Acupuncture

Today, I tried acupuncture for the first time. It was definitely weird. But my friend had heard that there's a high success rate of women with fertility issues having successful pregnancies with accupuncture. Can't hurt, right?

We started off chatting about my health and my pregnancy and miscarriage history. I showed him my charts and he was very impressed that I keep such good records. He noticed that I seem to have longer cycles and asked what they were like before my m/c. Unfortunately, I have no idea. I was only off the pill for two months before I got pregnant. Before that I was on the pill for 15 years. I don't remember what my period was like when I was 15. I just know it was awful. Cramping, sweating, diarrhea, all the good stuff. At the time, I was so grateful that BCPs were able to fix that.

Once we were done talking, he had me take off my shoes and socks and lay on my stomach. My feet were very cold so he put a heat lamp by my feet to balance my temperature (my head was warm but feet cold; he didn't like that). He proceeded to do this horrible squeezing, pinching thing up and down my spine five times. It was REALLY painful in spots, but not so bad in others. None of it felt good though. He claims once my blockages are freed it won't hurt so bad. We'll see about that.

After that, I rolled onto my back and he placed two needles in each wrist/thumb area, one under my belly button, and two above each ankle area. The needles in my wrist were a little uncomfortable going in but they were fine once they were in. I barely even felt the other ones going in. He left me in the room for about 15 minutes, during which I dozed on and off. I don't know if it was because I was laying in a dark room with soothing music, or if it was the acupuncture, but I was way relaxed. My arms and legs felt like dead weight. It took concentration to move them but it wasn't scary like I was paralyzed or anything. Just relaxed. Very relaxed.

He came back in the room and took the needles out (only one of them hurt coming out; the rest I didn't even feel). He had me sit in a chair and used some sort of auricular acupuncture contraption on my ears. I don't know what this thing was called and I can't find a picture of it online. All I know is that he put it on three different parts of my ear and pushed. Hard. It hurt like hell. But he seemed confident in that part of the treatment and said I'd get the most value from it.

All in all, it was an okay experience. I'm definitely going to try it again and see if it gets better. Mark (my acupuncturist) says that a lot of people find it uncomfortable at first, but as their treatment progresses it hurts less. We'll see.

Oh, and also...the green tea is doing great things for my poop. Just thought I'd share that.

Amy

PS - He called them my Filipino Tubes. Or at least that's what it sounded like. Love it.