How acupuncture helped treat my post-natal depression
Tom’s birth experience was drastically different to what I’d been hoping for and expecting. Instead of a calm, quiet drug-free home birth, I ended up being whisked to hospital in an ambulance, and having every intervention I’d hoped to avoid. Immediately following the birth, I knew that my physical recovery would take a while. What I didn’t realise was how long it would take to recover mentally.
Self-care during fertility treatments
If you’re doing fertility treatments, chances are pretty good that you’re stressing the fuck out. Not only do you have the logistics of appointments and medications (and physical/emotional weirdness from said medications), but if you found your way to fertility treatments after dealing with infertility, then you’ve got the emotional burdens from THAT whole awfulness.
And then, as if the whole process wasn’t stressful enough, then you have to stress about STRESSING, because everyone tells you that anxiety will negatively influence your chances of getting pregnant. Not stressing isn’t just an issue of sanity — it’s an issue of treatment effectiveness. AARGH!
So, that’s all fine and good: DON’T STRESS. But how? How can you keep yourself calm and non-anxious during the mind-fuck that is fertility treatments?
Our lesbian conception story – how a salsa jar helped us get pregnant!
We always knew we wanted to have a baby, but having two sets of ovaries doesn’t really help with that. Patty’s best friend has always talked about helping her conceive by donating sperm, but Patty didn’t want to carry the baby herself. I, on the other hand, was happy to get pregnant. We did consider adoption, and I in fact always thought that would be the way I’d have a child, but since we had a willing known donor… we figured we should at least give conceiving a biological child a shot!
My female acupuncturist knocked me up — and it was mostly painless
When I first met my acupuncturist in a small Brooklyn practice where a mechanic shop spewed fumes nearby, I took one look at her and hoped she would knock me up. In fact, I desperately hoped she was the one. The one who would know just where to stick those freaky needles for my womb to quiver and totally rock out a life force ready to take the world by storm in 9+ months. I hoped she was magic. I hoped it happened immediately.
Endometriosis didn’t crush my baby-making hopes
I think the first time I experienced “the pain” was around 15. After describing these very scary occurrences to my gynecologist, she ordered an ultrasound where they found multiple grape sized cysts and endometriosis on and around my ovaries.
My thanksgiving birth story
Somewhere around my 26th week of pregnancy, our midwife Heike taught us how to find the baby’s head in my belly. “It’s called ballottement,” she explained. His head was just under the right side of my ribcage, meaning he was breech. “Don’t worry about it,” my midwife said. “Most babies are breech in the second trimester. He’ll flip.”
Figuring out when to stop: a couple’s struggle with infertility
Diane and her husband are approaching infertility treatments and wondering just how far they’ll go to conceive a child.
Using acupuncture and herbs to treat morning sickness
As an informed and offbeat consumer, you may want to consider alternative approaches to treating morning sickness. Acupuncture has been used safely and effectively by pregnant women for thousands of years, long before anything resembling Western medical science existed. It is all natural, with no drugs or potentially harmful side effects to threaten your health or that of your baby.