Posts from — February 2009

This is the 27th installment of Barren Advice. You can ask questions that are fertility or non-fertility related.

Barren Advice is posted each Tuesday-ish. If you have your own question for Barren Advice, click here to learn how to submit. Please weigh in with your own thoughts in the comment section and indicate which question you’re addressing if there are multiple questions in the post.

Dear Mel:

I am looking into acupuncture. It is pretty expensive, so I would like advice from you and others on the prospects of acupuncture working for me. I have been diagnosed with PCOS and Clomid has not been successful in making me ovulate. I will be moving on soon probably to injectables and IUI cycles. Any help, any pros/cons any success stories involving acupuncture, etc. would be great! Thanks!

—He Resoreth My Soul

Unlike other alternative therapies (rubbing yam cream on your inner thighs anyone?), acupuncture has been well-studied in regards to infertility. And that could be because while it’s alternative for us, it is mainstream for a large portion of the world. And NIH simply cannot deny its success rate even though they state that it is “difficult to reconcile with contemporary biomedical information.” In other words, American doctors can’t figure out how it works based on our breadth of knowledge but they do know that it does work.

And, at the very least, it falls in the “can’t hurt” category.

Most of the studies on acupuncture and infertility have focused on IVF rather than IUI. Fertility and Sterility has released articles on utilizing acupuncture to increase the success of IVF. Acupuncture benefits have been studied for cycles where treatment fell during the luteal phase (after ovulation) as well as on the day of transfer during IVF. In both cases, pregnancy rates were higher for those who utilized acupuncture over the control group who received a placebo (non-strategically placed needles? Ouch!).

Acupuncture has also been studied in regards to male factor infertility. A recent study reported through National Institutes of Health (NIH) saw significant increases in sperm production after acupuncture was used and concluded: “acupuncture may be a useful, nontraumatic treatment for males with very poor sperm density, especially those with a history of genital tract inflammation.” Another study also reported by NIH found that not only sperm quality increased after acupuncture, but also fertilization increased.

So nothing specifically with PCOS and IUIs from a medical study, but certainly enough anecdotal evidence on the Web to warrant trying it.

All that said, just as you do diligence to find a good reproductive endocrinologist, make sure you’re comfortable with your acupuncture practitioner. In other words, go with someone licensed. The best bet is to contact your local Resolve chapter because they have lists of recommended practitioners for everything from reproductive endocrinology to acupuncturists who specifically work with infertility.

If you’ve utilized acupuncture in addition to injectable with IUI cycles, share your story below.

No really, the beauty of a blog advice column is that you get to weigh in with your two cents too. Let the questioner know if you support the advice, add to the response, or dispute it completely.

Leave a comment in the reaction box below–only keep in mind that conflicting advice is embraced and rudeness is not. Want to ask your own question? Click here to see what you need to send in order to be included in a future Tuesday’s installment of Barren Advice.

Every night around 11 p.m., right as Josh is trying to watch the Daily Show, I ask him if he wants to talk about my feelings. The answer is usually no. I thought I’d set that in the title just in case your answer is also no–either because you’re also watching the Daily Show or because you simply don’t feel like hearing about my feelings.

My feelings. Does anyone else talk about their feelings as if they are tangible entities separate from your body?

This first feeling contains children. Feel free to skip this one if you’re not up to reading it. I was the room mother last week. As room mother, I got to go to school on Friday and read a book to the class and my child got to choose the songs we sang at circle time and sit at a special snack table. It’s sort of the preschool equivalent to winning an Oscar except that every child gets to have their week.

Everyone probably has a moment in their head that they keep returning to–an image of being in this moment–when they can’t conceive. A moment they are striving to reach. For some it might be a first Christmas or bringing the baby to a big family reunion or something of that ilk.

And my moment was being the room mum.

When I imagined myself as room mum, I was actually picturing my own mother as room mum for my brother’s class back when he was in preschool. We have a video from that day of my brother sitting next to my mother while she read the class a book about a little fish named Otto. So when I pictured myself, it was with an early 80s haircut and a slightly exasperated look as my spirited child inserted extra words between every line of the book.

The date snuck up on me and I was wholly unable to absorb the idea that I had finally reached my moment. Isn’t that bizarre? I entered the room and sat down in the circle with my Fancy Nancy book. I sang the same songs that I learned in preschool and then was led to the special snack table in the front of the room.

And then it hit me as I sat down. I was there–I was right there in the moment I had been thinking about since 2001. And it’s 2009. That is a very long time to wait for a particular moment. I hate to be all dramatic, but I really felt like an internal wound had healed. There, I did it, I got all swoony and dramatic. But that’s exactly how it felt.

Which leads us to feeling number two.

I got home and realized that it was time to throw out all of my teaching materials. I kept a few documents on disc and I packed up a box of writing books. But everything else went into the garbage. It took two trips to the dump to haul away a nine year teaching career. Middle school, high school, and college. I really can’t say why I thought it was time or why I think I won’t go back to teaching. At least not teaching the subjects I was teaching.

There was a lot of hurt in those boxes. It hurt to know they were downstairs and it hurt to open them and look at my career laid out on pieces of papers. On thousands of pieces of paper. I have no regrets about leaving teaching so I can’t fully explain it. I threw them out while Josh was out of the house. I felt like I needed to do it alone. I dumped the first box angrily. And then I sat with the second box opened for a while feeling this awful wave of regret. And then I simply closed the boxes and pushed them over to the garbage pile and saved only a single picture of myself at a random graduation, my acceptance letter for my last teaching position, and a song I wrote about my students on a school trip. The hardest thing to throw out was this hand-drawn window covering that was behind my desk for six years. It was interlocking shells. Everyone would come in my room and comment on it and when I left, a fellow teacher asked if I would leave it behind. I thought I wanted it so I packed it and it felt sad to throw it out.

I have a lot more thoughts about things we threw out from the storage room as well as an impromptu trip to Ikea. I think the whole purging and redecorating are baby steps towards something. The point is not entirely clear so I think I need to still sit with it for a few days.

Housekeeping:

If you signed up for the IComLeavWe list and you haven’t been moved up to the main post (and it has been over 24 hours), there is a good reason. You don’t have the current pink icon on your blog. There are about 11 people in that position right now. Why do you have to add the icon? Well, it’s two-fold. One, it gives more people a chance to find the list and join along. But the more important reason is that there is a long gap between sign-up and the start date for the commenting week. The icon on your blog serves as a visual reminder since I can’t send out an email to everyone as I do with the book club when the post date is approaching. Seeing it there better ensures that people who sign up also participate when the time comes to do the commenting. So make sure you put on the icon either before you leave your comment or immediately after. And if you just checked the list and realized you’re not on it, add the icon and let me know it’s up.

I am still working on the Creme de la Creme. I’m much slower getting blurbs up on the list that come in after the due date (this year, it was December 19th). Sorry.

Bloglines seems to not be updating or finding a feed for Lost and Found (it may also be the case for this blog too, though I’ve only heard about in regards to Lost and Found). I’m not sure why it’s not working and I haven’t gotten a clear answer on what is wrong with the RSS feed or why it suddenly stopped working. I don’t have a great solution beyond the email sign-up (it’s on the right sidebar). It will send you a link to the current post every afternoon. But other than that, I’m not sure how to fix it because I’ve tried everything they’ve suggested.

Thank you for listening to my housekeeping items and my feelings. Perhaps I won’t need to bother Josh tonight.