About five months ago, pre pregnancy and miscarriage #2, a LivingSocial deal for acupuncture landed in my inbox.  Acupuncture is something I know very little about, but had heard it could work wonders in the fertility realm and as I was 8 months post miscarriage #1 and was not having any success conceiving I thought, why not?  So I bought the voucher and scheduled my appt.  I ended up having to cancel my appt and before I was able to reschedule I found out I was pregnant so I didn’t bother making another one. Until last week.  I try to push myself outside my comfort zone on a daily basis in order to feel alive and maintain continued internal growth– sometimes it will be something big, like skydiving, others days it will be something small, like saying “hi” to the intimidating doc in the hallway.  This is one of the reasons I love my job- there is little predictability in hospital nursing, so I don’t need to look far for new experiences! Everytime I try something new I get that nervous energy that comes with feeling vulnerable- it’s so uncomfortable but so vital for living life to its fullest.

So last Thursday I hopped in my car at 2:30, an hour before my appt. Google says it will take me 39 minutes to get there, so I gave myself an hour.  I always try to leave plenty of time when going some place new- I HATE being late, and it’s nerve-wracking enough to be trying something new in the first place. You can tell that I am not a parent because I forgot that school gets out between 2:30-3:30 so sure enough I get behind school bus, after school bus, after school bus.  Now I pride myself in being a courteous driver, I always try to stop for people in crosswalks and let cars in… except when I am running late.  That’s when the road rage sets in.  Every time I saw the lights go on and the stop sign pop out I forced myself to take a deep breath and focus on all the happy reunions between parent and child in an attempt to quell my nervous energy.  I made it to my appt a little after 3:30 and was relieved to find out that the practitioner was busy with another client.  So I took a deep breath and started filling out my paperwork.  I really had no idea what to expect- I only had stock photos I had seen in spa advertisements to go on.  I started looking around the waiting room, “Qi” this and “Qi” that, thinking what is the “Qi” business like a good ignorant American.  Then the lightbulb went on “Oh…. it’s Chi!” How many times throughout my life had I heard someone, myself included, say that they were going to “harness their Chi” without any clue as to what it meant.  I’ve gone twice now and I still don’t fully understand it, I know it’s about balancing energy flow in the body, but I realize I don’t need to fully understand in order to believe in its benefits.  I had a great introductory consultation with the practitioner (Qi Master or QM moving forward), who got an earful about my struggles with conceiving and pregnancy and then she showed me to the back room.  It is a community acupuncture center, so there is one large room with ten or so beds which allows them to treat multiple people at a time and keep prices low– so low, in fact, I was a little skeptical of the place!  But they are still able to keep the spa like atmosphere with the calming music and lighting and soothing artwork on the walls.  I was asked to wear comfortable clothing (as if I ever wear anything but) so they could gain access to elbows and knees.  I was a little nervous about the needles, but the only place I felt more than a slight prick was my feet.  With every placement of a needle I felt a warm tingling sensation (Qi, is that you???) that would then pass to the next needle placement.  She placed needles in my forearms, lower legs, feet, forehead, and belly- above my uterus and ovaries, I’m guessing. And then I lay.  And lay.  And lay.  As I felt the energy move from one needle to the next.  Nothing drastic, just very small sensations.  “Fertility treatment is a long process”, Qi Master said.  Don’t I know it.  And I’m only a year and a half in!  I did naively think that acupuncture would not require a big commitment- one or two treatments to realign my energy and then I’d be a fertile Myrtle, ready to roll! But that’s not how it works.  When treating pain with acupuncture, results are seen instantly, but fertility is, unfortunately, a much more complicated process, as everyone reading this blog knows.   QM wants me to go twice a week for 8 weeks and then reassess. While taking Chinese herbs. And charting my temp.  And the really kicker: she wants me to take time off from trying.

“Are you willing to take a couple months off from trying?” The question stung my ears. The people pleaser in me was tempted to shout out “Yes!” But the 32-year-old Liz who has been through many years of therapy to work on meeting her needs and learning when to say “no” hesitated. “I might be,” I responded hesitantly, before delving into my reasons. Bottom line, I know too many people who have gotten pregnant and carried to term immediately after having a miscarriage that I’m not willing to give up these potentially very fertile couple months to let my body rebuild, because, quite frankly, my body rebuilt for 10 months last time and that didn’t seem to help.  While in my head it makes sense that by taking the time to rebuild the uterine lining and “get healthy” I would be rewarded with a healthy pregnancy, in my heart I’m not convinced.  Because if there is anything I have learned through this process is that it doesn’t make sense.  If it was up to my head to decide what made sense, I would have two healthy babies right now.  But I have none.

I feel torn. I want to feel in control of the process of conceiving/carrying said baby when ultimately, as I have learned, I have very limited control.  Seeking out intervention, whether it be through acupuncture or a reproductive endocrinologist, makes me feel more in control, but it takes up time in my schedule and space in my mind that I could be using to focus on enjoyable, stress-relieving activities.  I had gotten to a point where a baby was not my first thought in the morning, but now that I am back to taking my temp in the morning it is.  And when an activity that is supposed to relax me has the opposite effect, I think I need to reassess. As much as I feel that I don’t have time, that the clock is ticking, fact of the matter is, I do have some time.  And as much as I want a baby, I don’t want to devote all my time and energy to having one at this point.  Acupuncture has been around for thousands of years, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon, it will be there when I need it.  In the meantime, I will focus on “harnessing my Qi/Chi”, however you want to spell it, in a place far away from slow school buses, at home.