FERTILITY & REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH

One may think that the circumstances around one’s birth might play some role in the subsequent events of one’s life.  For me, this was certainly the case, though I would not be made aware of this until I was well along my journey of self-discovery.  Growing up, I was surrounded by an extended family of well-respected western medical doctors and nurses.  So when I announced that I wanted to become a Doctor of Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine, my family questioned why I would choose this ancient system of medicine over the Western medical system which they considered to be more modern and advanced. One advocate I found on this journey, however, was my Mom.  She not only supported me financially to pursue my training in Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, but also revealed to me that I would literally not be here if it were not for this medicine.  What?  Huh?!

That moment of revelation came literally right before my Master’s Degree graduation from Acupuncture College, where I was selected to be the speaker of my class.  On the morning of the big day, my Mom told me how proud she was of my accomplishment and how proud my Dad would have been if he were still alive.  Then she said that it was meant to be that I would choose to become a Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine.  As I searched her eyes for answers, she told me my birth story, something I had never been told before.  

My Mom began by asking me if I had ever wondered why there was a five-year gap between my older sister and me.  I replied that I had not.  She then told me that after my older sister was born, she and my Dad wanted to wait before having a second child, and her doctor prescribed her the early form of oral contraceptives from the sixties, which later proved to be highly disruptive hormonally.  When my parents were ready to have a second child, my Mom stopped taking the birth control pills and waited for her menstruation to resume.  She waited close to two years without success.  During this time she consulted with multiple western doctors, all of whom told her that since she was nearly forty years old and her menstruation had stopped that it meant she would not be able to conceive again.  The doctors told her she should just feel comforted by the fact that she already had one child.  Instead, my Mom felt heart-broken since she and my Dad had always dreamed of having a big family together.  

Fortunately, my Mom confided in a friend, who referred her to see a Doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine who was renowned for his success with fertility patients.  Upon her first visit with this doctor, he took my Mom’s pulse and examined her tongue and informed her that she would have more children. He then treated her with Acupuncture and prescribed her Chinese herbal medicine, and after just a few weeks, my Mom’s menstruation returned and I was conceived.  Wasting no additional time, their third child, my brother, was born just a year after that.  “So you see,” my Mom said, “you were meant to become a Doctor of Chinese Medicine!”  “Wow!  That is such an amazing story!” I thought to myself, “If only I had time to work that into my speech…”

Knowing my birth story propelled me to dive headfirst into the rich tradition of Chinese Medicine in the treatment of fertility and reproductive health for both women and men.  In my over two decades of clinical practice, I have helped countless couples conceive healthy babies naturally or by increasing their success rates with reproductive technologies such as IVF and IUI.  Many of these babies have become my dear pediatric and young patients, who are paving the way for a new generation of people who turn to nature first and drugs last (or never) for their health and wellness.