Olivia Munn underwent breast cancer treatment last year after a surprise diagnosis, but in a new interview with People, she said even that experience wasn’t as difficult as postpartum anxiety. “It was truly the most challenging thing,” said Munn, who shares her two-year-old son Malcolm with partner John Mulaney. “It was incredibly difficult. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would put my postpartum anxiety at 100… I went through something challenging this past year,” she continued, referencing her breast cancer battle, “but I don’t think it compares to what I went through postpartum.” Postpartum anxiet ..read more

Kimberly Seals Allers likes to say that Irth, the app she created to give BIPOC birthing people the power to review their doctors, is something she wished she had when she was giving birth. “I was doing all the research… really hoping to have a great birth experience,” she explained in a discussion with SheKnows Editor-in-Chief Erika Janes at the SHE Media Co-Lab Whole Life Health event at SXSW in Austin, Texas, this past March. A journalist by trade, Allers leveraged all her research skills to find a good hospital and a doctor who would care for her. But in the end, all her careful vetting di ..read more

Popular beauty influencer Jessica Pettway passed away due to cervical cancer at age 36 last month, according to E! Online. As a Black physician, wife, and mom, the news of Pettway’s passing deeply resonated with me, as does every tragic story that adds to the increase in mortality rates and dismissals of Black women in healthcare. Stories like hers and many others only serve to compound the already pervasive mistrust and trauma that Black women experience when seeking healthcare. It also underscores the importance of health screenings as well as women advocating for themselves, and not normali ..read more

If you have endometriosis, you know that the symptoms can be unpleasant, from common ones like intense cramps, fatigue, and excessive bleeding to “silent” symptoms like fertility issues and ovarian cysts. If, on top of all that, you also feel like you’ve gained weight due to endometriosis, know that you’re not alone. Bloating (aka endo belly) will often make it seem like you’re putting on weight in your midsection, but true weight gain might be happening too — though it may not be directly related to endometriosis. “Endometriosis itself does not cause weight gain, but some women with endometri ..read more

Halle Berry was convinced she would miss perimenopause. “My ego told me that I was gonna skip it,” she said in a panel conversation on menopause and women’s health with First Lady Dr. Jill Biden at A Day of Unreasonable Conversation. “I’m in great shape,” Berry continued, explaining her rationale. “I’m healthy. I managed to get myself off of insulin and manage my diabetes since I’m 20 years old. So that makes one think, ‘Oh, I can handle menopause. I’m gonna eat right, exercise, and I’m gonna skip that whole thing.'” Of course, menopause doesn’t quite work like that (if only… although diet and ..read more

If you purchase an independently reviewed product or service through a link on our website, SheKnows may receive an affiliate commission. More and more celebrities are talking about menopause these days, getting real and honest about their experiences, and we love to see it. The more all of us (famous and not-so-famous) talk about menopause, the less stigma we all face about this time of life experienced by half of the population. More transparency, more sharing what works, more normalizing this common (but not always easy) experience. Halle Berry is one of the stars leading that charge, espec ..read more

When you’re trying to get pregnant, doctors often recommend trying to reach a healthy weight before conception in order to reduce the risk of complications. For some, taking a weight-loss drug like Ozempic or Wegovy, AKA a semaglutide, is the silver bullet to actually accomplishing that goal. But is that kind of medication safe to continue taking once you do conceive? Reddit threads are filled with stories ranging from miscarriages to birth defects to zero complications at all.  “There’s not enough information out there as to what the risks are,” says endocrinologist Dr. Judith Korner, di ..read more

Last week, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos should be considered children under state law. The implications of the ruling are massive, threatening the legality of fertility procedures like in vitro fertilization in Alabama and providing a path for other states to do the same. For people who have undergone the strenuous process of IVF themselves, the ruling felt personal. “I was horrified,” said Sarah McCoy Isaacs, who conceived her son through IVF. The case itself involved a couple whose frozen embryos had been destroyed when a hospital patient removed them from tanks of liquid nit ..read more

The maternal health crisis remains one of the most serious health issues facing the US, and Black women continue to take the brunt of it. According to CDC statistics, pregnancy-related deaths in the US have more than quadrupled since 1987, and a 2021 study found that Black women are three times more likely to die of pregnancy-related causes than white women. That study also found that the leading causes of pregnancy-related death for Black women are two related blood pressure disorders called preeclampsia and eclampsia. Even wealthy and famous Black women have faced these potentially deadly di ..read more

One of the most confounding aspects of engaging with assisted reproductive technology is that there is no clear, defined path to build a family. It’s a white space, with thousands of nodes uncoverable through evaluations by reproductive endocrinologists (RE), diagnostics, procedures, and luck. When my husband and I started trying to build a family, we knew I had low levels of Anti-Mullerian Hormone (AMH), a hormone that can act as a proxy for the number of eggs a woman has remaining in her ovaries, her ovarian reserve. We quickly found ourselves in an RE’s office and decided to pursue in vitr ..read more