My husband and I started trying to have a baby when I was 38 years old. Before that, we were concentrating on our careers. Truthfully for much of my 30’s my career was my focus and having a baby was secondary. That is until my internal clock woke up! Because I had already been an acupuncturist specializing in fertility for about 5 years, I knew a lot about my body’s rhythm and signs and thought I knew what we needed to do to conceive our baby. So we tried…and tried, and after about 8 months of trying to conceive naturally it just didn’t happen. It turned out my husband had a varicocele and we needed assistance from Western medicine. In the years of working with an RE and urologist we experienced an ectopic pregnancy and a miscarriage. These losses truly gutted us. The financial toll of traditional fertility treatment is tremendous and our marriage was feeling the strain. But we really wanted to be parents so per our doctor’s recommendation, we decided to do another IVF. Before doing another cycle, I decided to take some time off to clean up the havoc wreaked by traditional treatment & medications. At this time I was overweight, depressed and exhausted. I wanted to feel like myself again. I took time off to cleanse from the treatments and I turned to what I know best: Chinese Medicine. I made it my mission to heal myself and my wonderful associates gave me acupuncture treatments and prescribed herbs and I got back to all that Chinese Medicine has to offer. I started to feel like myself again. I decided I felt good enough to try an un-medicated IUI with a frozen sperm sample. At this point this was a hail-mary pass and I’m pretty sure my Reproductive Endocrinologist didn’t have much faith in this idea, but this time we got really lucky, really lucky. Yes we got pregnant and most importantly I had an uneventful pregnancy and gave birth to a healthy baby girl on December 8, 2008 – 1 month away from my 42nd Birthday.
I believe my journey was an opportunity for unique healing and it has ultimately made me a better mother and practitioner. I feel so much compassion for individuals and couples going through fertility challenges and remember the pain and suffering we experienced during this time. It has forever changed my life.