I am several years away from even considering having children, and yet, sometimes I find myself thinking that if I do ever have a daughter, I kind of hope she’s a lesbian. Now, bear with me—obviously, I’ll be thrilled with whoever my daughter turns out to be. But if she’s a lesbian, she’ll be much less likely to be pressured into sex when she’s young and she won’t have to worry about getting pregnant before she’s ready. She’ll be much less likely to ever get an STD, and since more than half of rapes are of the “date” variety, that becomes much less of a concern. Not to mention the fact that she won’t have to spend nearly as much time as I do decoding the opposite gender’s mind. And, apparently, she’ll also be a better mom. Yep, the director of the U.K.‘s National Academy for Parenting Practitioners said today that his research shows that the children of lesbian couples tend to be better adjusted than those of straight couples. “Lesbians make better parents than a man and a woman,” he says. Why would this be? Easy. Because for a lesbian couple to have a baby, it takes serious planning and action—there are no accidents. Kind of interesting, no? [Telegraph]

A hospital in the U.K. has some overweight mothers-to-be outraged. Weston General Hospital will refuse to deliver babies to pregnant women with a body mass index of 34 or more. That roughly equates a woman who is 5’6” and weighs about 210 pounds. Their reasoning behind what many women are calling discrimination? Mothers with a high BMI are at risk for bleeding and severe labor complications. They will send these mothers to another hospital 20 miles away with a more hi-tech maternity ward. This all sounds shady to me. The last thing any woman in labor needs is to: a) be told she’s fat and b) to take a full-on road trip to deliver her baby. Sounds like Weston General Hospital needs to upgrade their freaking maternity ward. But what do you think? Is this discrimination or a step forward in the war on obesity? [Daily Mail]

Here’s a unique scholarship money idea: earning cash for your empty womb! A program at University of North Carolina at Greenboro called College Bound Sisters,  started by two doctorate-holding nurses, has paid teen girls one dollar per day for college if they don’t get pregnant.

Oh my God, look! Models—not celebrities—on the cover of a fashion magazine! And they’re black! November’s Teen Vogue published a fantastic cover story about models Chanel Iman and Jourdan Dunn, who spoke candidly about the racism in the modeling industry and the competition that results when black models feel there can only be “one black girl.” (Chanel is actually black and Korean—damn, she should have been in our biracial hotties slideshow!) The pair dished to Teen Vogue about the fashion industry’s flat-out racism:

Iman: “You’re being told, ‘So and so is only booking one black girl. It’s either you or Jourdan,’ So we’ll be sitting in the lobby looking at each other like, ‘Okay, I want this job, and she wants it too. Which one of us is going to get it?’”

Dunn: “I remember last season, I was about to go into a casting, and my agent phoned and said, ‘Turn back. They decided they don’t want any black models.’ I was like, ‘They’re actually telling you that’s the reason? Are you serious?!’”

In a story on The Daily Beast, Danielle Friedman writes about Joy Szabo, an Arizona mom who painted a message on her car window which read, “Page Hospital, enter my body without permission… Sounds like rape to me.” Szabo was pregnant with her fourth child and the local hospital (the only one she could feasibly get to when she went into labor) would only agree to giving her a C-section when the time came to give birth. Szabo has three other children—two born naturally, one born via C-section. “In June, Szabo’s hospital adopted a policy prohibiting women who had prior C-sections from delivering vaginally—from having what’s technically known as a VBAC, for ‘vaginal birth after Caesarean.’”

Ask almost any childless women in her 30s to name five things that have been on her mind lately, and there’s a good chance she’ll mention her biological clock. It may not be the first thing she names — her career, the economy, saving for a house, her parents’ health, the health of her relationship, finishing her dissertation, fitting back into her skinny jeans, and finding someone to share her life with may be getting more of her attention; but for a vast majority of us, the idea of having kids is something we think about nearly as much, if not more, than almost everything else. After all, our biological clocks and the issues of when, whether, and how long we have left to procreate determine so many other variables in our life. And for those of us who wait until our 30s — a quickly growing number of us these days — it’s a decision we face when the stakes are especially high.

One summer during college when I worked at coffee shop, a man with special needs—I think he had Down’s Syndrome—used to come up by the cash register and chat with me all the time. We were shooting the breeze one day and I was standing with my pelvis leaning against the counter, sort of slumped forward. He looked down at my stomach and asked me, “Jessica, are you pregnant?” My eyes widened and I stood ramrod straight, sucking in my belly. “Nooo! I’m not pregnant!” I shrieked. His face flushed with embarrassment and he apologized profusely. And I, of course, felt like an ass for making him feel bad.

Flash forward to Sunday afternoon on a shopping trip to Sephora, when the cashier ringing up my Bliss Spa Best Of Skintentions moisturizer looked down at my stomach and exclaimed, “Awww, are you pregnant?”

Cringe.

I know we all have “Mad Men” fever these days. On the off chance that you have become desensitized while watching Betty Draper suck those cancer sticks and throw back cocktails with her bun in the oven, let me remind you once again that smoking while pregnant is hazardous to the baby. Wait? You already knew that? But in case you need just one more good reason to quit lighting up while knocked up, a new U.K. study about smoking while pregnant is likely to scare the s**t out of you.

Julia Grovenburg of Arkansas is giving the woman with two vaginas a run for her money in the race for Medical Anomaly of the Year. She was already pregnant when she went for a sonogram and—surprise!—the doc discovered that a second, younger, baby was in there as well. In other words, she’s carrying two babies that aren’t twins—they were conceived three weeks apart. This phenomenon is called “superfetation” and it’s very rare. Pretty freaky, no? [Lemondrop]

A friend just sent me this photo, taken at an NYC drugstore. I know there’s a recession and peeps be lookin’ to save money anywhere they can, but this is taking the penny pinching a bit far.

Duo Fertility, a new producer of fertility monitors, is selling itself hard on a guarantee that’s the opposite of what you hear when it comes to sex—pregnant in 12 months or your money back.

So, Khloe Kardashian is getting married this Sunday to brand-new boyfriend/fiancé Lamar Odom. Raise your hand if you think she’s knocked up. Everyone? That’s what I thought. If Khloe is with child, she is following in the grand footsteps of big sis Kourtney, who found out she was pregnant earlier this summer and is now engaged to the baby’s father. Is it just me, or is this totes retro? Accidental pregnancy? A super speedy marriage is the answer to all your problems! Khloe and Kourtney would hardly be alone. Ashlee Simpson married Pete Wentz then disclosed that she was pregnant with his child. So did Jessica Alba and Cash Warren, as well as Christina Milian and The Dream. I gotta say, and maybe this is because I’m not much of a traditionalist, but if I found out I was pregs and was going to keep the baby, I wouldn’t necessarily rush to the altar, even if I was in love with the father. What about you?

I’ve got a soft spot for this lingerie commercial for New Zealand-based brand HOTmilk (I know, unfortunate name). The sexy line of underthings is targeted at pregnant women and is about “empowering women, to remind them that they are beautiful confident and SEXY,” even when their stomachs are stretched to epic proportions and their nipples are leaking. While I agree with Broadsheet that we should be celebrating the beauty of the pregnant female form through other means than expensive lingerie, I think it’s refreshing to see a sexy commercial where a woman’s swollen belly is on full display and a hot sexy man is losing his s**t over it. [Broadsheet]

For everyone out there who has ever had a friend, family member, co-worker, or stranger in line at the store who has shared a little too much of her pregnancy with you — this video is for you. “Pregnant women are smug. Everyone knows it, nobody says it, because they’re pregnant!” And for all you pregnant women out there, oh, we kid because we love. Seriously, your little belly is adorable!

I can’t eat, I can’t sleep—I am overcome with heartbreak knowing that the man of my dreams is off the market. This unemployed father of seven children by seven baby mamas is preparing for a shotgun wedding to the eighth! Being single is hard, and when I think of the kind of guy I’m looking for, I know that Brit Keith MacDonald embodies all of the qualities that I dream of. I only ask myself why I couldn’t have met him before his fiancée, 20-year-old Claire Bryant? The story is sooo romantic. Check out the swoon-worthy details after the jump.

The 34-year-old Tunisian woman who claimed to be pregnant with 12 kids—six boys and six girls—is a fraud. Although this gal said she’s nine months preggers with duodecaplets, docs say, “There’s absolutely nothing about her appearance which indicates this.” In fact, health peeps think the only thing the woman is pregnant with is “psychological problems.” The unidentified non-mother has supposedly gone into hiding. [Fox News] — When are people going to realize that Nadya Suleman is not someone they should emulate?

When mother-of-three Carmen Blake, 27, unexpectedly went into labor, she called the hospital across the street from her house in Leicester, England, but was refused an ambulance. She was told to take a bath then walk over. Blake got in the tub but realized the baby was going to come, like, right away. She called the hospital back, but they still said they weren’t going to send anyone out. So the mother tried to hustle on over. She made it across the street before the baby, Mariah, started coming. Luckily, a physiotherapist happened to be walking by and was able to help deliver the baby on the pavement. The hospital is “disappointed that Ms. Blake was not happy with the advice and care she received.” Yeah, understatement of the year, guys.  [Daily Mail UK]

If you’re not quite artistic enough to make one of those diaper cake things people always give at baby showers, maybe this gift will be a little more up your alley. A sonogram cake! It may seem a little icky at first, but it’s totally foolproof and most likely delicious. Just get a pic of your pregnant friend’s sonogram, drop it off at the cake store, and BAM! The best preggo gift ever! [Mom Logic]