Throughout my 90 Day Infertility Challenge I have planned to do yoga at least 3 times a week. I have come across a lot of information showing that yoga can help reduce stress and help increase the chances for pregnancy. I found a great article online, Yoga for Infertility: When Conventional Methods Fail that included some research studies on yoga, meditation, group discussion, and altered diets. One study on relaxation and yoga had remarkable results: 55 percent of the women in the group using yoga and other techniques got pregnant within a year, in contrast with 20 percent of the women in the control group who conceived in that same time period. Regardless of whether or not the yoga helps me conceive, I love the way that it makes me feel, how it improves my flexibility, and makes me take time to meditate and be one with myself.
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I love having a healthy gluten free, dairy free lunch in freezer bags so I can pull it out of the freezer and thaw it in a bowl of hot water in a pinch. I just tried this soup for the first time today and it was so delicious. I topped it with a half of an avocado and a couple of crushed tortilla chips for some crunch. To make the soup just add the ingredients below to a crock pot and set to High for 3 to 4 hours. I was able to get this all put together in ten minutes this morning and when I got home at 1:30 lunch was waiting for me. This recipe is modified from my favorite gluten free website Once a Month Meals, Chicken Taco Soup. I have added it to my recipes page.
So half of my new 100% Pure cosmetics came in the mail today. I was so excited to try them out. I've never switched cosmetic brands. I have been a loyal Clinique customer until I found the website Good Guides and I looked into my Clinique products and found out that most of them were scored very low because of the many chemicals or products that may cause health concerns. For a new daily moisturizer, I bought 100% Pure Organic Acai Berry Antioxidant Face Cream. You can use morning and night after cleansing. It's for normal to dry skin. I like the consistency and the smell and my face feels moisturized, although I'm still a little tight and dry around the chin. It's fragrance free and was ranked a 10 out of 10 by Good Guides from a health perspective containing no ingredients that would cause health concerns. I will continue to buy and use this product going forward. I replaced my Clinique face scrub with 100% Pure Cherry Honey Facial Scrub. This is a very mild scrub, I'm used to something very abrasive so this will take some getting used to. The jajoba beads are mixed right into honey making it very sticky and a bit messy. I have this in my shower and don't think I will ever use it outside of the shower since it can be a bit difficult to rinse the honey off. I don't dislike this product given that it has the highest health rating by Good Guides and I feel safe using it, but it's not the same as my old facial scrub. It does still do a great job exfoliating the little bumps on my forehead and removing dead skin. I may look for a different scrub when I run out, but if I can't find another rated a 10, I will stick to this. Today my husband and I went to my monthly RESOLVE Support Group. RESOLVE, The National Infertility Association, is a non-profit, charitable organization, working to improve the lives of women and men living with infertility. 1 in 8 U.S. couples of childbearing age have trouble conceiving or sustaining a pregnancy. RESOLVE provides free support programs in communities nationwide, leads efforts to increase public education, reduces the stigma around infertility, and advocates to protect legal access to all family building options. Today's group was a special meeting, as we don't usually include spouses. The group meets in Media, PA once a month and is led by a therapist who specializes in infertility and adoption. I am the only member of the group at the current time that is dealing with secondary infertility. By including our spouses this month, the hope was to allow our husbands to finds ways to help support us (the wives) throughout our infertility journey. I really hoped that my husband would gain a lot by attending, I thought he would hear how other men help their wives deal with the depression that comes and goes throughout this journey. He didn't though. He seemed to go in with the mindset that our lives are fine because we have a daughter and so he didn't let some of the helpful information in. So while my husband didn't get anything out of this particular meeting, I love attending the monthly meeting and find them to be very supportive. While you would think I wouldn't get much out of the group since I am the only one with secondary infertility, I actually find it extremely helpful. It's nice to be able to share my experiences with women who are familiar with what I am talking about. They get it when I say I saw an acquaintance sporting a tight shirt to show off her newly pregnant belly and it really got to me. I think that I am able to provide them with support as well because I have gone through so many treatments and know the infertility world inside and out at this point. If you are suffering with infertility, don't think you are alone. If you haven't found a support group, just take a minute to look online here and see if there is one in your area. I can't tell you how much I have gotten out of it, I really truly love the women who I have come to know and rely on them a lot throughout the month when I need to vent. So today was hard...we woke up with 4 inches of snow on the ground and it continued to snow until 6pm. I think we walked away with 10 inches. That meant I wasn't able to leave the house to go to the grocery store and buy all of the stuff I needed for my recipes. Luckily I had some Paleo Kale Turkey Burgers from my favorite gluten free website Once a Month Meals left over so I had that for lunch and I cut up a potato and cooked it in some olive oil with onion and garlic and a ton of kale. I posted the Paleo Kale Turkey Burgers under my recipe tab. I still had enough fruit for my afternoon smoothy. Today is Thursday, which is normally date night for us, so we would have gone to Honey Grow a local salad shop and then done something fun after like yoga or rock climbing. Since we were snowed in I scrounged for dinner, we had gluten free pancakes, organic eggs, homemade hash browns with onions and red peppers, and organic bacon. So my diet didn't have as many veggies as I would have liked but I'm not going to worry about it. I also forgot to make the pancakes with coconut milk instead of real milk so I had a bit of dairy tonight as well. Can't wait for spring, just two more weeks. So last night I ran across the most amazing website called Good Guides while I was researching the affects our makeup, skin care, and other hygiene products can have on fertility. While there are no direct links to infertility or at least no studies linking them, there are several chemicals in our cosmetics and skin care that have links to cancer. Many include fragrance, coal tar, formaldehyde, mineral oil, parabens, talc, titanium, the list goes on and on and each has their own potential health affect. The great thing about the Good Guides website is that you can enter your product in their search bar and if they have it in their system it will show you what grade they gave it from a health, green, and ethical standpoint. I had no idea that the lotion I used on my face everyday was so bad for me. It contains 6 ingredients that can lead to health concerns the worst Propyl Paraben can lead to breast cancer.
After doing all of my research I decided to take my fertility journey one step farther and replace my makeup, soap, shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, and deodorant for now. I know this is not what has been causing my infertility but I want to make changes in my life for the better and this is one thing I can do for long term health. I don't suggest that you dump all of your cosmetics and spend a fortune replacing them, but maybe think about slowly replacing your empty containers with brands that are fertile friendly. When I need laundry detergent, dish soap, and household cleaning products in the future I will definitely do a little research to see if I can find some that are effective yet chemical free. I will add a list a little later with all of the products I bought and where I got them. And over the coming weeks, I can review them for you too! How fun:) So today I went in for my first acupuncture treatment in quite some time. For IVF#1 I did acupuncture the month I was going through the IVF treatment and had acupuncture done after the transfer, the cycle failed. I opted not to do acupuncture for IVF#2, the cycle ended in ectopic. For IVF#3 I did acupuncture once a week for three months prior to that cycle plus I had a treatment done immediately following the transfer, cycle failed but I got 5 blastocysts, I had never had any blastocysts. IVF#4 I opted not to do acupuncture again.
Since I don't want any regrets with our last round of IVF, I am including acupuncture once a week throughout my 90 day challenge and will do a treatment following my embryo transfer. My acupuncturist from Healing Arts Center of Philadelphia in Bryn Mawr suggested that we also add in Chinese Herbal Medicine. She stated that a new study shows that weekly acupuncture treatments for several months prior to IVF, plus a fertility diet, and Chinese Herbs showed an increase in birth rates as compared to the group who just did acupuncture. I will ask her if she can send me the name of the study. Anyway I ordered the herbs today. The herb mixture is called Wen Jing Tang and I am to take 1.5gm 2 times per day for 33 days stopping during menses. The whole premise behind the 90 Day Infertility Challenge, besides walking away from my last IVF cycle the June with no regrets, is that our eggs actually come out of dormancy 3 months before we use them. I found the best website Natural Infertility Health with an article and diagram to explain this. During this 90 day period before an egg is ovulated, the eggs are changing and preparing for ovulation. During the tonic growth phase and protein syntheses between 90 and 20 days prior to ovulation (see the yellow section of the image below) the eggs are able to be affected, by both healthy or unhealthy influences. The eggs can be affected by blood flow, proper oxygenation, hormonal balance, nutritional intake, and stress. The article goes on to explain how we can address each of these areas. Like I have said in the in other areas of this blog when I did a similar 90 day cleanse during IVF#3 I had by far the best results of my four rounds of IVF. Image from www.Natural-Fertility-Info.com
I have gone through 4 rounds of IVF, and for IVF#3 I took supplements for three months prior to retrieval. I not only stimmed for 3 fewer days than my other cycles, I was on lower doses of the stimulating drugs, and I had the most amount of embryos make it to blastocyst. See My Journey tab for my full infertility timeline.
So taking three months before my final round of IVF to get the benefits of the supplements again is a no-brainer. I have done a lot of research online to find supplements that have gone through studies either on mice or women to help egg quality during IVF. Each supplement below has a link to it's study or a website explaining it's benefit if no study exists. See my Pinterest page for the actual brands that I bought. I tried to research and purchase reputable brands and the best formulas to take for instance with CoQ10, ubiquinol is more easily absorbed by the body compared to ubiquinone.
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April 2015
Author I'm a 33 year old Mom to one and Step Mom to another from Philadelphia, going through my 3rd year of secondary infertility. I am spending 90 days preparing for my last round of IVF, through diet, supplements, mental health, acupuncture, and exercise hoping this will make the difference. Categories
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