Or rather, how desperate in the race to have a baby are you to try the most random things?
Full disclosure moment, I didn’t try that many things, but even the ones I did try, my younger self from 5/10 years ago would have been rolling her eyes at and muttering ‘nutter’ under her breath, so…
Ok, so, you’re not having much luck with the whole ‘getting pregnant’ thang, and you start to do a bit of research (as we all know, googling things when ill inevitably leads you to presume you have the plague, so imagine similar in fertility googling). You’ll probably also join some facebook groups (because you never bloody learn that they are either a) full of nutters or b) have a significant population of {mainly Americans} who have already had 8-14 children and are worried about their inability to get pregnant when their husband sneezed in their direction last month as they are now a geriatric 32 year old, *sigh*), and away we go.
First thing you’ll probably see recommended a lot is acupuncture. Fair enough, old tradition, been shown to have some effect for certain conditions. And frankly, even if it doesn’t work its an hour of lying quietly and relaxing whilst being stabbed by small pins right?
So I tried acupuncture. It was not something I thought would necessarily work, but I also thought it couldn’t hurt (mostly). The first person I booked with was an acupuncturist / medical doctor. Winner! Totally legitimate treatment in that case.
This was hands down the nastiest medical person I think I dealt with (so far!) during this whole process. When I turned up early she completely ignored me. She then told me after 5 minutes into the appointment that I wouldn’t get pregnant (turns out shes right so far, but this was a bit rude 3 years ago) and there was no point talking to me. I said I knew I needed to lose weight and I was hoping she could help with that too. This meant the conversation continued as she told me I would have to be completely focused on this and follow her instructions to the letter… until I asked whether this would work with me being vegetarian (since a child). “Well, can you eat meat for this?”, “Er, no, sorry”, “well you’re just not committed enough, nothing will work, you should stop trying and adopt”.
Strangely not the open and spiritual experience I had expected to have.
So, after getting over this appointment, having bawled my way home – definitely not sexy crying unfortunately – I went to another acupuncturist. She was, and is, lovely, and I really felt her treatments helped after cycles to try and get the hormones to calm down (swapping one set of needles for another here). Unfortunately, getting an appointment that worked for my schedules and hers was hard… so I went to another clinic she recommended.
They sold me a lot of revolting Chinese herb tea to drink 3x a day. Sufficeit to say, I did not manage to do this, because a) I’m not a tea drinker, b) it tasted like earth and farts mixed together.
In the end I couldn’t keep going there either as the appointments meant I had to leave work 2 hours early to get there for their last appointment, and as I was already taking so much time off work for IVF…
So, I went to another recommended acupuncturist – a fertility specialist. She was nearly as rude as rude as the first woman and I battled with wanting to punch her and walk out and wanting to stay because I knew she had helped lots of women get pregnant. After several appointments the constant haranguing prior to being punctured by needles each session became too much and I decided not to pay her any more money for the pleasure of doing so.
So that’s acupuncture and Chinese herbs covered.
I’ve already written about the ludicrous number of supplements I was taking at one point. I think 12-15 or so per day, some of which were 6 tablets per supplement. Supplements basically got added every time someone mentioned something helped, I’d look it up, see what it was meant to help and sometimes add it to my regime, meaning that I had exciting luminous pee for a while from too much vitamin B across the variety of things I was taking. This also included buying incredibly expensive fertility focused vitamins from the USA (because they have soooo many more than in Europe) and also adding DHEA for a time. The latter I’d discussed with my doctors. Its meant to help egg health. Didn’t work for me, but the side effect of horrific acne? – yep, got that! Who doesn’t want to be spotty in their 40’s hey?
And so WHY was I adding all these supplements, trying to avoid plastic and so on? Because of some books. Specifically ‘It starts with the egg’ which is all about improving egg health (spoiler alert!). Thing is, the advice is fine, and some women follow it religiously and then get pregnant and say this is why. Well, it might be, or it might not be. Who knows?
There are numerous posts on fertility forums that say ‘yay, we’re pregnant, here’s what I did differently this month’. Often this includes things they and their partner have done, like standing naked in cow dung under a full moon before having sex (no, I made that one up, but I bet if someone wrote they did do this and it was successful people would try it..)
Most of these things are fairly innocuous – eating the core of a pineapple for several days post ovulation, wearing socks to bed post ovulation, lying with their feet up against a wall after sex, giving up processed food/gluten/red meat/parabens/plastic/dressing as a furry.
And the thing is, you want to scream – ladies, it makes no bloody difference! Women have been getting pregnant since the beginning of time whilst running away from tigers, carrying heavy loads, shivering in the cold and starving. But the problem is, you think… but ‘what if…?’ and you get sucked into the madness.
And me? I stopped taking all the supplements a year or so ago – it made no difference anyway. Yes I still have food from plastic containers – it is virtually impossible not to, and no, I don’t wear socks to bed or eat the inside of pineapple.
However, now I have found an acupuncturist who isn’t a rude sadist, or too woo woo, I’m definitely going to keep doing that. Sometimes. When there is time.