my fertility plan

This is not how either my husband or I really wanted to spend our Monday night – settling into an oversized movie chair for Ron Howard’s new movie, Frost/Nixon, sounded way better. But we both know the benefits of making and then reviewing a my fertility plan.

“We need to talk tonight.”

“About what?”

“Reviewing our fertility plan.”

Silence. A sigh. “Yes, let’s do that.”

My First Fertility Plan

Last September my husband and I created our initial fertility plan whilst on the top of a mountain.

So we settled into our usual planning area, a couple of cushions on the living room floor, and looked at the plan we drew up last year sometime after my miscarriage.

The old fertility planning looked like this:

1. 1. Repeat liver cleanse and gallbladder flush
   2. Research and implement the best fertility diet
   3. Begin daily weight lifting
   4. Go back for fertility mud baths
   5. Go to Sharkey’s Healing Center for herbal treatment
   6. Head to the infertility clinic

I did steps one through four. So why not move on to step five? Because three things happened:

• I learned that it usually takes between three to eight months for natural fertility treatments to heal the reproductive system
• My body has been transformed beyond my expectations by my fertility diet: my acne disappeared, my digestive system became regular and my energy returned.
• My cycles went from 44 to 39, then to 36 days.

It seems like I am on to something – something that is making me healthier and more fertile!

When Should We Revive My Fertility Plan?

Revising my fertility plan to give the fertility diet the time it needs to heal my body seems like the smartest thing we can do. But how long should we allow it to run before doing a revision? Should we wait the full eight months?

Surprisingly, this was relatively easy to decide.

We talked about it for all of about ten minutes and decided that I’ll do the fertility diet for three more months by itself. Following that I will add three complementary treatments that I did before I had my positive pregnancy test last year:

• Castor oil packs
• Mayan abdominal massage
• Fertility mud baths.

We’ll give the fertility diet and these complementary treatments the full eight months to heal my body – before moving on to herbs and then conventional medicine.

Eight months. Yes, this sounds very long to me!

Fertility Declines After 32

I’m almost 32 years old – just three years away from the age many studies suggest fertility begins declining for most women, so it’s hard to give these treatments eight full months. However, nothing I’ve tried has had such a positive effect on addressing the source of my problems and healing my body, than the fertility diet.

I’ve been following the ideal fertility diet for a couple months now, but we’re going to start counting the eight month period from the beginning of January. The reason for this is that I fell off the fertility diet wagon over the New Years period. I suffered the consequences and had to start over in bringing my body back into balance.

It was my husband’s idea to follow the fertility diet for three months before adding the complementary treatments. His idea has merit for these reasons:

• Three months is generally the time it takes for the body to recover: It’s the time, for example, that conventional medicine often stipulates is needed to fully recover from surgery and it’s the time natural fertility experts often recommend as a minimum for treatment to take effect. So, since the fertility diet is healing my body, we’re giving it three full three months to do so, solo, in the hopes that it fixes a few of my other lingering problems: breakthrough bleeding, my short luteal phase and my still too long cycles.
• Also, we’re moving and three months is about the time we need to settle into our new place. Seemingly unrelated to fertility, moving and implementing other fertility treatments would be counterproductive since squeezing them into our schedule is likely to add a good deal of stress.

My Fertility Plan Now Updated

So, the new fertility planning looks like this:

1. 1. Continue following fertility diet
   2. In about three months go for 3 weeks of Mayan abdominal massages
   3. After the massages begin 2 weeks of fertility mud baths
   4. After the baths begin castor oil packs for two cycles
   5. In August 2009 go to Sharkey’s Healing Center for herbal treatment
   6. After three months of herbal treatment head to the infertility clinic

This looks like a plan. A done deal. But not so fast. Our fertility planning didn’t go quite that smoothly. At step six we hit a kink – a very big kink.

We agree on the plan and all its details up until “head to the infertility clinic”. Right now we have no solution for, or have the faintest clue how we can solve our very big difference of opinion: we are both open to the infertility clinic up until the point the doctor recommends IVF.

I would consider trying IVF if the natural fertility treatments do not work on their own. My husband is not open to trying IVF – under any circumstances.

Right now we’ve agreed to disagree. We see no solution.

We’ve decided to see how the new plan goes before discussing IVF options. With our initial fertility plan we saw how quickly things can change. I think it’s important that we both know how the other feels and respect each other’s feelings and opinions. We can’t do any more than that right now.

I’m hopeful that we will never have to go down the IVF option.

So, for now, I’m going continue following my fertility diet – one day at a time.