Divine Intervention or Dr.Google?

Do you think god sometimes answers your prayers...just a little?

Well, he didn't answer my prayers about ovulating--maybe because I didn't specifically say to him,

"God, please, please, please make my ovary lay me an egg..."

But he might have responded to my other "prayer": If you remember my mini meltdown a few days ago..., well, I decided to see my TCM doc the next day to get some answers about why my cycles were getting worse. He said he had no idea why because all my tcm vital signs told him I was doing rather well. Needless to say, I was frickin' disappointed and annoyed with his answer. My TCM doc's good (I did get pregnant within 3 months of being under his care) but he is not a fertility specialist. While I was laying on the clinic bed with a million needles stuck into my belly, I cried out in exasperation,


"God, Help Me!" (Not out loud, but in my head. The new needle-virgin patients waiting for their turn might appreciate that).

The next day, Saturday, I spent most of my time surfing the internet for answers. Most of my searches led me to fertility acupuncturists that were not even anywhere within a thousand miles from where I lived. Yet they were exactly what I wanted and needed. I was so desperate I fantasized about moving across oceans to be near them. After what seemed like an eternity drifting through cyberspace in desperation, I FOUND ONE! And he practically operates out of my own backyard. OK, I exaggerate, but his clinic is in my neck of the woods. The acupuncturist specializes in infertility and claims to use both Chinese and Western Medicine to diagnose infertility (they include hormonal bloodwork and ultrasound scans to monitor your follicles for ovulation) but use traditional chinese medicine to treat IF. This was exactly what I was looking for! I mean, yes, I still have delusions that at 39-going-on-40, I, endo girl with poor sperm DH, will get pregnant and have a baby without resorting to ART!

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Okay, you can stop laughing now... Of course I still have a back-up plan--I will still talk to a fertility specialist about doing ART.

We plan to see this new fertility acupuncturist tomorrow. Maybe I just got lucky with Dr.Google. Or maybe God heard me and decided to give me a helping hand. So this is my new prayer to God:

"Oh God, please, please, please let him speak English.
May his english vocab extend beyond the words "Hello" and "We accept credit cards".
And please, please, please don't let his needles hurt.
May my acupuncture sessions with him be devoid of any screaming.
That's right God, please don't let him be a Dr.Yeeeoch v 2.0!

And please, please, please God, may I have a baby real soon!"

To Defect Or Not To Defect?

Its 11DPO and this 2 Week Wait is driving me absolutely CRAZY! I am glad I've got a lot of updating to do on my blog, though I've been spending time on the internet instead obsessing about 2WW symptoms - again! I just never learn do I, even after another year of futile obsessions during the 2WWs of 2009!

As I have hinted, much has changed in my TCM routine this year. For one, I have only seen my regular TCM doc once this year. I felt like we had come to the end of the road with him, especially when the last cycle under his care ended up in me having an anovulatory cycle. In lay terms -

No ovulation = No egg = No chance in hell of conceiving!

So when that happened, it's like,

What's going on here? I'm getting worse!

Because from what I know, and what my Fertility Friend and OPKs tell me, I usually do ovulate every cycle.

I know these things happen occasionally and who can ever be sure why, but it's just easier for me to blame him! Time is ticking... And granted that he did help me get pregnant for the first time in my life last year, there hadn't been anymore pregnancies under his care since my m/c in March '09. I was getting worried. And time is still ticking...

My husband and I had developed a great relationship with him over the year, but he hadn't given us what we wanted. I don't care how many couples he's helped got pregnant since. It's always frustrating to hear about so and so who got pregnant. Everyone he's helped seems to be getting pregnant except us. I had no idea why or what to do. If I hadn't been pregnant under his care I would have left a long time ago, but he did help me get pregnant once naturally, and that was the hold that he had on me. I looked very hard for signs that it was time to move on. After our last visit with him, I pretty much got all the signs I needed.

The First Sign - he hardly showed any concern for our inability to conceive last year. Infact, he suggested that we cool it off and wait for three months instead.


What? You want us to Wait?

I'm thinking, there had better be a damn good reason for this. Turns out, his reason was not based on ovaries or qi or meridiens or hormones, but based completely on his beliefs in the chinese horoscope! He really believed that a baby born in the Year of the Tiger (which starts on Feb 14, 2010) was a really bad match for us, especially for my husband, a "monkey". He said that it would be tough on my husband while the kid's growing up and very tough for our child later trying to grow up under a "monkey" parent. It would be a very difficult relationship. Wow! That really threw me off. I wasn't expecting that at all! We cried out in disbelief but all he kept saying was, "Trust me. Believe in what old people have to say."

Well, that got me really nervous. The chinese horoscope is fun, but I've never taken it seriously. Could our dreams of having a happy family be ruined by the timing of our child's birth? He wanted us to wait 3 months so that our child would be born after the Year of the Tiger. Telling an aging, desperate infertile to wait and do nothing for 3 months is like being banished to hell to suffer for eternity! I had to go and have a consult with Dr Google and see what he says. More on that later.

The Second Sign - I didn't feel like he was focused on our problems anymore. Sure he has dying patients with cancer and life threatening diseases, and babies with brain development problems that are in much dire need of his attention, but I want my TCM doc to treat us like we were his one-and-only most important patient in the world that he would drop everything for! And he was not giving that to us anymore. He was also spending less time in the clinic these days, being more focused on getting his other clinic opened within the next month. He's stretched thin, and his staff never knows when he would be in. I like it when he used to be there 24/7 (seriously - he even works on sundays and public holidays).

He gave us an excuse to disappear. So, (take a deep breath...)

We defected!

We had one last electro-acupuncture with him that session. (By the way, when he pricked that spot over my right ovary, the pain was so intense, my screaming startled him! Yup - either he wasn't careful or something was going on at that acupuncture point!) We got one week's worth of herbal medicine to boil at home and we have not seen him since.

Coming soon... Introducing our new acupuncture fertility specialist...

Dr Yeeeouch!