There’s been a lot of press in the last year or so talking about various celebrities and their struggles to get pregnant. I know that it’s an incredibly common problem, and several of the commentors on here have talked about their struggles with fertility. It’s good to know there’s support in numbers, and that celebrities aren’t immune to the struggles of everyday people. Helena Bonham Carter and her husband Tim Burton struggled with infertility after having their first child, four-year-old Billy Ray. Yeah the name surprised me a little too. Bonham Carter, 41, assumed that she wasn’t ovulating, so she began a course of treatment with Clomid, which is designed to stimulate egg production. It turns out she was still ovulating, and had a bad reaction to the Clomid, which is apparently not that uncommon.

“‘It stressed me out beyond belief. Hormonally, I was all over the shop and I got really low emotionally. Lots of people don’t have that reaction, but on the internet I found a Clomid Club, with people who react to the stuff discussing it online,’ she said. After going to a North London acupuncturist who supplied a variety of teas to ‘build my strength up,’ Bonham Carter, also tried Tui Na (literally ‘push and grasp’), an acupuncture-related Chinese massage for patients who prefer to avoid needles.

“But with her biological clock ticking loudly in her ear, she realized Oriental medicine wasn’t the solution she’d hoped for – and the next viable option was In vitro fertilization. ‘We might have gone for a round of IVF,’ Bonham Carter said. ‘There was an argument for just having one child, because we thought if that’s the way it’s meant to be, so be it.’ But the pregnancy came naturally, under the intense pressure of making a movie musical.

“While being directed by Burton alongside Johnny Depp in the title role of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Sweeney Todd, Bonham Carter discovered she was pregnant . ‘I was working so hard at the time,’ she recalled. ‘The first three months being pregnant while filming, I felt totally spaced out. You do need to multi-task with acting. You’ve got to remember your marks, your lines, singing, everything, and actually – you have no brain! Suddenly your own brain is growing another person’s brain, so yours goes defunct,’ said Bonham Carter who is due in December. ‘It wasn’t ideal, but then I was so happy to be pregnant.’”

[From People]

Helena Bonham Carter is super lucky to have gotten pregnant naturally. Though I don’t know a ton about fertility issues, I can’t help but wonder if it was just a lucky fluke, or if the Clomid and alternative therapies might have worked in conjunction and helped her out. I can’t imagine how stressful and exhausting it would be to film a movie while pregnant… though one would hope that if your husband is the director, he’d cut you some extra slack. And massage your feet from his director’s chair.

Bonham Carter also has been craving Marmite during the last few months of her pregnancy. I was pretty sure that was some kind of animal, probably related to sloths or lemurs, but it turns out it’s a “British and New Zealand spread made from yeast extract, a by-product of beer brewing. The British version is sticky, dark brown paste with a distinctive, powerful taste. This distinctive taste is reflected in the British company’s marketing slogan: ‘Love it or hate it.’” Thanks, Wikipedia. I’m glad to know Helena Bonham Carter isn’t eating sloths. Although that could be a kind of alternative therapy too. Probably for insomnia though.

Picture note by Jaybird: Here’s Helena and Tim at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition on June 6th. Header image at the “Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix” London Premiere on July 3rd. Images thanks to PR Photos.