Listening Closely

Today, I got an email that said,” This is Miranda's Mom sending you pictures of her and her beautiful baby girl.  The baby was born on October 26th at 9:26 a.m. by c-section.  The baby turned breech about 3 weeks before the due date.  She was 6 lbs. 9 oz. and 19" long. They are both doing wonderful.  Miranda and I both believe that it was due to your herbs that she was able to get pregnant”.

Mariana really is beautiful. She has a full head of dark hair and in one photo she seems to be pointing her finger.  I want to post the picture so you can see her but I don’t think that would be the right thing to do. Her mother will decide who should see her baby and keep her privacy from prying eyes. 

I am just so excited that I might have had a part in the birth of this beautiful baby that I want to share my joy with someone who would understand what a big deal this. Miranda was having such a hard time trying to get pregnant before she found my website. 

When she told me her story and I asked her a million questions to try to understand what her body was doing, I was pretty sure that the Chinese herbs would help her even though nothing did before. I have to say that sometimes it seems so obvious what the problem is after talking to these women,  even though medical tests don’t reveal it. 

In the west we are so convinced that the medical tests will tell the objective truth. Over and over I have seen that the body reveals the truth and when I talk to the women long enough and compare what her body is doing against the backdrop of what her body should be doing it becomes so darn clear.  

Luckily, there are thousands of herbs to combine in just the right way to fit each and every woman and if we combine these with destiny a beautiful baby has a chance to come into the world. Perhaps, the real key to helping these women get pregnant is just to listen… really closely.

Young Women Trying to Get Pregnant

I just received 3 emails today from women in their early 20’s who are trying to get pregnant. This should be the most fertile time of their life. Why would they be looking for help from a fertility herbalist? In my experience there seems to be are two main reasons they are searching for help.

The biggest reason is that they really aren’t sure how to get pregnant. Of course they know that they are supposed to have sex but that is all they know for sure. For most women in their 20’s this might be all they really need to know. They are having sexual intercourse regularly enough that just by accident they will get pregnant.

But what if their husband is in the military and they aren’t able to see them regularly? I get calls every day now from women who tell me that they want to get pregnant when their husband is on leave or they want to get pregnant before he is deployed. They aren’t able to have sex every day or every other day.

I am not going to go into all the intricate details in this blog there are plenty of places to find this information. The best book on this subject if you ask me is Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Wheschler.

Here are the very basics of what it takes for a young woman to get pregnant:

1- Know your cycle. You don’t care what an “average” menstrual cycle is. You care about YOUR cycle. Your “cycle day 1” is always the first day that your period starts. Don’t count the days that you might spot before your real period starts. Your cycle will end when your next period begins.

2- Know when YOU ovulate (when the egg releases and you can get pregnant). The “ovulation calendars” only tell you when the “average” woman would ovulate. Who cares about “average”. You care about YOU. The only way to know for sure when YOU ovulate is to use an “Ovulation Predictor Kit”. You can buy these at most drug stores. Read the instructions on the package. Basically, it will say to pee (urinate) on a stick and look at it. Ovulation usually happens half way between periods but everyone is not exactly the same so use the kit to see when YOU are able to get pregnant.

3- Look for fertile vaginal discharge. When you see that you are ovulating by using the kit you should also see some other changes in your body. The biggest indication that you are ovulating and can get pregnant is that your vaginal discharge will become clear and slippery and it will look like uncooked egg white. Don’t look for this when you are sexually aroused because it combines with your normal “wetness” and it will always look "fertile" if you check at this time. You need to see this discharge when you are not aroused.

Some women will have so much of this discharge that they need to wear panty liners and other women will only see this slippery slimy vaginal discharge when they wipe after urinating. You need this discharge to get pregnant. The sperm will be able to swim in this discharge but when it is sticky or watery.

When you see this “fertile discharge” you should also check to see if the “Ovulation Predictor Kit” is also indicating that you are ovulating so that you can get pregnant.

Once you have seen that the kit is telling you that you are ovulating and you see that it is happening at the same time you see this “fertile mucus” you will not have to keep using the kit. You can just look for the right discharge.

4- Have sexual intercourse for 4 days in a row as soon as you see the fertile discharge and/or you see from the kit that you are ovulating. We never know exactly when the egg releases. We only know that it is about too so cover your bases and have sex for 4 days and this should do it. If you can’t do it for 4 days in a row you can do it every other day as the egg will wait for a few days before it is reabsorbed into the body and also the sperm will also live for a couple days before the body absorbs it too.

5- Don’t do anything that you wouldn’t do if you are pregnant because you won’t know if you got pregnant for about 2 weeks. You can use an early pregnancy test but a lot of the time it isn’t accurate until you have missed your period. The babies’ brain and spinal cord are the first things that start developing and if you drink alcohol or smoke or take drugs it can affect the brain, heart and spinal cord.

6- Once you have missed your period use an early pregnancy test (purchased at a drug store) to see if you are pregnant. YOU HAVE TO USE THE FIRST MORNING URINE at the very beginning of a pregnancy for the test to be accurate.

The second big reason that a young woman might contact a fertility herbalist to help her get pregnant is that her body isn’t doing any of the things that everyone says should be happening. Her period doesn’t come regularly or she doesn’t have fertile discharge or the ovulation predictor kit never picks up an ovulation. When she goes to the doctor they usually want to put her on birth control pills but somehow this doesn’t seem right when she knows that she took them to prevent a pregnancy. Why is it that they are giving the same medications to her when she is trying to get pregnant? It just doesn’t make sense to her.

This is a good reason to contact a fertility herbalist. I can figure out what the problem is and give you herbs to help. If the problem is something that I don’t think Chinese herbs will help with I will try to convince you to go back to the doctor but you would be surprised at how effective they can be. I know I was shocked about this.

FSH… The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

Every day I get calls and emails from women from around the world asking the same question, “Can you bring down my FSH with herbs”? The story goes on. “I want to get pregnant but the doctor said my FSH is too high.” 

I will explain what I have learned about FSH as a practitioner of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) working exclusively with women trying to get pregnant for the past 11 years. I am not an expert on FSH but I have helped many women with “high FSH” get pregnant. 

I have found that there is a very big range of what FSH (follicle stimulating hormone) can be. The highest I heard from the women calling me was 189.  A normal FSH is 8 and below but doctors are okay with 10, but usually the cut off is 12. There are some rather rogue doctors who will be okay about a 15 if the woman is in her 20’s or early 30’s.  

But what do these numbers mean? 

Doctors seem to enjoy or at least that is my impression, telling a woman with “high FSH” that she has “old eggs” or “not many eggs left”. Oh my gosh, a healthy vibrant 40 year old woman being told she has “old eggs” is not something that can be comprehended easily. 

The bottom line is that if your FSH is too high you will not respond well to the drugs and medical procedures that are available from your doctor. MD’s do not have anything in their bag of tricks to help a woman with high FSH get pregnant other than to use a donor’s eggs.  

Let me start by giving you a “few statements of fact” as I have observed and researched.  First, no one knows what the FSH is of women who get pregnant without any challenges. Secondly, we are born with all the eggs we are ever going to have and we will die with some too.  

(By the way, I like this image because it means that we developed as eggs in the womb of our grandmothers) 

The problem seems to be that the eggs aren’t developing properly for some reason. The body is working extra hard trying to get the follicle (where the egg is) to develop and so it is producing more follicle stimulating hormone (FSH). 

In Traditional Chinese Medicine we look at what the body is actually doing to see if there is anything that might be affecting this process. A woman’s reproductive system is governed a lot by blood flow and how the Qi moves (energy or life force) and how well temperatures are regulated in the body. If we can create the normal balances in these things the body doesn’t have to work so hard and the FSH goes down naturally. 

There are great difference in how women present with these imbalances and there are thousands of Chinese herbs to bring together to address them but practically speaking there seems to be a limit. I am pretty confident that the herbs will help women with FSH of around 40 as long as she is still having her period. The higher it goes up or the more irregular her period gets the less confident I am that the herbs will help enough. 

Even if your FSH is higher than this I would advise you to try to herbs for 6 months. We should see improvement in this time. If you are not pregnant in this time I would think we should really evaluate if we would go any further. 

Remember, I said that there is a cut off with how high your FSH can be for doctors to help you? You should be aware that even if we get the FSH to go down to a perfect “magical” level, many doctors will still say that they will not have anything to offer.  Some say that “once it is high they will always use the highest number even of it goes down”.   

Not all doctors say this though. If your doctor decides to give you something, make sure to tell your herbalist because there are many Chinese herbs that you can’t take along with drugs… but there are some that you can!