When treating fertility issues, the long-term goal is a healthy baby. The path to that goal can be challenging, sometimes it takes time….. A great help to give confidence that you are on the right treatment path, is the BBT chart. Monitoring BBT can help women have a sense of accomplishment and hope as they begin their transformation to motherhood.
temperature charting
BBT charting involves taking your daily waking temperature and recording it onto a graph. Did you know that a woman’s temperature changes throughout her cycle and that the shape of the graph should have certain features and have a distinct shape when all is healthy?
text book ‘normal’ charts
They show clinical pictures that support pregnancy. They are slightly different, like you might expect because after all, we are all different. We differ genetically and our life styles vary.
Now take a look at these charts. They are taken from my client records and show their health position when they first came to ETCM.
The baseline graph that a new client presents with helps us here at ETCM to give a diagnosis based on Traditional Chinese medical theory from which we advise on treatment.
This is one of our experiences. The graph following the story shows the client’s chart during the cycle where the couple became pregnant.
ETCM Success story
This client had a previous history of difficulty getting pregnant and miscarriage.
A brief history of events before coming to our fertility clinic
. The 1st pregnancy resulted in a baby. It took 14 months to get pregnant. The pregnancy included a threatened miscarriage @ 9 weeks;
. 2nd pregnancy – it took 5 months to get pregnant. She had a miscarriage at 6 weeks;
. 3rd pregnancy – this time it took 8 months to get pregnant. She had a miscarriage at 6 weeks ;
. 4th pregnancy – she became pregnant straight after previous miscarriage. Sadly she miscarried at 6 weeks ;
The client began a course of treatment at the end of July 2009. We prescribed Chinese Herbal medicine and weekly sessions of acupuncture
great news
She became pregnant during her 3rd complete treatment cycle. Because of her previous history and because she had some morning sickness, we advised weekly sessions of acupuncture until week 10 which was very effective. Our client had no problems, her first pregnancy free of miscarriage symptoms and she conceived quicker than previous times. On Christmas Eve 2009, we received a text message with the wonderful news of a normal 12 week scan. Her son was born at the end of June 2010.
Modern life encourages us to be busy, productive and successful and although these get up and go ideals should yield positive results they lose their power if a balance between ACTIVITY and REST is not respected.
In the context of fertilty, tension that comes from being busy all the time is a very common finding in some women who are having problems conceiving. There are two major ways this can affect normal physiological function.
1. The first is that the nervous system is over stimulated affecting hormone release in the first stage of the woman’s menstrual cycle. This happens because the pituitary gland in the brain is responsible for the release of 2 major hormones that ripen the follicles in the ovary.
2. Another reason is that tension can lead to muscle spasm. The the smooth muscle in the fallopean tube can spasm leading to obstructed movement of the egg through the fallopean tube.
So how can we ensure good QUALITY rest?
A good place to start is to let go of the muscle tension we hold without realising. Muscle tension robs us of the free flow of energy that we could be enjoying and makes it harder to ‘let go’ and RELAX.
Here’s a Yoga exercise that we teach here at ETCM that is simple to do. When done effectively this sequence is said to be equivalent of several hours of sleep. It involves 2 stages.
1. Relaxation of the physical body
2. Relaxation of the mind
Please try it for 15 minutes and see how you feel afterwards.
Ideally the breath should flow like the ebb and flow of a calm sea. In this way our body and mind receives a constant, regular supply of energy and blood. Interuptions to the flow cause distress. You only have to think of the effect if the interuption was exaggerated to get an idea. If the disturbance to the breath is very minor yet frequent we really may not notice we are doing it yet we don’t feel great and not feeling great can lead to irregular breathing.
Everyone experiences this. When we are tense we can hold our breath, when we are talking a lot we might breath in more than breathing out. What ever job we have may lead to these patterns.
Some very simple breathing exercise can help to reset our breathing mechanism.
Try this simple exercise for yourself :
Single Nostril Breathing
- Sit in a comfortable position either rock pose (on knees) or in easy pose (cross legged);
- Focus on a straight spine emerging from the contact of your sitting bones with the earth;
- Keep the shoulders relaxed, left hand rests on the left thigh;
- Keep the elbow of the right arm close to the body as you bend at the elbow and place the side of the thumb against the right nostril and press gently to block the airflow through the right nostril. All the time keep the neck in line with the spine, shoulders relaxed;
- If you feel comfortable do this exercise with the eyes closed (apart from maybe checking how much time is remaining);
- Breathe through the left nostril. Long, slow, deep breaths filling the whole of the lungs. Feel like a balloon that is slowly inflating and feel the movement of the ribs at the front, sides and back of your body that allows the full expansion of the lungs;
- At the height of the expansion start to exhale, again very slowly through the left nostril. Feel the ribs moving back and at the end of the exhalation focus on the abdomen. Squeeze the abdominal muscles to release the last bit of air from the lungs;
- Keep this cycle going for 5 minutes;
- Swap sides. Blocking the left nostril with the side of the left thumb. Remember to keep good posture. Breathe deeply and completely again for 5 minutes through the right nostril;
- Afterwards lower the right arm down so the hand rests on the right thigh. Keep the eyes closed and breathe through both nostrils for about 1 minute. Focus on how you feel.
Posted in Fertility, Yoga
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