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Madelyn Dunham died of cancer Sunday evening November, 2, 2008 in Honolulu, Hawaii. She was the grandmother of Barack Obama and made famous by her role in his life as his white grandmother from Kansas.

She was the last surviving member of his family that was involved with raising him. Her husband, Stanley Dunham, died in 1992. Their daughter, Ann Dunham, who was Obama’s mother, died of ovarian cancer in 1995. Obama’s father, Barrack Hussein Obama Sr, came from Kenya and died in car accident in 1982.

Obama’s surviving family members include his half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng (they have the same mother) of Honolulu and his step-relatives through his father in Kenya . He also has two daughters, Sasha and Malia, with his wife Michelle.

Obama was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii.

By Heidi Pfister

I was deleting my old email drafts and came across this almost two- year old email, which I never actually sent to the intended recipients…don’t know why. Now my baby, Penelope, will be one year old in about a month, which makes it even more amusing to read than if I had I sent it when I wrote it. The email subject line read “fertility woes and baby hopes”.

This is an update on my efforts to conceive, and so much has happened in the past few weeks that I’d like to update all of you in one e-mail. If clinical info makes you squeamish, stop reading here!

Earlier this month, I found out that my ovaries are “old”, my uterus lining is too thin, and none of that matters because my cervix is too acidic to let sperm survive long enough to get to an egg anyway.

I found this out after a series of doctor visits that included multiple blood draws, an ultrasound of my ovaries, and an extremely painful procedure to examine my fallopian tubes. I screamed during that event, and said out loud, “Why am I trying so hard to have a baby if childbirth is
going to feel worse than this?!!”

However…there is a bright side. My 36-year old ovaries are now performing well thanks to fertility medication, and we have bypassed the cervix issue by undergoing intrauterine insemination. The procedure took place yesterday, and now we wait. I pray it works because I really don’t want to go through all this again. And I really don’t want to have to pay $17,000 for in vitro fertilization!

That’s where it ended. And now that I think about it, I know why I didn’t send it: I didn’t want to jinx myself!

Gotta go…Penelope’s waking up from her nap. 🙂

Love to all of you trying to get pregnant,
Heidi

Heidi Pfister is a new mommy and guest blogger. This is her first entry.