We are so excited to share our story of how we got pregnant naturally after a negative IVF and miscarriage!
My entire life, I have always known that I wanted to have a family of my own. I have always loved being around children. When I got married, I was still really young. Even though I knew I wanted to have children, we didn’t start trying to conceive for a few years since I wanted to “be ready” in all other aspects to start a family. Had I known all the struggles that we would go eventually through, we would have started trying to conceive as soon as we got married!
In October 2006, we finally decided to start trying to have a baby. The very first month that I got my period after trying to conceive, I was disappointed and told my husband that I had a feeling that having a baby wouldn’t be so easy for us, and boy was I right! We continued trying, still not stressed out or anything, until a little over a year, we decided to go to our doctor to see if there was something wrong. I had some tests done and so did my husband. There was nothing wrong with me as far as those tests were concerned. Unfortunately, we did find out that my husband’s sperm was low in morphology and count. We were sad to find this out but continued to try to conceive naturally for a while longer until we decided to pursue IVF.
A few days after our first meeting with our doctor at the fertility clinic around November 2008, we found out that a miracle happened – we had gotten pregnant naturally! We were so happy for such a blessing and so relieved to not have to go through IVF to conceive! Sadly our happiness was very short-lived; after 11 weeks of pregnancy, I had a miscarriage. Every miscarriage is a horrible thing to go through but I believe it hurt me even more since I knew how hard it was for us to conceive in the first place and it wouldn’t be easy to get pregnant again.
Me and my husband tried to conceive naturally for the next few months but decided to give IVF a try by the end of 2009. Looking back at the whole IVF process, it was a very mentally draining and stressful time. I was trying to remain positive during the whole process but I couldn’t help knowing right after the embryo transfer that it hadn’t worked; it was almost as if something was telling me not to get my hopes up and, sadly again, I was right. I was not pregnant and had to spend Christmas with this terrible news. After having to tell our friends and family around us that we had tried IVF and it had not worked, the stress level that I went through was really a challenge since trying to conceive is really all I thought about.
My husband and I decided to go on vacation in February 2010. When we returned, he found out about this website, www.ivf.ca; we both started going through this website on a regular basis. He told me about acupuncture, more specifically about Acubalance, how many people have tried IVF combined with acupuncture, and how they were successful, I have to admit I was reluctant to try it but I figured it couldn’t hurt. We wanted to try IVF again in the summer of 2010 so we made an appointment to start acupuncture before trying IVF.
We had our first meeting with Dr Ryan Funk sometime in March or April 2010. He made me feel at ease and he gained my trust right away. During every session, we would have a talk about what was going on with my life, especially my nutrition and exercise routine. I can only say that having him listen to me helped me tremendously. I was in need of someone to just listen to me; to listen to how I was feeling and give me feedback on what we were going to do to deal with whatever was going on instead of just going through medical procedures as if I was just another number on the list of patients.
The main issues we focused on were the irregularity of my periods and stress. He recommended both of us to try acupuncture but it was me who started doing it. Ryan was amazing, and made me really relaxed during every session. Friends around me were starting to notice and tell me that I seemed less stressed out and the reality was that it was really helping with my stress and anxiety and my periods were starting to get more regular.
One of the things that Ryan asked me to start doing was to keep a “Basal Body Temperature Chart.” I was on my second or third chart when I told him that my body temperature had not come down yet (as it had in previous periods), and told him that I didn’t really have any other pregnancy symptoms other than slight breast tenderness. I still remember him giving me a little smirk and saying that everything was looking good. On June 17, 2010, I found out I was pregnant again naturally!!! My husband and I were absolutely happy and in shock! We decided not to tell anyone this early this time around. Of course, I couldn’t wait to tell Ryan during our next session, so Ryan was really the first person to know that we were pregnant and couldn’t have made a better choice. 🙂
During my early pregnancy, I was really afraid of having a miscarriage given my past experience, but Ryan was there every step of the way to reassure me that everything was going well, I am now extremely happy to say that I am 30 weeks pregnant! and can’t wait to meet our little girl in February 2011. I would say to everyone having difficulty trying to conceive to give acupuncture a try. I know that it has helped many women and I am 100% certain that it helped me conceive.
Ryan, thank you for everything! I will be forever grateful and indebted to you.