Finding Hope with "The Infertility Cure"

Since we cannot, tragically, afford IVF/ICSI, to help us concieve a healthy baby, I am looking to find ways we can improve our chances naturally. Hubby has been on some fantastic multi-vitamins to help with his sperm issues. We're not sure how much it has improved over time, but he is doing what he can. So we're left to deal with my issues, the biggest being my age (nearly 39) and the fact that I have low ovarian reserve. *screams a little* So I need to try to improve my eggs and health at this point.


I ordered and read "The Infertility Cure" by Randine Lewis.
It's a great book although it is a big and somewhat heavy read. I found myself needing to re-read many portions, underline/take notes and study it to really benefit from it. It feels like a short crash course in fertility related eastern medicine. I think what she has to say is not only interesting however, but beneficial to any woman looking to improve her fertility by getting to the root causes of fertility problems and not just addressing the symptoms (which we do so well in the West). This book feeds my inner-hippie chic too. I love natural-granola type things, but she comes across like a doctor, combining wisdom from both east and west (and not like a flaky guru of some kind).

In reading you will be able to identify your symptoms for various problems related to ferility that are connected to our organs and hormones. What I discovered is that I have the classic symptoms of deficiencies related to my liver, kidney and spleen....the big three. I think I have always had some hormonal imbalances, but they have become more pronounced with age and stress. I have way too much stress in my life and have for years...but that's another story.

The book is so full of information that one of the challenges is actually narrowing down how you are going to address the problems once you recognize them. I wanted to start with supplements and there were so many options listed for all of my deficiences that it is difficult to choose. My approach was actually to take the supplements that seemed to have overlap in recommendations and/or were the easiest to find. Otherwise I would be taking like 60 things a day!

One thing you will come to understand is that this natural eastern approach is not a "one size fits all" and that you won't know which supplements to take to boost your fertility until you know what your personal problem areas are. Everyone can benefit from improving their diet however, which she recommends, and I am making an effort to get a lot more fresh fruits and veggies and fiber.

My new regimine consists of the following supplements daily to improve my fertility/eggs and cleanse/balance my organs and body:

Wheatgrass
Vitex
Milk Thistle Seed
L-Arginine
Chinese Ginseng
CoQ10
Astralagus

In addition I am taking an increased amount of Folic Acid and Calcium along with my prenatal vitamins and a baby aspirin every morning. We'll see if things improve. I have been on Vitex and Wheatgrass for about a month and have noticed a decrease in some of my hormonally related symptoms already. I have been gradually adding the other supplements in as well.

This week I have my first appointment with a fertility acupuncturist, which is something Dr. Lewis recommends. I'm excited! I did 3 sessions of acupuncture for back problems awhile back and felt FANTASTIC afterwards....I was pain free after every session for several days. So, I guess I believe it must really have some benefits even if we don't fully understand it.

Maybe that's where faith kicks in: I don't have to understand something to believe it can work. And this has given me some hope in an otherwise hopeless situation.

Chemical Pregnancy is My New Middle Name

I have been neglectful of my blog...it's been hard to write about purely bad news. My goodness. I had a chemical pregnancy loss in July/August on the heels of my May/June loss, followed by another *possible* chemical pregnancy loss at the end of August, making it three chemicals in a row. I'm three for three cycles! That's just crazy.

Honestly, the late August cycle is still a mystery to me. I took a HPT right before Aunt Flow arrived and it was still a faint positive. I started bleeding for four days, figured it was over and did not retest and decided to take a month off of TTC. I thought BDing/being intimate on CD 4 would be safe! But then I started having an upsurge in early pregnancy symptoms 7 days later so I took a test (just to assure myself I could not be pregnant still) and it came up faintly positive.

You could have knocked me over with a feather.

I continued to get very faint positive tests for several days on multiple brands and so I made an appointment with a new OB in our new city, again fearing an ectopic. I think he thought I was nuts, but at least he talked to me at length about my history of pregnancy loss. My progesterone was borderline (10ish) so hard to say if I had actually ovulated again or not.

Long story short, I started bleeding and the tests finally went negative/BFN and the beta came back negative that weekend.

Was this a continuation of the former chemical loss, now 11 days later, or was this a new loss? I'll never know. I am tempted to think I might have ovulated on CD 5 because I had many of the signs/symptoms of it then. And if I did, the egg would most likely be too immature to develop properly. Here are 2 tests (in addition to numerous Dollar Tree tests and others not shown) that I took on what would then have been 9 DPO (if a new loss) or 30 DPO (if from the same loss):

I am starting to feel like an expert on chemical pregnancy loss, in addition to recurrent pregnancy loss. I know that most women who are not obsessively tracking and TTC would never know they were even pregnant with these very early losses, so in some ways that lifts some of the weight of it for me...because I believe I am now up to 6 losses in a row.

Eeeeegads that sounds dismal! You have to wonder what hope is left...and, well, that requires a new post.