as a partner in a law firm and not wanting to be late for work, Avery would go to the fertility clinic before dawn each morning in an effort to put her name down first on the sign-up sheets at the reception counter. One list was to check the hormone levels in her blood, the second was to look at her developing follicles through trans-vaginal ultrasound, and the third was to meet with the doctor.
Somehow she never managed to be first. By 7 a.m. daily, the waiting room would be full of women seated quietly with their heads in a book or their cell phones, avoiding contact with each other. Avery preferred the anonymity, and dreaded the thought of running into someone she might know. A private person, she worried about admitting to someone she was having trouble conceiving.
Mentally prepare to go to a fertility clinic
If you are reading this book before your first visit to a fertility clinic, the information in the next section will help you prepare for it. If you have already been to a fertility clinic, and it was as difficult for you as it is for most women, this information might help you put your experiences into a different perspective.
Even if you don’t plan to go that route, you have no way of knowing whether your own pathway to pregnancy will end up taking you there. As a mother who didn’t plan to use a fertility clinic but ended up doing so, I can promise that you don’t always know where your fertility journey will take you. Although this section will equip you with information I give patients who come to me before attending a fertility appointment, it’s information you may find useful no matter where you are on your pathway.
An opportunity to gather information
I counsel my patients to view the fertility clinic as a step on their path, and I suggest you see it as an opportunity to gather medical information about your current baseline reproductive health. Along the way, remember you are always in charge. When it comes time to make decisions, pay attention to your intuition. Attending an appointment at a fertility clinic does not bind you to undergoing any kind of interventions.
Create a positive state of mind before attending your first appointment. Fertility doctors typically compare your test results against what they believe to be the “norm.” But you are a dynamic individual, capable of change, and your body has an innate way of healing itself. Use the tips and techniques you’ll learn in this book to take an active role in your reproductive health.
Please do not consider the fertility doctor’s diagnosis to be the final word. Their evaluation is an educated guess, an opinion based on statistical averages and numbers. Each woman is unique. Many babies are born despite unfavourable diagnoses from fertility specialists.
The clinic doctors may speak in generalizations. If you are over thirty-five, your fertility doctor may say you are reproductively old. If your tests indicate your eggs look less than stellar, remember that this test represents a moment in time. Eggs are cells that develop over the course of a year. From a TCM perspective, you can have a profound impact on your eggs’ health in their last ninety to 120 days, while they are growing and proliferating, by making positive changes in your life. Fertility doctors are not versed in TCM principles and do not view egg health as flexible, but as we’ll see in Chapter 5, egg health can change dramatically in a short period of time.
If you have already been to a fertility clinic
If you have already been to a fertility clinic and found it difficult, try to reframe your visit with these thoughts in mind: It was an opportunity to collect baseline information about your reproductive health. Your doctor’s opinion is just that—an opinion. You are not bound to follow any advice that makes you uncomfortable and you need to listen to your intuition in making decisions. Your visit may have left you feeling out of control, but you can take back control any time you choose. Your first step may be to try TCM as a way of getting a second opinion from a different perspective.
Epigenetics and environment
Before learning TCM, I studied sciences and was always looking for ways to demystify this ancient Chinese art. Even after I entered practice and was helping countless patients achieve their goals of better health and healthy babies, I continued to seek modern explanations for the centuries-old success of Chinese medicine.
Reading about quantum physics, which recognizes the energy fields or “Qi” that we study in Chinese medicine, excited me, but when I heard Dr. Bruce Lipton, a renowned cellular biologist, speak at an acupuncturists’ conference in 2004, his words and research resonated with me in a profound way. Dr. Lipton discussed the new science of epigenetics, a complex cellular science that says environment affects the health and well-being of our cells even more profoundly than genetics. Even our conscious and subconscious thoughts, beliefs, and emotions are part of our environment.
For me, Dr. Lipton’s work was the missing link, helping me understand why in TCM we focus on harmony and balance of body, mind, and spirit as the foundation of all health. Moreover, what we think, feel, and believe about our environment affects our health and, in this case, fertility.
Dr. Lipton says a “cell’s life is controlled by the physical and energetic environment and not by its genes.”1 In my TCM world, everything I do with my patients is intended to help them heal and balance their physical environment, using acupuncture, herbs, and diet to alter their energetic environment, encourage positive thinking, and pay attention to thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.
At the very foundation of fertility are two cells: the egg and the sperm. The largest cell in a woman’s body is her egg and smallest in a man’s body is his sperm. Everything I discuss in this book relates to how I help my patients create a nourishing, healthy, balanced environment in their bodies, minds, spirits, and surroundings to give their cells, especially their eggs and sperm, the best possible chance of developing into life.
Nature’s balance
Traditional Chinese medicine helps us understand how to restore and preserve balance in the body, mind, emotions, and spirit. Once balance is restored, and environment is optimized, many women in my practice achieve spontaneous conception. TCM stems from observing nature and viewing our bodies as microcosms of nature. We believe we must cultivate the earth before we plant the seed.
In nature, life erupts from fertile ground in supportive environments. In my clinic, we use TCM principles to create the ideal physical and energetic environment to increase the chance of conceiving a baby. In my experience, when the conditions are right in body, mind, emotion, and spirit, life happens spontaneously. When we go off course, our internal homeostasis becomes unbalanced. Some women’s bodies tell them of imbalance through frequent bouts with the flu, sore muscles, colds, or headaches. Other women’s bodies alert them of imbalance by presenting fertility challenges.
The work of the TCM practitioner, then, is to determine the causes of the imbalance and offer workable solutions to correct them and restore the body to a naturally healthy and balanced state that’s right for conception. TCM recognizes that our internal and external environments affect this balance. What we eat and drink; how we think, feel, and live our lives; and what we are exposed to in our environment all affect our overall well-being.
Western fertility clinics focus attention on gathering a patient’s medical history, blood tests, ultrasound results, and sperm analysis. Fertility doctors factor in a woman’s age to calculate her odds of having a healthy baby, and say they can improve those odds by using modern treatments and technologies. While some women have been told to reduce their stress and lose weight to increase their odds of conceiving, I have never heard of a patient whose RE told her to pay attention to the physical and energetic wellness
