Parenting

For parent and child, a cancer diagnosis is a mental shock. And the physical shocks that follow that diagnosis- invasive treatments, surgeries, radiation and chemotherapy are also difficult to bear, also potentially traumatising.

Look, no woman is obliged to tell the world how she got pregnant, famous or not. Infertility is an intensely difficult, often painful and always personal experience. But to safeguard our own fertility and our self-esteem, we need to start filtering these "miracle" celebrity pregnancies through a reality-check. Which brings us back to Hollywood's donor egg explosion.

Living with the death of a child is difficult at any time of the year but Christmas brings extra challenges for bereaved parents. I should know. This will be my ninth Christmas without my son Owen.