthy, take care of myself, and live as long as possible."