My Pregnancy Journey Part 3: My Struggle with Fertility
In this multi-post series, I share my full pregnancy journey, from the the first moment motherhood became a concrete goal, through my three pregnancies and births, loss, and fertility challenges. I hope that doing so will help to challenge commonly-held misperceptions about pregnancy and birth, and foster recognition that there are a wide variety of experiences, choices, and outcomes that are possible. Ultimately, it’s about connection, to empower each other with confidence and wisdom to make our own informed decisions about what’s best for ourselves and our babies. If you have a pregnancy or birth story that you would like to share on the blog, please reach out here!
If you’ve read part 2 of my pregnancy journey, you’ll remember that we ended with C pooping on the floor of a fancy restaurant in Hong Kong. I had just had a D&C following a miscarriage, and if we thought that was the end of our fertility challenges, oh man were we wrong!
My cycle returned shortly after the miscarriage, and we felt ready to continue trying to get pregnant. Three months passed, and we figured it was normal, but in the back of my mind I began to worry. Six months passed, and I decided to turn worry into action. At this point, I understood the basics of how conception worked: I ovulated once a month around mid-cycle, and we needed to get sperm to connect with the released egg in order to get pregnant. But I quickly realized that there was quite a bit more to it.
I also learned an incredible fact:
There are only 12-24 days a year when you can get pregnant.
And, just as important: if you don’t know when those 12—24 days are or how to time intercourse around them, getting pregnant can be a challenge.
Despite what I had been taught during junior high sex-ed, ovulation didn’t necessarily occur on day 14 of my cycle, nor could I get pregnant on any random day of my cycle. The lesson here was clear: knowing when I ovulated and timing intercourse to coincide with ovulation was key.
At this point, Toni Weschler’s fabulous book ‘Taking Charge of Your Fertility’ became my bible (and I still recommend it for every menstruating woman). From this book, I really came to understand how my reproductive system works, including how to know when I ovulated and how to use that knowledge to time intercourse for the best chances of conceiving. And maybe just as important, this knowledge and understanding gave me a huge feeling of empowerment.
But despite all the cycle tracking and rigid timing, we passed the nine month mark with still no pregnancy. I raised my concerns with my doctor, who told me that we’d start looking into it if we reached the one year mark.
Now, trying to conceive as a foreigner in China is an interesting experience. Back then the one child policy was still in effect, which meant that pretty much everyone I encountered was only allowed to have one child. So worrying about having a second child felt at times gluttonous, and even if I had shared my struggles with my local friends, they would likely have had very little sympathy for me. And maybe it was my imagination, but I always felt like I was being hit by piercing stairs when I had to buy pregnancy tests or ovulation predictor kits at the pharmacy and had C with me. At the time, the internet, including the social media sphere, was a completely different beast, so the online support we are so fortunate to have today really didn’t exist. Needless to say, it was a pretty isolating experience.
Three months later, and still no pregnancy, we started looking into it. My doctor ran various tests, and when the results came back normal, she referred us to a fertility specialist but told us to just keep trying in the meantime.
While we waited for our appointment, since I was in China after all, I went to see a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) doctor. She prescribed a bunch of awful tasting herbal medicine and biweekly acupuncture. I quickly gave up on the medicine, but really enjoyed the acupuncture and so continued to see her regularly.
A couple of months later, we finally got in to see the fertility specialist. He ran more blood tests and scheduled me for a hysterosalpingography (HSG) to check my fallopian tubes for blockages.
At this point, we were 16 months post-miscarriage. My HSG was scheduled for the following week and we were still waiting for the blood test results. It was a Saturday morning; we woke up to a beautiful blue-sky spring day and decided to head to the Great Wall for a day hike. My period was due in a couple of days, but almost out of habit I decided to take a test.
Positive.
Positive!!!!
Nearly two years after deciding to try for baby #2, and nearly 1.5 years after my miscarriage, it finally happened. I was pregnant!
I spent the day hiking in a giddy surreal haze, and then promptly cancelled my follow up appointment with the fertility specialist. Which felt so amazing.
I’ve asked myself so many times what the magic trick was: what was it that I did that allowed my body to conceive? After much consideration, I think it came down to two things. First, I think my regular acupuncture sessions played a big role. Whatever was stuck inside of me that was preventing pregnancy became unblocked. Second, I truly believe that we were waiting for a certain special soul to join us, and until that point she was not ready. In hindsight, as a holistic nutritionist who now understands the delicate intricacies of hormonal balance, I think there was likely a third factor at play: my stress levels around this time were through the roof: living in a foreign country + being a mom + a demanding job very likely threw my hormone levels off, impacting my ability to conceive. And I should probably add environmental toxin exposure to the list as well since we were living in one of the most polluted cities in the world (where, on occasion, the air quality rating was literally off the charts).
Having faced these fertility challenges, and recognizing that the key to resolving them lay not in medical intervention but in addressing imbalances and blockages in my body, as a holistic nutritionist I now feel super passionate about supporting women who are facing their own fertility challenges, or who are planning a pregnancy and want to make sure that they are in the best position (not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, and even spiritually) to conceive. If you are planning a pregnancy, especially in the face of fertility challenges, and are looking for support to make sure you’re covering all your bases, I would love to work with you! Read more about my services here.