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March 22, 2006 -- FIRST Lady Laura Bush gave birth to twin daughters Jenna and Barbara only after taking powerful fertility drugs, according to a major new book.
In "Laura Bush: An Intimate Portrait of the First Lady" (Random House), best-selling author Ronald Kessler reports that, after trying for more than three years to have children after she married George W. Bush, Laura took clomiphene citrate, which induces ovulation and helps increase egg production and often leads to multiple births.
When that didn't work after a few months, Laura was given a shot of gonadotropin to adjust her hormones to help her conceive.
"Her temperature went up on a Saturday, indicating she was ovulating," Laura's close friend Nancy Weiss told Kessler. "On Monday, she had the shot. Within a few days, they believed she was pregnant. When Laura took the second medication, it worked immediately. So the twins were miracle girls. She obviously was not able to carry children without the hormone adjustment."
Kessler also writes that Laura occasionally sneaks a cigarette with friends. "In 1994 and 1995, she totally quit a lifelong smoking habit," he writes. "When asked by the media, she would honestly say that it was 'difficult' to quit. But after 1995, Laura went back to bumming cigarettes from friends, though never in front of George or her staff."
Not content with revealing Laura's secrets, Kessler also writes about Laura's little-discussed White House influence.
"The Bush Administration asks for her opinion and for any suggestions she might have on possible appointments and on issues affecting a range of agencies dealing with subjects which she has committed herself to promoting or in which she has a strong interest," he claims. *--OAS Middle*
They include such areas as education, the arts, women's rights, juveniles with social problems, AIDS, libraries, and the humanities. Because of her, budgets for some agencies have been increased or not cut. In one case, a well-connected top political appointee who had engaged in deceit never took his post because of her take on the issue."
Kessler's tome is out April 4. Back in 2002, Page Six reported that Kessler fingered former FBI official W. Mark Felt as "Deep Throat" in his "The Bureau: the Secret History of the FBI." The former Washington Post reporter has also written about President Bush (the current one) and the CIA.
http://www.nypost.com/gossip/pagesix/pagesix_u.htm. *--OAS Middle*
