In the market for something pink? Something soft, cuddly, and awareness raising? Take a look at this baby.

It's a Beanie Baby, another product by TY -- maker of all sorts of handmade collectibles -- and this one is all about breast cancer awareness with its plush pink coat and signature pink ribbon.

Available on Amazon.com for the low, low price of $1.80, this is one hot deal. Grab it while is lasts.

Valerie Monroe, beauty director for The Oprah Magazine, writes a monthly column -- Ask Val -- that appears on the pages of Oprah's feel-good publication. She responds to questions about make-up, skin care, hair care, and overall body care too.

In her February 2007 column, Val writes, "Many of you have written to tell me that you began to be less critical of your body when you appreciated the things it could do." As I read this, I had what Oprah would call an Aha! moment, a moment when something just clicks and makes sudden sense. Aha!, I thought, as I considered all the things my body can do, completely independent of how I look on the outside. So while I was jogging today -- my body can now easily run three miles -- I ran through all of my body's accomplishments, and I stored them in the files of my mind so I could later write them down.

Here are seven things my body can do. As you read them, consider your own body -- its strength, its power, its capacity for greatness -- and remind yourself of your wondrous self the next time you start to criticize the way you look.

• My body can partner in the creation of human life. It can carry babies and deliver them and love them and care for them and raise them. Not all bodies have this power. I am lucky.

• My body can climb an attic staircase, crawl into cramped and dark corners, pull large boxes out of wedged spaces, drag them back to the staircase, and walk backwards down the stairs with goods balancing on my head so that I can fulfill the wish my five-year-old child who wanted so badly in early November to assemble our Christmas tree and decorate our house for the holidays. "Let's wait until Daddy gets home," I told Joey when I found myself crammed into a tiny space in the attic, wrestling with a heavy box full of artificial tree parts. "You can do it, Mommy," Joey said. "You are strong." And so I fought my way through the frustrating feat because I was afraid of the lessons I would teach this little boy if I didn't. In the end, it was Joey who taught me the lesson. I can do it. I am strong.
  

• My body can endure and conquer a 5K run when it once could barely run around the block. With a little extra effort and push, I think my body can accomplish even more.

• My body, once weak and without definition, can lift increasingly heavy weight and can generate muscle tone. It can even do push-ups -- real push-ups. It takes dedication and practice and persistence and mental toughness too. But I see progress. I feel progress. And I want more.

• My body can help others. I can use my fingers to type words on a keyboard that will reach friends and family and people I don't even know. My words can inform and support and encourage and heal. I can use my hands and my semi-creative talents to create hand-made gifts, to cook and deliver very mediocre meals for friends in need, to massage my husband's sore back, to braid my niece's beautiful hair and paint her tiny nails. I can use my arms to hug my little boys with all my might. I can use my voice to communicate, my ears to listen, my senses to feel.
  

• My body can tolerate surgery and chemotherapy and radiation and horrible allergic reactions to antibiotics. My body was badly beaten by a treatment protocol intended to cure me of a disastrous disease. And somehow, in some way, it survived.
  

• My body killed cancer. With the aid of medical intervention and a hopeful attitude, my body overcame the worst and best thing that has ever happened to me. And if it could do nothing else, I would be truly happy for this one thing my body can do.
  

Young women that receive a diagnosis of breast cancer are usually told to wait at least two years after treatment ends to try and conceive. This is because the longer the patient goes without a recurrence the better the chance that they will remain cancer free.

There are not many studies available to give physicians a good idea of how long women should wait to become pregnant after breast cancer. Is it safe? Some previous studies have suggested that becoming pregnant after breast cancer could provide a survival benefit.

Researchers from Western Australia wanted to investigate the effects of pregnancy after breast cancer. They looked at 123 women aged 15-44 who were diagnosed with breast cancer and had at least one pregnancy after their diagnoses.

There findings were as follows:

• Sixty two women, 50 percent, conceived within two years of their diagnoses.
• Twenty seven of these women gave birth.
• Women who became pregnant had improved overall survival compared with those who didn't.
• The protective effect was seen in women who waited at least six months to become pregnant.
• The protective effect was stronger in women who waited two years after treatment.

The authors of the study say that their evidence does not support the current medical advice given to premenopausal women diagnosed with breast cancer to wait two years before attempting to conceive. They also said this recommendation was for women with early stage disease. They concluded that early conception after completion of treatment is unlikely to adversely affect their survival.

Eugenia Calle, PhD, of the American Cancer Society believes that this study is too small for these researchers to claim to have answered the question about pregnancy and breast cancer. She says "I don't think that anyone believes that pregnancy, with its huge surge in hormones, will be in any way protective against breast cancer."

For women who are thinking of becoming pregnant after a diagnosis of breast cancer, talk to your doctor about the risks. I agree that the study seems too small to come up with any definite conclusions.

I've never had a problem with crying. My tears of joy and sorrow have always flowed easily, and I have never regretted shedding any one of them. I once told a college student I mentored who was hesitant to cry over a work-related scenario that I cry all the time. She later told me my confession sticks in her mind -- my ability and willingness to cry freely, without reservation. I told her I consider crying a cleansing, therapeutic process. I told her that I always feel replenished after a good cry. And I still believe this, years and years after my encounter with this student.

I cried just a few days ago while talking to my doctor and then my mom about how cancer may prevent me from having another child, if not physically, then emotionally. I just don't know if I could peacefully experience a pregnancy with the fear of cancer recurrence. And this makes me cry. Because I want another child. But I don't think I will have one. I cried at my oncologist appointment the other day while talking about the death of a friend. I cry while reading certain books and while watching sad movies and television shows. Two nights ago, I cried while watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, about a breast cancer survivor. I cry when recalling the births of my babies and while marveling at my little growing boys. And I know I will cry when I read a journal a friend just shared with me, written by his uncle who lost a daughter to brain cancer.

Tears cleanse my soul. And sometimes, they complicate matters. They make me wonder how well I am, two years after my cancer diagnosis. I interpret my tears now more than ever, in an effort to determine how well I am coping with life in survival mode. I wonder if the tears that frequently well up in my eyes are normal or if they are indicative of the depression that prompted my oncologist to prescribe an anti-depressant. I consider that perhaps I should be better able to handle some topics, some situations, some tough experiences without becoming weepy. And I also realize that perhaps my tears are completely normal, that I could be ultra sensitive to my every emotion, that as long as I feel happy and function easily, I am just fine.

I plan to iron all this out at my next and final counseling session that I need to schedule. This closing session will allow me to wrap up two year's worth of cancer issues, to close one chapter of my life and begin another. I just need to make the appointment. Which I have yet to do. Because contemplating the end of something so healing seems so daunting. And for better or for worse, this makes me cry.

Daughters born to mothers who were prescribed the anti-miscarriage drug diethylstilbestrol (DES), a synthetic estrogen, during pregnancy are at increased risk of developing breast cancer, according to research done by a nationwide team of researchers. Between the 1940s through to the 1960s millions of pregnant women were given this drug.

"This is really unwelcome news because so many women worldwide were prenatally exposed to DES, and these women are just now approaching the age at which breast cancer becomes more common," said the study's lead author, Julie Palmer, Sc.D., professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health.

For a little history on DES, back in the late 1930s, physicians believed that low levels of estrogen in pregnant women led to spontaneous abortions or premature deliveries. But in the early 1950s, a clinical trial showed no drug benefit in preventing miscarriage. However, use continued in the US until 1971 when researchers determined that DES greatly increased the risk of developing rare cancers of the vagina and cervix in DES daughters.

I assume most DES daughters at increased cancer risk are already aware. However, what makes this news, is that researchers believe that if excess estrogen in utero might increase breast cancer risk later in life, the concern becomes one where other environmental factors that increase fetal exposure to estrogenic compounds need to be given serious consideration.

My mom just wished me a happy birthday and said she recalls vividly the days of June 19th and 20th -- way back in 1970. She remembers June 19th because she was admitted to the hospital on this day and June 20th because this was the day she gave birth to me. Her own birthday is just two days from now -- but it is my birthday that is more memorable, more joyous, more etched in her mind. And so it is not my birthday -- today -- that evokes emotion in me or makes me feel nostalgic about the day a life was born. The days my own two babies were born -- January 3 and May 30 -- are the birthdays that are most powerful for me. These are the days when I personally pushed two big boys into the world -- and for me, that is a cause for a celebration.

I will still celebrate my birthday today -- with a day spent with my boys, a dinner out with my husband, perhaps some gifts, and the thrill of knowing I've lived to the age of 36 after a breast cancer diagnosis at age 34. So it will be a happy day for sure. And I am thankful to my mom for pushing me into the world so I can know the true pleasure of birthdays that are not my own.

Parents who know they are at high-risk for passing on genetic defects that can lead to disease for their child, have been relying on genetic testing to screen embryos for inherited diseases. British scientists announced today they have developed a new test that focuses on DNA fingerprinting near the gene. The new test allows more couples to be tested since they are looking at DNA markers opposed to trying to find the gene, which can vary. According to the researchers, this is a more reliable test. The method involves taking a cell from the embryo to detect signs of the DNA marker and discarding it if it does show the likelihood of gene mutation. Only healthy embryos are used during the in-vitro fertilization, ensuring parents a healthy child.

Right now, there are strict ethical controls on this type of medical procedure, but in the years to come, when these types of procedures become more commonplace, and less expensive, will the controls begin to relax? I am not going to argue against choosing a healthy embryo over one that carries a genetic mutation that might one day lead to disease later in life, but I am still hesitant to embrace where the medical field might be going with these new tests and the potential for superficial application such as -- say -- designer babies. Paris Hilton mommies embryonic shopping for a child. I realize that is an extreme example, but it is the one I fear most. In addition, I am not an adherent of scientific worship and see medical science as a very shaky inexact science. The more I learn, the more I realize they do not know. However, here we are, and you can't un-ring a bell. Hopefully the future will prove all my misgivings wrong.

For more thoughts on designer babies, related posts: Woman pregnant with cancer-free baby and Disease-free designer babies embryo selection.

Remember Dolly the first successfully cloned sheep? In 1997, a scientist named Ian Wilmut stunned the world when he announced he had successfully cloned a sheep from an adult cell. With a new book, After Dolly, set for release on June 12, Wilmut is suggesting that we should seriously consider cloning babies to put an end to genetic disease. But Wilmut says he is not suggesting the practice of genetic enhancement to create designer babies. It certainly sounds like that is what he is saying when he suggests that parents, with the assistance of scientists, be allowed to combine the cloning of human embryos with genetic modification to eliminate hereditary disease. The process of creating designer babies is the same, the intent of purpose separated by a thin veil. Regardless of what he says he is or is not saying -- what he is describing is the eventuality of designer humans.

Wilmut states, "The use of genetic and reproductive technologies is not a step backward into darkness, but a step forward into the light." But in following Wilmut into his light, will our eventual fate be that of Icarus, who soared toward the sun on wax wings? I don't want to go all Luddite, but I am very uneasy about the ethics and where this all leads. And to take it to the next level, will there one day in the future be two races of humans? The genetically perfect designer human, and the genetically-imperfect unmodified human. How will it work? Who will decide? What do you think? 

Australian newspapers are reporting that a woman in Britain is pregnant with the first designer baby selected to prevent an inherited cancer. The mother-to-be, who has not been named, conceived after receiving treatment from Paul Serhal, of University College Hospital, London. In Britain, Dr. Serhal pioneered the use of this procedure to detect inherited cancers.

The Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority awarded him licenses to screen for retinoblastoma and a form of colon cancer. Using a genetic-screening technology that will prevent the mother from passing on a hereditary form of eye cancer to her children, doctors removed cells and tested them for the cancer gene, and only unaffected embryos were transferred to her womb. There is heated debate over the ethics of this practice. How do you feel about designer babies?

Related post: Disease-free designer babies embryo selection.