Giuliana Rancic and her husband Bill will soon have a baby by gestational surrogate, according to news reports. Rancic recently underwent a double mastectomy after she was diagnosed with breast cancer last year.
Rancic, 37, was first alerted to the cancer via a mammogram during her third in vitro fertilization attempt. She and her husband had been detailing their attempts to become pregnant on their reality show, "Giuliana and Bill."
"Had I not gone through IVF, had I not had this struggle, I never would have discovered I had breast cancer,” Rancic said on "The View" today (April 23), HollywoodLife.com reported. “Had I gotten pregnant naturally and easily, it would have actually accelerated the cancer.”
Earlier this month, Rancic said on TODAY that she and her husband were looking at other options for having a baby after her cancer diagnosis.
"We absolutely want a child. As far as getting pregnant myself, with the medication I'm starting... it's probably not going to happen anytime soon," she said on TODAY, HuffPost Entertainment reported.
Pregnancy might be dangerous for some women after they have breast cancer, though each case is different, the American Cancer Society reported. Many times, the ability and safety to become pregnant after cancer has to do with the treatments the woman is receiving or has received.
The American Cancer Society explains how cancer treatments can impact the safety of pregnancy:
When organs have been damaged, the added stress of a pregnancy can lead to serious health problems for the mother and the growing fetus. Radiation aimed near the uterus, especially if the woman got it as a child, can limit the ability of the uterus to stretch as the fetus grows. This creates an increased risk of having a premature or low birth-weight baby, or even having a miscarriage.
WebMD reported that chemotherapy in particular can be especially detrimental to fertility, because women may experience early menopause or early failure of their ovaries. Age and the stage of the cancer also play a part in fertility, according to WebMD.
The Nemours Foundation reported that cancer patients may choose to take steps before cancer treatment to preserve fertility, like freezing eggs or freezing the ovarian tissue.
Previously, women with breast cancer were generally warned that becoming pregnant within two years of a cancer diagnosis could actually increase the body's estrogen levels, and could increase the risk of cancer recurrence, the Guardian reported.
But recent research shows that it may actually be safe for breast-cancer survivors to get pregnant, the Guardian reported. That study, presented at the European Breast Cancer Conference earlier this year, showed that pregnancy doesn't raise the risk of cancer coming back in women who have estrogen receptor positive breast cancer (the most common kind of breast cancer), according to the Guardian.
In fact, the Susan G. Komen For The Cure reported women who got pregnant within a two-year time frame of their cancer diagnosis actually had a lower risk of their cancer coming back than women who didn't become pregnant after their cancer diagnosis.