Discussion: How many pregnancies did Anne Boleyn actually have?

"Hmmm. Frasier says a miscarriage in 1534 (p.219) and her last in October 1535 (p.223) which she only carried until the end of January, a few weeks after Queen Catherine's death.
It's absolutely errie the way that things went really bad for Anne after Catherine's death. Frasier makes the statement on p. 245 that "the influence of the dead woman (Catherine) stretched from beyond her grave in Peterborough Cathedral to pull down the woman who had supplanted her." As long as Catherine was alive, Henry couldn't really do anything about Anne and her miscarriages but once Catherine died, it was open season on Anne. "

"I agree. Ives mentions that Anne's coronation meant little without her delivering a male child. If she had been able to do so, a lot of the factions going on would have been diminished, Henry would have had his boy and voila, maybe a happy ending. But by delivering a female, she had increased pressure on her to give Henry that boy and solidify their marriage, the pressures of the Aragon factions, perhaps the annulement would have been given by the Pope, as their was finally a male child. All those pregancies one on top of the other had to be sapping her of her strength. She carried Elizabeth with no problems. Her body needed to recover."

"While I think that it would be too optimistic to expect everybody in England to just fall in line, and I don't see the Emperor offering to be godfather or the Pope telling Henry "turns out your marriage to Katherine was invalid after all, sorry for the inconvenience, old chap. All the best to your lovely new wife", I wonder how close to the truth that would be."

"it is very odd that all of her stillbirths were male. I wonder if there was a health problem connected to delivering a healthy male child. I wonder if rumors about Henry contracting syphilis were related to this. They say that stillbirths are a side effect of syphilis and he was a very promiscuous man. He could easily have contracted this disease. It would also explain why Elizabeth I never conceived. It was said that she was not a technical Virgin. There is more to the story than "Anne was just worn out.""

"There really isn't anyway of knowing medically why these stillbirths births were male or why Anne miscarried all the preganancies after Elizabeth. There were no autopsies back then and nothing to work with now even if they exhumed whatever was in the tomb. The babies could have just as well been dead females. Queens did not nurse their children, which would have given her some protection from an immediate pregnancy and also helped her get back into shape gynocologically. I don't believe that Henry was syphiltic as was Francis I. (Ives states this on page 190 of his book.) He raises the question that Henry might have been the problem with conception either physically or genetically. Historians have discussed Henry's perodic impotency and the rumor that he could not get an erection or sustain it as he became older. Catherine had at 5 miscarriages out of six pregancies, Anne, ttwo miscarriages and one birth. Only Elizabeth Blount and Jane Seymour had sons. Anne's sister Mary, became pregnant after she married her first husband.
As for Elizabeth I never conceiving, she was never married and would have never had a child out of wedlock. It was a political decision. If she did have sex, she would have practiced some sort of birth control. Elizabeth enjoyed sexual flirtation in the sense of "attention without intention." I think she spent her childhood and young adult life seeing all the people around her suffer and/or die because of their love interests and sexual indiscretions.
(If anyone knows of a reason why a woman might miscarry only male children, let us all know!)
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"Defiantly more to the story. I know from experience the Dr's tell you to refrain from having sex after a baby b/c it’s so easy to get pregnant again."

"He may have had a genetic disorder that we may never know of but he didn't have syphilis and his ulcered leg wasn't the result of an STD it was due to complicated healing after a sporting injury."

"I was thumbing around the index in Ives last night, he lists just two other pregnancies (besides Elizabeth) like Fraser.
pregnant, December 1533 which resulted in miscarriage in July 1534
then another pregnancy that appeared October 1535 which resulted in miscarriage on January 29, 1536 at 15 weeks as recorded by one court physician who was present. This was the miscarriage that led to rumours of a deformed fetus. The Catholic exile and propagandist Nicolas Sander (who wrote 40 years after the event) described the fetus as "a shapeless mass of flesh". Granted, this is the same person who wrote that AB had a sixth finger, a third breast, and was Henry's daughter. Retha Warnicke elaborates on this theory but Ives flatly denies it based on lack of evidence.
"A cover story which held for 450 years but had been unnecssary in the first place invites more than a raised eyebrow. In history, evidence matters, not invention, and no evidence whatsoever supports the alleged deformity." (page 297)
He also doubts that the fetus could have accurately been identified as male becase most pregnancies can only be sexed at 17 weeks. But then again maybe AB was further along then we think?"

"I meant it is more likely he had some kind of genetic disorder or physical condition that prevented him from having vailable viable offspring. Henry had no problems get a woman pregnant, the problem was that the pregancy often resulted in miscarriage or crib death. Out of all the conceptions Henry was able to produce with his wives and mistress(es) it only resulted in 4 viable offspring that we know of: Mary Tudor, Henry Fitzroy, Elizabeth Tudor, and Edward Tudor. Which leads me to think there maybe something wrong with the quality of his sperm, that may or may not have anything to do with an STD."