Treating Infertility with Acupuncture

I made Jamie take a picture of me and my needles.

Remember when Jamie and I consulted with a new fertility specialist and were really excited to start treatments with him? And then remember when the months of April and May were jam packed with travel, family visits, and home restoration after our flood? It was looking like June was going to be our month to get our testing done for the new RE so that hopefully we could get back to doing insemination in July.

But then, a week and a half ago, my good friend and neighbor Clare sent me an email. In it was a link to a book and an anecdote about a friend of a friend having followed its guide and fell pregnant after having been unable to for a few years.

The book was The Infertility Cure by Randine Lewis. I read the reviews and the preview pages. Less than a half hour later, I had the book downloaded on my iPad and I started reading. By page 60, I was sold.

It's all about using acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine to treat infertility. I'm going to tell you straight up that I've never been one for holistic medicine, and though I'd never given it much thought or attention, it always felt hokey and hippy-dippy to me. But this book! This book straightened it out for me, at least when it comes to acupuncture and TCM for infertility. In the basic of basic explanations, TCM and acupuncture serve to balance your reproductive system and create the best possible environment for conception.

I could try to explain it all here, but it'd be wordy and probably not well thought out, so I'll tell you my situation and what the doc planned out for me.

First, we went over the details about my cycle. While I haven't been diagnosed by my OB/GYN or RE with this, he believes I have mild endometriosis based on my signs and symptoms during my period. This means that I have endometrial tissue outside of the uterus causing my immune system to fight hard against something that isn't supposed to be there. Unfortunately, my immune system knows that it wants to eradicate endometrial cells, but it doesn't know that it only needs to fight off the ones outside the uterus so it also attacks the endometrium making it unwelcome for our baby-to-be.

He also looked at my past Basal Body Temperature (BBT) charts to help assess the situation (also something that my RE did not do.) From my chart he can see that my overall body temperature is too low. After ovulation (where the vertical red line is) my temperature should be in the 98 degree range, but mine is always still in the 97 range. (He also pointed out that my spikes in temperature could also be a sign of my immune system battling the endometriosis.) He also noted that my luteal phase, the time between ovulation and my next period, is too short.

One of my own charts.

An example of a good chart.

From there he decided that the main goal for me at home right now is to basically warm up. I need to keep my feet warm and not drink anything cold. He even recommends drinking my water closer to body temperature rather than even room temperature. He's put me on a restrictive diet of no coffee or tea (not even decaf), no alcohol (except during ovulation, but hey, I've been meaning to cut back!), no dairy, and no beef or lamb. He also gave me plenty of suggestions as to what I can and should eat and in what amounts.

Oh, and herbs.

The diet, the warming up, the herbs, and the acupuncture will all serve to balance my body and my reproductive system. It should regulate my periods and work to create the optimal environment for conception.

It's recommended to give it 3-6 months, but I've read a lot of success stories (and I mean a lot because I can't stop Googling it) of women in my same situation, with years of negative pregnancy tests and even some failed inseminations and IVF procedures who start acupuncture and get pregnant naturally within a month or two. While that definitely gives me hope and makes me feel like we're finally going to get what we've been working so hard for for so long, we also have a longer-term plan. We plan to try acupuncture and TCM alone for about 6 months, then from there we will likely pair it with fertility treatments.

IUI (insemination) has about a 20% success rate when used with fertility drugs. My acupuncture doc has a 38% success rate with women using acupuncture and herbs alone. His overall success rate with women using  either IUI, IVF, or acupuncture and herbs alone is 65%. Based on these numbers, I'm feeling really optimistic.

I feel like acupuncture and TCM work to naturally change your body to make it more ready and receptive to conception whereas the treatments with my RE felt really invasive and forceful with synthetic hormones trying to replicate a fertile womb. I'm definitely not against using IUI and IVF with fertility drugs; we will go back to that if we have to. But I'm happy to try something natural with side effects that are positive that seeks to fix the problem rather than try to MacGyver the hell out of it.

Moving Forward and Starting Over

Hey, remember when this was a blog about trying to conceive and infertility?

This photo is irrelevant.

Since last fall, I've come to know nine women who are pregnant. This doesn't include the dozen or so women that I follow here in the wide world of the interweb, either. The realization of how many women I know and "know" that are getting pregnant led to a meltdown... a major meltdown.

For a woman, unexplained infertility is absolutely, soul-crushingly heartbreaking. For a man? I really couldn't tell you how it feels. Jamie is still so frustratingly optimistic. During my sob-fest, he urged me to calm down. This made it worse. I asked him why he doesn't feel like I do and he only offered me "I do. Yes, it sucks. I'm upset about it too."

I didn't think that was enough. After nearly four years, (five, if you count a year of not-so-carefully being off birth control) I'm not upset; I'm heartbroken and I want him to be heartbroken too. I told him that I didn't understand how he couldn't be or why he isn't; why after so long, he's still satisfied with "it'll happen." I want him to hurt as much as I do.

I don't remember if I mentioned this (and if I had, I can't find it), but after our last cycle of Clomid and IUI in November, we decided to take a break. Christmas was ahead of us and we wanted to take it easy for that month and take some time to start paying off our fertility treatments. Then we found out that my mom had breast cancer, which led to my heading to Ohio for two weeks for her surgery and to be her caretaker during her recovery. So needless to say, our fertility treatments were put on the back burner for the past two and a half months.

I must have gotten my point across during my meltdown, as the next morning Jamie asked for the name of the new Reproductive Endocrinologist I had wanted to see. After looking him up on his iPhone, Jamie suggested I make an appointment.

The RE I had seen last year was fairly underwhelming. I never heard suggestions from him as to what more we could be doing. It was my suggestion to him that we try IUI. He never gave me the feeling that he wanted to do everything possible to help me conceive. So I took the advice of my buddy Carrie, who has nothing but rave reviews of the RE that helped her conceive her son, and I put in an appointment request for a consultation with him.

Here's to hoping that this new doctor can help us. I really, really need this to be our year.

Seven Million

I haven't really shared much about this third cycle of fertility treatments. I guess it's mostly because there weren't any new developments. When I went in for my ultrasounds to monitor my follicle growth after taking my generic Clomid, it showed I had one large follicle and three smaller follicles. My large follicle was at an acceptable size to give me my shot to trigger ovulation, but they thought since my follicles in the past grew much larger, we could wait a day and try to get the smaller, not-so-ripe follicles large enough to trigger as well.

It turns out that I didn't need the trigger shot. When I had my ultrasound the next day, it showed that my large follicle had ovulated. It wasn't too late, though, since we deduced that it likely happened early that morning. I was even having some pretty significant cramping on the way to this appointment that had quickly gone away, so I was feeling comfortable that I had really just ovulated.

But time was of the essence. We had to do the IUI that day, as soon as possible. I called Jamie at work. He carpools and didn't drive that day, so I had to pick him up, take him home then deliver his little buddies to the doctor's office for preparation. I managed all of this in about an hour, so I was feeling... accomplished? I don't know, I guess I needed a win, so I chose that.

It takes about an hour for them to prepare the insemination. Basically, they separate Jamie's super sperm from the fluid so it's just a small concentrated amount that they shoot into my uterus via catheter through my cervix. It's really fun?

Luckily this time was much easier since I had just ovulated, my cervix was more open, which made the process much quicker than the last cycle. Once it's finished, they propped my butt up and made me lay there for 10 minutes. They set an egg timer and offered me magazines.

And now we're waiting. Again. It's the hardest part of trying to conceive. Right now I've got about six days until I find out if it worked. If my past two cycles are a prediction, then I'll find out before six days if it didn't work. If, in fact, it didn't work this cycle, we've decided to take the next cycle off to reassess and reevaluate and possibly get a second opinion on how we should be handling this.

If it did work, then scratch all that.

Round Two

It had been a really, really rough day when I got my last period. I had started spotting, which to any woman in the two week wait is full of mixed emotions. We just hope and hope that it's implantation bleeding, which would happen either around when your period is due, or earlier. It was Monday when I started spotting, and my two week wait wasn't going to be over until that Thursday, so I was really on board with this implantation bleeding thing.

Of course, I spent the next hour or so Googling it and reading forum posts and two week wait stories like I have in cycles past. I don't know why I keep doing this as it pretty much just makes it worse when I do actually get my period, but I just can't loosen my grip on hope, even if it does mean a more severe disappointment.

The worst was yet to come. Not long after I started spotting, I scrolled through Facebook as I normally would. I came upon an ultrasound picture that someone posted to announce their pregnancy. Instantly, I smile and think 'Aww! That's so exciting! They're going to make one gorgeous child, for sure.' but then my hormones and three-and-a-half years of not-being-able-to-get-pregnant-ness took over and I ugly-face cried. You know, the kind where not only does your face contort to Jim Carrey proportions, but tears squirt out of your face as if your eyeballs were attached to one of those pump-action Super Soaker backpacks that I coveted as a kid.

Soon enough, I composed* myself and went on with my day. That is, until the soul-crushing moment about an hour later when I went to the bathroom and realized I had started my period. Jim Carrey face, check; Super Soaker tears, check; but this time, lets throw in some sobs that, had our windows been open, may have led our neighbors to believe that we were harboring a seal pup.

I let it happen. I let myself feel sad because there's no use in trying to tell myself that I can't be sad that other women are getting pregnant and I cannot. It hurts and I have to feel it.

Keeping it together for the duration of the day was not easy, and I wasn't always successful. The next day, it was back to the drawing board. I knew immediately that I wanted an IUI this cycle. Jamie and I discussed it, then spoke with our doctor about it who is a big advocate of it, so we went forward.

Once again, I took Clomid to stimulate my follicles to create more than one egg. Last cycle, I had three follicles, but one kind of took over so I only had one egg. This cycle, I had four follicles. The one on the right was huge and ready to burst on Monday, my birthday. I had had my HCG trigger shot the day before to make me ovulate, so when I had my first IUI on Monday morning, the timing looked perfect. I went in again on Tuesday for a second IUI, and I still had my three follicles on the left side that were going to ovulate that day. So it looks like I had four eggs this cycle! And, because Jamie has super sperm, he managed to produce 5 million sperm two days in a row, which impressed the doctor since sperm count is usually lower on the second day.

Lying in wait, literally, after the IUI on my birthday. Let's hope it's good luck.

I'm also really hopeful this cycle because IUI removes the whole process of trying to get those swimmers through my cervix without dying. If my - GROSS ALERT - cervical mucus isn't up to Goldilocks'** standards, then it can seriously decrease the chances of spermies ever making it through the cervix.

So once again, we wait. I've got about ten days left, which will be a long ten days.



* I am glad I caught my typo before publishing this as I had originally typed "composted" instead of "composed." 
** Just right, duh.