Jimmy Fallon, Elizabeth Banks Other Celebs Who Used a Surrogate

Jimmy Fallon

Funny man, Jimmy Fallon, got serious talking about his new baby girl, Winnie Rose. He and his wife used a surrogate to conceive their daughter. "My wife and I had been trying a while to have a baby," Fallon told. "We tried a bunch of things - so we had a surrogate." Most of Fallon's fans didn't know he was expecting a baby until his announcement.

Elizabeth Banks hilariously played a pregnant mama in What to Expect When You're Expecting, but in real life Banks never had the opportunity to carry a baby to term, explaining to  magazine that "embryos wouldn't implant" in her womb. Although she admitted that turning to a surrogate was "a big leap," it was ultimately the right choice, which happily led to the birth of son Felix. She also told  that "It helps that other moms had said that once they had their babies, they forgot they were ever pregnant," she says. "So once my focus became the baby and not the pregnancy, it was a very easy decision." On November 14, 2012, Banks announced that she and husband Max Handelman welcomed another son, Magnus Mitchell Handelman, into their family, also via gestational surrogate.

Giuliana and Bill Rancic certainly made no secret about their intentions to have a baby - their reality show, Giuliana & Bill, documented every excruciating step, including infertility, miscarriage and the E! host's bout with breast cancer - yet their long-awaited dream finally came true when son Edward Duke Rancic was born via gestational surrogate in Denver. "We are so in love with the little guy already," Giuliana told adding that they were in the delivery room for the birth.

Intensely private couple Robert De Niro andGrace Hightower surprised the world when they announced they had welcomed a daughter, Helen Grace, via surrogate. De Niro was 68 at the time of the birth, while Hightower was 56. The baby girl joins big brother Eliot, now 14. This isn't the first time De Niro has experienced childbirth via surrogate: In 1995 he welcomed twin sons, Julian and Aaron, via surrogate with then-girlfriend Toukie Smith.

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban welcomed a daughter born via surrogate, Faith Margaret Kidman Urban, though she is the couple's biological daughter. "No words can adequately convey the incredible gratitude that we feel for everyone who was so supportive throughout this process, in particular our gestational carrier," the couple told. This is the second child for Urban and Kidman, who have a daughter, Sunday Rose, 2. Kidman also has two adopted children, Bella, 18, and Connor, 15, with ex-husband Tom Cruise.

Elton John and husband David Furnish welcomed a baby boy, Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John, via surrogate. "We are overwhelmed with happiness and joy at this very special moment," the couple said in a statement about the birth of the 7lb, 15 oz. little one.

Neil Patrick Harris and his partner, David Burtka, welcomed their first children - a boy and a girl via surrogate! The How I Met Your Mother star told fans of twins Gideon Scott and Harper Grace's arrival on Twitter. "All of us are happy, healthy, tired and a little pukey. They cry a lot. I thought it was just a long bit that they were doing. I keep saying, 'Annnnd, scene!'... but nothing happens."

In June 2009, Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker and her actor-husband Matthew Broderick added twin girls to their family via surrogate. The celeb couple, along with biological son James Wilkie, are pictured here with Marion Loretta Elwell andTabitha Hodge Broderick.

Latino bon-bon shaker Ricky Martin traded in "livin' la vida loca" for an out-of-the-spotlight single-parenting role when his two sons, Matteo and Valentino, were born in early August 2008 via surrogate. 

Camille Grammer used a surrogate to conceive daughter Mason, born in 2001, and son Jude, born in 2004, with then-husband Kelsey Grammer. Doctors advised the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star to avoid getting pregnant due to the form of irritable bowel syndrome she suffers from, and the serious health risks it could pose.  

Law needed to regulate surrogacy

BANGALORE: A House committee is batting for a law to regulate surrogacy, with Bangalore fast emerging as the world's biggest hub for surrogate mothers, since the technology is cheaply available here.

The report said most surrogate mothers who come from the lower middle class are renting their wombs for trivial sums. The cost of surrogacy ranges from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh - at least ten-fold lower than what is charged in other countries -- attracting childless couple from foreign shores to India and mainly Bangalore, it added.

Some surrogate mothers from slums are cheated after delivery, and also suffer from psychological problems and depression while giving away the child. Besides, if the child is born disabled or if the mother dies during delivery, no responsibility is fixed.

"Surrogacy is bound to create sociological, psychological and medical problems for women and society. In the absence of any law, middlemen are making money, leaving many hapless women and children in the grip of a cruel fate,'' said Shetty in her report.

There is a need to demark the emotional, blood relationship and rights of surrogate mothers with the child, the report recommended.

Foreign nationals who want to hire surrogate mothers should be made to register with their respective consulate offices, so that middlemen don't exploit women here. The state government should form a State Accreditation Authority as a nodal agency to allow hiring of surrogate mothers, the report added.

The report also recommended the installation of CCTVs in all police stations and buses to ensure that police personnel and the public behaved properly with women, besides deputing 20% of women staff in all police stations.

(timesofindia.indiatimes.com)

Would a Pregnancy Through a Donor Egg Feel Like ‘Mine’?

I don’t exactly know how we found ourselves talking to a doctor about egg donation. We were in Israel to interview in vitro fertilization experts about their proposed treatment for me, and next thing I knew, we were sitting with the woman in charge of one of Israel’s egg donor programs. Donor eggs were supposed to be our last stop, only after full-force I.V.F. But when my husband heard the numbers, his eyes lit up. “There’s a 60 to 70 percent chance of success for donor eggs,” the doctor said. We had long known about the statistics (although according to the Society for American Reproductive Technology the success rate is 54.9 percent), but we hadn’t yet considered using someone else’s eggs because I kept getting pregnant, and it seemed only a matter of time till we found my one good egg and the right protocol to carry a baby to term.

There’s a strange silence in the world about donor eggs. Many proud older celebrity mothers who grace the pages of supermarket tabloids with their children probably used donor eggs, even though they would never go public about it. (Not that they should: it’s a private issue, yet the secrecy makes it seem shameful.) I hadn’t given it much thought until that meeting because the cost — starting at around $25,000 — seemed prohibitive.

This doctor said that Israel’s egg donor program cost about $8,000 for private patients (less if you’re a citizen), who fly to clinics in places like Ukraine, Cyprus and the Czech Republic for six eggs from a young woman (age 21 to35). She made it sound relatively simple – few drugs, a weekend abroad and poof! I’d be pregnant. I could even do it from the United States.

Solomon, my husband, was ready. It was the math – 50 percent versus less than 10 percent – that swayed him. But he left it to me to make the decision to stop I.V.F. “In the end, it’s your call,” he said.

It was my call because with donor eggs the baby would still carry his genetic material, not mine. I wanted to believe it didn’t matter – I’d still be carrying the baby, nourishing it, birthing and nursing it – and I feel like the worst person in the world when I admit my deepest fear: that I wouldn’t feel like the baby was mine. I wish I could think like my holistic therapist cousin who worked with families and keeps telling me, “Love is the only thing that matters.”

But is it?

The State Department requires that “a U.S. citizen parent to have a biological connection to a child [born abroad] in order to transmit U.S. citizenship to the child at birth. In other words, the U.S. citizen parent must be the sperm or the egg donor in order to transmit U.S. citizenship to a child conceived through ART [Assisted Reproduction Technology].” Solomon is an American citizen, but reading that information felt like a stab in my uterus: a government agency was saying the baby wouldn’t be “mine.”

But that was a straw man. My real concern was the Jewish one. Solomon had hoped in vain that I wouldn’t come across Caren Chesler’s article What Makes a Jewish Mother? Like her, I worried. If I used donor eggs, would I have to convert my child? What would my ultra-Orthodox family think? Of course it shouldn’t matter: I was a grown woman, no longer religious, married to a secular man who thought these religious edicts were bogus, yet I couldn’t shake the (admittedly racist) notion I’d grown up with my whole life, that any baby of mine would de facto be Jewish. I didn’t want my children rejected by the Jewish establishment.

Turns out, it’s a gray area in Jewish law. I turned to a rabbi from the Puah Institute, an Orthodox organization that helps women with infertility. “Some rabbis rule that only the donor mother needs to be Jewish, others rule that the birth mother has to be – and others yet say both have to be,” he said, noting how hard and expensive it was to get Jewish donor eggs. He listed names of respected rabbis, including the recently deceased Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel, Ovadia Yosef, who ruled that only the birth mother needed to be Jewish. That was enough for me.

“But I’m not convinced you need donor eggs yet,” the Puah rabbi told me after I had recounted our fertility journey. I thought of my friend who, after a botched I.V.F. procedure, was forced to move onto donor eggs. Her children were lovely. But she hadn’t had a choice. I still did.

The rabbi said, “Is there any way you can continue with I.V.F.?”

There was. We would meet with in vitro fertilization doctors in Israel for what Solomon called our last-ditch effort to find my one good egg. If a few rounds of full-force I.V.F. didn’t work, we would take donor eggs. I know one thing: in the end, it will be our baby either way.

 (By Amy Klein)

Egg donation helps people to have the family

For 10 long years, Sarah and her husband had been trying to start a family, with no success.

It should have been straightforward. They were both healthy and only in their 30s. But after a decade of disappointment, doctors broke some devastating news. Sarah's eggs were of such poor quality that even IVF was unlikely to help her conceive.

In the past, women with poor-quality or scarce eggs would have had to accept that they'd never have a baby, or else start thinking about adoption.

But these days there's another increasingly popular option - egg donation. If Sarah was willing to travel abroad and use eggs donated by another woman mixed with her husband's sperm, she could carry and deliver her own child and finally have the baby she longed for.

Sarah found reproductive clinic and choose donor program. Such programs are conducted across Europe, the UK and the Ukraine where donor eggs are readily available.

With no way of tracking the number of babies born in this way, it's hard to say how many couples are choosing this route, but experts believe it's likely to be hundreds every year.

Egg donation is permitted in Ireland, but medical guidelines prohibit the payment of donors, so unless an infertile woman can find a sister or friend who's happy to give her an egg, donors are hard to come by.

But they're not unheard of. The well-known Irish writer Maria Duffy donated her eggs after watching documentary about infertility.

"We had our four children and felt very blessed, and watching the program really affected us," she remembers. Maria was so moved; she contacted the clinic and said she wanted to donate eggs.

Clinic matched her with someone on their waiting list, and explained in detail the process involved. Essentially, Maria would be going through a cycle of IVF, with hormone treatments and daily injections, and then, under a local anesthetic, the eggs would be retrieved from her.

Those eggs would be mixed with the recipient's partner's sperm in the lab, and then implanted in the recipient.

"The clinic went to great pains to make me realize what a big thing it was," says Maria. "They wanted to make sure I knew that while it would be my biological child, I would have no legal rights. But I was very sure that regardless of what was involved, I wanted to do it."

Maria donated her eggs to a woman whose name she never knew. "I just knew basic details about her - how long she'd been waiting, that sort of thing. When I rang the clinic nine months later, I was delighted to find out she'd had a baby, although I don't know if it was a boy or a girl. It really was one of the best things I ever did."

Deciding to pursue the egg donation route is a big decision for couples - and not something done lightly. Clinics recommend counseling for couples to fully understand the implications of the process - both for themselves and for their child.

"For the couple about to embark on egg donation, coming to terms with the idea of it is about acceptance," says fertility counselor. "And not just about accepting the decision to proceed with this course of action, but accepting the loss of not having a genetically shared child.

"After that, their attitude towards the donor is very important: they must feel positive towards them, but at the same time I don't want them to overthink the donor."

And couples must be prepared for the future. What questions today's donor egg babies might have about their own history and heritage 20 years from now are anyone's guess.

Egg donation is most common in countries where the donor's anonymity is protected by law. But many argue that children born as a result of egg donation should have the right to track the biological parents.

There are no easy answers. Sarah's little boy is now two. She plans to tell him, when he's old enough to understand, how he was conceived, but he'll never know exactly who his biological mother was, because US law protects donor anonymity.

Genetic screening excludes gene carriers for conditions like cystic fibrosis. Donors are even psychologically tested.

But it's not about creating designer babies, says doctor. "We are looking for the best heritage for our patients and we are out to create the healthiest baby we can," he says.

"Many donors are young mothers who have had their own families, or medical professionals who have seen patients suffer and feel that they can give something back in a unique way. Yes, they are compensated, but really it is a combined motivation. There are daily injections and different appointments to attend, and it's a big commitment."

Sarah will be able to hand her son a 10-page document, compiled by the fertility clinic, with details about what kind of a woman the donor was - what she liked, what she didn't like, what color her hair was, how many siblings she had. Sarah feels this is enough.

"I think about that amazing woman all the time," says Sarah. "I might not know her name, but I do know a lot about her."

"I think biology is overrated," says Maria Duffy. "The woman who received my eggs carried that baby, delivered that baby, and is now bringing it up. That baby couldn't be more hers." She'd be happy, she says, for the child to contact her if he or she wanted to in the future.

For Sarah's part, the rewards of having a longed-for family of her own outweigh the potential pitfalls of donation.

"People get too hung up on making a baby, but what you're really doing is making a family.

"Egg donation is nothing to be ashamed about. Society makes people uncomfortable with this step. But our lives have been unbelievable for the past two years. It is the most incredible thing that has ever happened to us. I have a beautiful boy, and I have the happy ending that I always wanted."

(Irish Independent)

The germ of new life

The world-famous photographer Lennart Nilsson has presented mankind a unique project that depicts in details germ of new life. These are 23 photos that show step by step process of the germ and development of a baby. It took Mr. Nilsson 10 years to record embryo’s evolution with the help of photo, from its conception to birth.

Photographer has received international recognition in 1965. Then one of the popular American magazines published 16 pages with Nilsson’s photos where he pictured a human embryo. Thereafter these photos were also published in all well-known magazines of Europe and brought their author a world fame.

Since early childhood not cars and toy soldiers were favorite toys of Lennart Nilsson but microscope and camera. Nilsson wanted to show the world all the beauty of human body not in a classic form but on a cellular level.

First pictures of the human embryo Nielson has made in 1957 but their quality left much to be desired, so the master decided not to show them to the public. Subsequently photographer got a cystoscope - a medical device that allows to examine the bladder from the inside. It allowed Nilsson to make the most accurate and colorful pictures. Master attached camera and a light guide to the cystoscope and made thousands of pictures of baby's life inside the womb.

In such a way a unique project by Lennart Nilsson was born with the help of which photographer was able to show the world the mystery of the origin of human life.

Sperm cell being in uterine tube is moving opposite to egg cell

Egg cell

Sperm-egg collision

One of 200 million sperm cells search into the egg

Sperm cell in cut. Tip of sperm cell contains all genetic material

In a week embryo reaches a womb sliding down Fallopian tube

In one more week embryo fastens to womb’s mucosa

22^nd day of embryo’s development. Gray matter is a future cerebrum

Reaching the 18^th day embryo’s heart starts beating

 28^th day after  fertilization

5 weeks, length is 9 mm, face with spaces for mouse, nostrils and eyes is already can be seen 

40 days. External embryo’s cells mixing with womb’s upside create placenta

8 weeks

10 weeks. Blepharons is already half-opened. In some days they will be formed in full

10 weeks. Baby starts using hands to examine his environment

16 weeks

It can be seen blood - vessels through the thin skin

18 weeks. Baby is able to perceive sounds of outside world

19 weeks

20 weeks. Length is about 20 cm. Hair starts growing on the head

24 weeks

6 months

36 weeks. In a month baby will draw the first breath.

 http://www.lennartnilsson.com/