Fertility Treatment and Emotional Health
In thousands of clinics across the country and around the world, fertility issues are being treated. Couples are seeking help in welcoming a bundle of joy, and finding difficulty in the process. Like many medical problems we treat, this is not only a physical issue, but also an emotional one. Years of trying and crying may be rewarded with the hoped and longed for offspring. But for many undertaking fertility treatment, there is no bundle of joy after all of the effort. Why is this?
Infertility treatment is sought after from both Western and Eastern healthcare practitioners. In some states and cities, the acupuncturist can participate in the IVF transfer both before and after. In other states, acupuncture practitioners do not have staff privileges so those seeking treatment look to individual acupuncture physicians like me.
When there are unexplained reasons the couple is not conceiving, acupuncture can be the most effective path of treatment. Even with IUI or IVF treatments, with a success rate of 13-45 % (depending on the age of the mother), motherhood is not guaranteed.
Our bodies always know what is best for us and in the case of an unsuccessful pregnancy, your body will eliminate the pregnancy before serious health problems to the mother and/or child can occur. For most women this is heartbreaking, and the disappointment is life changing for all involved, especially with repeated miscarriages. Women who are perfectly healthy and viable, whose partners are fertile start to question why the lack of success is occurring, and they begin to find other options.
At this point, many couples seek acupuncture as the rate of fertility with IVF is 30-60% when paired with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)/acupuncture fertility protocols. Because we see and successfully treat many “invisible” issues that do not show up on lab results for Western medicine, the expectations for success are high. Often, acupuncture brings miraculous results because we see beyond what conventional tests conclude. You cannot quantify or test “stuck qi.” The protocols we use to test and treat this particular symptom have been studied over and over, and yet the answer to why acupuncture works is still a mystery.
So, why are some infertility cases so difficult to treat? Does it stem from long term emotional aspects of the mother that are embedded so deeply in the psyche they become physical problems? The short answer is yes. Acupuncture and herbal medicine are adept at clearing the body of long-term emotional stagnation that is causing disfunction. I often ask my patients about their childhood—which is not always easy for them to share due to the depths of pain and sometimes embarrassment around events from their youth. Often this sharing is heartbreaking, as patients feel they have “dealt with” and moved on from these events. I have found myself more than once crying alongside patients as we share and recognize that none of us has escaped or are responsible for our past. Sometimes I feel a veil lift, and I see a weight that has been carried around for so many years, get dropped. Other patients will shut down, hiding deeper inside themselves the memories they are not ready to address or release. This is the invisible “stuck qi” that acupuncture addresses and removes. In Chinese medicine we know that emotional stagnation creates blocks and compromises movement. When you understand, as does TCM, that everything in nature and in us is about flow, this makes sense. The sperm reaching the egg is pure movement, as is the release of the egg. Holding on, holding tight is the opposite of flowing—it is a blocking of movement.
When the space that should be occupied by a growing fetus has figuratively been filled with fear and lack, the stronger of the two will win out and remain. The body only has so many resources for all of the activities that it needs to carry out in a day/year/lifetime. If your body is overly dedicated to feeding its emotional needs, do you really have the blood and qi to spare to grow and nourish a human life? Again, the simple answer—no. Body, mind and spirit are what make us who we are, strong and able to reproduce, or living in a weakened state, unable to fulfill all of our bodies needs. Our bodies are tangible and knowable to us, but mind and spirit comprise as much a part of who we are. Food and water are necessary for life and as we imbibe them, we are quite aware of their mass, but air is the most important of all and we can’t see, feel or grasp that. This is the spirit, the invisible, the intangible that is not truly knowable, but it is solid enough to block the flow of our life. If you can give yourself grace, time and the strength to face the past then you have a shot at creating the future.