Post-natal Care after Miscariage

My recovery after my miscarriage has not been an easy one, often plagued by pain during and in between Aunt Flo's visits. Although I had improved minutely from cycle to cycle, it can be seen as a regression in my condition, compared to the progress I had made before my miscarriage/pregnancy. I had been pain-free for a few months after acupuncture and herbs pre m/c, but I could not understand why I had regressed. My TCM doc told me it was because a miscarriage weakens the body, and as I had neglected to take care of my body after the m/c, I had inherited a whole new set of problems that had aggravated my endo again.

So today, I want to share about the importance of post-natal care as explained by my doctor. According to TCM, a woman who suffers a m/c has to go through the same care as a woman who has had a baby because what the body goes through is essentially the same. The body is taxed to its max with hormonal surges during pregnancy and loss of blood when the baby comes out, whether alive or not. A woman's body needs to be nourished and healed after these massive changes. In TCM practice, the woman is confined to her home for one month with rest and intensive changes to her diet and activities. She is often fed lots of ginger to expel the "wind", kept warm and banned from bathing or touching water among other things, to prevent her from getting more "wind". Failing to do so often leads to problems later in life such as arthritis and rheumatism and the sudden appearance of conditions that western medicine labels as "unexplained" illness. To illustrate the importance of post-natal care, my TCM doc related to me an incident where a head nurse from a hospital had gone swimming after 3 weeks of giving birth. That night, her body turned blue and then black and she died the next day. She wasn't even supposed to touch water, and she had instead gone to the other extreme! This is unexplained in western medicine, but TCM recognizes this as a fatal result from exposure to cold and water that adversely affected an already much weakened body.

Although I didn't go to the extreme of swimming after the m/c (it was winter anyway) I only rested (bed-ridden rather) for 4-5 days, I had my regular showers and ate burgers and icy cold coke - hardly a nourishing diet. In retrospect, these were the sorts of actions that caused me to regress, as I had completed neglected to take good care of my body. When I resumed treatment with my TCM doctor, he did confirm that I had "confinement wind" - wind that I got during the time when I should have been confined to intensive post-natal care. He said that these problems were very difficult to rid off and very, very bad as they stay with you for the rest of your life, if left untreated, developing into health problems later in life. I can see then why my progress had been extremely slow.

What I found interesting was the point he brought up about how every culture had their own post-natal care regiment, which unfortunately had started to disappear with the appearance of modern western medicine about 100 years ago. In his knowledge, even many of his patients from all parts of the world like Sweden, Germany Netherlands, Africa, had told him that they too had their own traditional post-natal practices.

I think many of these traditional practises are perceived as old wives' tales or myths today. It's important to realise that our forefather's or rather "foremothers" knew what they were doing back in those days as they had little or no medicine to help them, and their best fight against illness was prevention. This lesson has been lost with the popularity of modern western medicine that only worries about illnesses when they appear. With the kind of lifestyle that we have now and our approach to medicine today, it is no wonder why so many people in the world are ill today.

There are many IF sisters like myself who have had miscarriages and even multiple ones, who do not understand why things are not working out for them even with the help of all sorts of expensive treatments. Our continued ignorance and neglect may be contributing to our infertility. Perhaps it's time to go back to our roots and pay attention to the importance of traditional post-natal care. We owe it to ourselves to respect our bodies and give it the best care so that we can be the best possible vessel for our babies to come into this world. And be in our best shape so that we can care for them after they are born.

Soy Sauce In My First Aid Kit!

Recently, I burnt my wrist with steam while opening the lid of a boiling pot. I'm not the type that fusses over small kitchen accidents, like hot splatters of oil on the hands or accidentally touching something out of the oven with my barehands ( Yep-you could say I am accident proned!) I think of myself as a Ruff-N-Tuff kinda gal - I don't usually bother with band-aids or antiseptic cream or even medication most of the time. But this time it hurt like hell. Instead of treating the wound I complained to my husband, who told me to at least rinse it under cold water. OK, I thought I should at least do that! But it continued to sting like crazy!

My skin was already quite red by then and hubby got worried. He said that I should quickly pour thick dark soy sauce over it if I had some. My first thought was "That's absolutely ridiculous!" Filled with complete doubt, I asked him three times "Are you SURE?" It sounded like an insane and nonsensical idea but he assured me that was what his mother taught him! Before I could give it any further thought, he was pouring that thick, gluggy, black condiment all over my hands. Spa treatment this is not! He coated every bit of my hand and not knowing how to deal with it I just stood there with my hand over the kitchen sink, black soy sauce dripping. The stinging continued. No way this is working, I thought. We were planning to go to the gym, and I wasn't sure what to do with the sauce on my hands-whether to bandage it up or rinse it off. After "marinading" my hand for about 25 minutes, I decided to just rinse it off and head to the gym. That was the last I paid any attention to that burn. The redness remained for a few days.

During my last visit to my TCM doctor, I asked him what I should do in the future if I had scalded my hands with hot water or steam. The first thing he said was pour thick soy sauce over it. My husband and I looked at each other and laughed! I couldn't believe that a doctor had seconded this Old Wive's Myth! Then I told him what happened and showed him my burn. It was still a bit red but was starting to turn a light brown. He said that it was healing well, and that if I hadn't done that, the burn would have blistered and the skin would have broken and bled. He did tell me that I should not have rinsed it with water but poured the soy sauce immediately over it instead, and then leave it on the whole day or for at least 30 minutes. And he said to cut fresh aloe vera and apply it over the burn so that it would heal better. Truthfully, I have not bothered with that or any lotions. I still don't know for sure if that soy sauce made any difference, but now my burn has left a very thin layer of brownish skin that has already started to come off, as you can see in the photo. I am sure that if I exfoliated the dead skin away, there would be very little sign of the burn. So who knows, it might be a good idea to have thick dark soy sauce in your First Aid Kit!

A Diversion

I used to be sceptical about Oriental Medicine. Needles, herbal medicine and invisible Qi sounded so hocus pocus and unscientific to me. That was until I was almost blown over by the power of the Qi, demonstrated on me, by a Qi Gong Master. It made me a believer! I had gone to his class about self-healing through Qi Gong because of the many cases of cancers in my immediate and extended families. When you learn that conventional western medicine cannot cure cancer, you look for alternatives.

In our first lesson, The Qi Gong Master made it a point to prove to us sceptics that Qi really existed and what it could do. He called me up together with 2 other people to stand in a single file, one infront of the other facing the wall, with our backs to the rest of the class. He called up a 4th volunteer and gave him a piece of paper which had been "zapped" with the Master's Qi. Not knowing what was happening behind us, we just stood and waited. Suddenly, I almost fell backwards. I felt an overwhelming sensation of something pulling me backwards and then pushing me forward. All of us 3 in line were swaying back and forth in tandem with each other. We could hear the whole class crack up. It was only after the "trick" was over that we found out we had been played! The 4th volunteer had stood behind us, holding the paper out infront of him. And as bizarre as it sounds, when he pulled the paper back, he pulled all three of us backwards too! And when he pushed the paper forward, we all fell forwards. I swear, there wasn't a gust of wind anywhere near us! We had absolutely no control of our bodies and were moving like puppets. That was the power of the Qi, surging through our bodies - invisible, but extremely real and effective. That blew me away and it opened my eyes to a whole new world of medicine, the chinese way.

As I attended more classes and practised the Qi Gong exercises, I learned to harness and feel the Qi, which is a natural energy within us. By then I had been converted to a firm believer in the existence of Qi. I had learned to tap into it and guide the Qi to search wherever my body needed healing. My body would automatically move in response to the Qi, swaying or jerking involuntarily wherever the Qi is working. It's astonishing to experience this energy controlling my body. Qi is something you have to feel to believe because you can't see it. The more I practised the more convinced it was there. When I generate enough Qi in my hands, I would always feel a resistance whenever I try to clasp my hands together. It's like an invisible ball of energy in between my hands. Have you ever tried to force two magnets of the same polarity together and feel it repel each other? It feels EXACTLY like that! What you can't see doesn't mean it's not there! It is just amazing to me that we are actually equipped with all this energy and power within us to heal ourselves. Qi Gong has won me over because of its safe, all natural and non-invasive approach to health and healing. It's just you, your mind, your body and your breathing.

So the BIG question you're probably asking - Why haven't I healed myself from endo? Idiotically - I am just too darn lazy! I wish I had the discipline because it requires daily practice, for an hour each time to be effective. It requires you to clear your mind, and focus on breathing and meditation, which, for a whole hour seems like an eternity of boredom. If I have to suffer for health, running on a treadmill with music blasting into my ears while watching TV is more my kind of thing! The MTV generation like me are used to sensory overload and quick gratification. We prefer to pop a pill and have others do the healing for us, at a predetermined schedule that we can follow mindlessly. I believe Qi Gong works, and I am glad I have the knowledge and skills to fall back on. But I don't have the patience. Yet this experience has turned me around and put me on a different path. Western Medicine offered me no cure and little hope, but with one door shut, another opened for me. I knew there was something worthwhile in Oriental Medicine, which had been around for thousands of years longer than Western Medicine. And so my search for a treatment continues...