Princess And The Pea

‘PREGNANT women in Hollywood remind us of the fable of the princess and the pea.

‘I’ll have one of those and one of those’

While Maureen Scag from Skegness can feel no pea when she goes to bed, no life threatening pang in her lower spine that will knock her hormones out of balance and necessitate an emergency collagen injection and magazine interview, Hollywood’s finest writhe in abject agony.

They are sensitive to the slightest touch, and so when Julia Roberts gets pregnant she wraps herself in cotton wool…and a pashmina.

News is that the actress, expecting two test tube babies, has changed her lifestyle utterly.

She has quit smoking. She has stopped eating sweets. She’s reading lots of childbirth books. She’s doing yoga. She’s cutting back on red meat. She’s reducing her cholesterol intake. She is eating a diet low in fat and salt.

So far so good. Every woman from Arkansas to Ipswich who dreams of being a Hollywood star can ape Julia’s pregnancy with their own embryo or cushion.

But things soon depart from the norm. Enter the pea. And its name is preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD).

You will not want it, nor need it. But Julia, being a Hollywood princess, knew that she had to have it or else something dreadfully normal would befall her.

So she had the test, which screens the male’s sperm for sex selection, to choose her babies’ genders. And she’s now having a boy and a girl.

And since she’s hand-picked the sperm and held a casting-call for her future children, we can only suppose that in time they too will go to bed one night and complain of something wonderful and hard to pronounce.

And we will look on with envy…’

Posted: 25th, June 2004 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink