Back From Paradise!

What a wonderful gift my soul received! Our vacation at the beach was just what my soul and body needed! It had been so long since I had been excited and passionate about something other than TTC! I had such a great time reconnecting with DH and enjoying nature's gifts - I was even eager to wake up early so that I could go out and have as many hours as I could in the sun! For a nocturnal creature like myself that hardly sees daylight and prefers the quiet hours of the night, that says A LOT!

I can't tell you how great it was not having to think and plan about making babies. No precision timing, no thinking about BBTs the minute you wake up, no obsessing about getting the damn positive lines on the pee sticks, no boiling herbal medicines, no charting anything on Fertility Friend, no foods to avoid. Absolutely no pressures or thoughts about TTC at all! I could have even thrown away my watch and just be in the moment with hubby, enjoying what we had with no thoughts about yesterday or tomorrow. 


I had such a wonderful time that I have already started planning my next beach vacation! I know - I just got back! We are planning to go away in early January 2010 right after New Years. That leaves us just shy of 2 weeks to decide and plan where to go. I've practically checked out every island/beach destination around the world that has good weather for this period. Googling and researching all this with great enthusiasm has certainly taken my mind off TTC!


It was a real drag going back to see my TCM doc again on Monday though. For the first time in the past year, I really didn't want to be there. After reading my pulse, he had both good and bad news for me: 


The Good News - I am not heaty nor cold anymore. My body has finally balanced itself out! I swear it must have been all that sun-My body is normally ice cold and despite eating ice-cream, and having icy cold water and soda throughout my vacation, I had actually warmed up! Damn! A beach vacation is good for me! 


The Bad News - My liver hormones are stressed.


What?


Stressed? But I feel great and happy and light! I had destressed completely during my fun in the sun! ??!! I really have no idea why this is happening! I guess my body is still figuring what to do about my MIA egg! Ever since eggy decided not to show up, my whole cycle has been really weird. (TMI Warning): I'm now somewhere on CD37 or thereabouts and I have been spotting dark blood with some small tiny clots the past 7 days. I have no idea if this is AF or not! Understandably, my BBT never saw the biphasic pattern that follows ovulation, and so there isn't a drop back down to note that AF is here. Obviously the lining is trying to shed and I want it to shed so that I can start off with some fresh lining the next cycle. There is however blood stasis in my body and I asked my TCM doc if could give me something to help my blood flow. Initially he didn't want to mess with my hormones, but in the end he decided he would change my herbal medicine to help it along. I've had one dose so far, and, nothing... No change. My uterus is just one stubborn B*tch! But at least I am in no pain whatsoever! 


I can't believe Christmas is just 10 days away! I haven't put up a single Christmas ornament up, and I haven't even begun to plan my Christmas dinner menu which I am hosting for both my family and my in-laws! My house is a mess and I haven't finished my christmas shopping either. But I am still feeling high from my vacation. I feel GOOD! I am still reminiscing about my holiday in the sun...

We stayed in these rooms. We were surrounded by beautiful landscaping and two pools. The first photo above at the start of the post was the view from one of the pools we were chilling in:

We were visited by monkeys from the adjacent forest reserve. Here they are peeking through my hotel room window. (Our rooms had the view of the sea) These monkeys are known to open unlocked doors and steal things from your room or balcony! We constantly had to keep our eyes on our belongings - even at the beach! 

The resort had a very wide private beach that sloped very gently into the sea:

Hornbills were also regular visitors at our resort. They come to feed on tropical fruit left out by the hotel staff during sunset. 

There's a resident cat who happens to love lounging on one particular deck chair next to the swimming pool. He was there almost everyday - as soon as guests vacated that chair! 

I expected rain, but the weather had been wonderfully sunny. And we had gorgeous sunsets that brought a beautiful end to our day of fun in the sun!

(Photo credits go to hubs)

I can't wait to get away again and lose myself in some island paradise with hubs...

I can't wait!

I can't wait!

I can't wait!

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.