My Fertility Journey
I’m going to tell you something not too many people know about me, but it took my husband and I 2 years to get pregnant.
Trying to conceive has incredible stigma in our society.
You get married and “when are you having kids?”
You turn 30 something and “when are you having kids?” or “you don’t want to miss your windor”
You decide to focus on other aspects of life and “so you don’t want kids?”
Everyone wants to be in your business, so most people who are trying to conceive don’t bring it up in conversation.
And then there is the fear of miscarriage once you are pregnant and waiting to tell.
So needless to say, unless you’re a patient of mine and could use a reassuring story you may not hear me talk about it. But that’s going to change.
And here’s why.
I have a success story that didn’t involve the usual western medicine route of artificial hormones, IUI and IVF.
Like many women who have been trying to conceive without success I was dishearted and didn’t know where I could turn.
Even though I worked for a hospital at the time and had a good relationship with my gynecologist, I wasn’t ready to pursue medical interventions.
Here’s why.
I am stubborn. Really it comes down to, I needed to figure out and do the research on my own. It’s a terrible, “I can do it by myself” attitude.
Plus, I wasn’t ready to admit that I needed anything that I couldn’t do for myself.
My fertile journey began when my husband and I had a conversation right before we got married that I would stop taking birth control. Ladies, it took 2 years for my body to regulate my period after that. I used to say, “my period is regularly irregular.” Anyone relate?
I would go every other month without a period, so as awesome as not dealing with a period for a month is, it’s also not ideal and a way for my body to tell me something was up.
At the same time I was finishing up my doctorate, my last rotations and starting to think about my exam to become a licensed PT and life outside of school.
Pretty stressful time!
I was also not eating the best and exercising irradically.
Not shocking that my hormones were wonky.
It wasn’t until I was in my first job that I really become concerned with what was happening with my reproductive system.
I had (and still do sometimes) what a lot of health care providers have a problem with… focus more on our patients and miss issues with ourselves.
This ended when I was at work, performing body work on a patient when I experienced the sharpest abdominal pain I ever had. It made my blood pressure drop, I got all clammy, and nearly passed out. But, the good dooby that I was, I finished up with my patient, transitioned her to the next provider and then collapsed.
I was surrounded by amazing women, and they quickly took action. What I found out later that day was an ovarian cyst had burst. Even though we weren’t trying yet, my first thought was, “how is this going to effect me trying to get pregnant?”
Have you had this feeling before?
After this happened I started to do some digging into how to support my reproductive health in a holistic and natural way. I knew that my body didn’t do well with artificial hormone management from my years on birth control.
This brought me to the book Take Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler. I began to pay more attention to my cervical fluid, my basal body temperature, and my cervical position.
Now, being a pelvic floor PT I know more than the average women about the body, but still these ideas were foreign concepts to me. When you go to the gynecologist you were educated more on how NOT to get pregnant. And for most, even when you do ask about getting pregnant, the answers usually leave you wanting.
After months of tracking, we were ready to use this information to start trying, even though I was still not super confident.
And then we were moving and I was starting a new job. So, trying for a baby was put on hold. My body showed signs of being stressed again and I need to learn more.
I doubled down on understanding what my body was telling me.
I learned about:
ideal fertility food (while being vegan)
detoxing my body and lifestyle
exercises that promote a fertile body
body work for reproductive health
All of these areas lead me to a weekly plan that I followed for months to:
reduce the effects of stress on my body and improve how my body handles stress
to improve circulation to my reproductive organs
to clear toxins from my body
to improve egg quality & uterine lining health
Once we were settled into our new place and my new job, we decided it was time to start trying again. I was more confident in my fertile body, after all the work I had done for it and it paid off.
Don’t get me wrong, it still took us half a year to get pregnant once we started trying again. It is still a miracle of timing and pure energy.
There were months that it felt like a chore and we lost sight of having fun.
But when that test showed positive, it was all worth it. And what I learned along the way was irreplaceable knowledge and set me up for a healthier pregnancy!