My Fertility Journey
Nancy Naylor
January 2005
Anyone who has been through infertility knows that it is a rough journey. There are lots of decisions to make, lots of bad advice coming from friends, family and medical doctors, and lots of heartache. Some get to be lucky enough to finally experience the miracle that they have been waiting for. In our case it had been 5 years, which included numerous tests and 4 failed IUI’s. I was just one year from reaching 35 years, the dreaded age when fertility starts to drop precipitously. We decided to not pursue IVF due to the high cost and the nasty side effects. We took some unique approaches which in the end worked for us, and we wanted to share the information in the hopes that it will help others reach their goal.
I don’t know if the answers to my fertility problems were on the internet or not, but for the number of hours that I spent online, I sure was behaving as if they were. I was convinced of one thing: The reason for our “unexplained” infertility was unlikely to be discovered by the medical system. We’d been through the basics, my tubes were clear, and my hormone levels were normal. I was ovulating regularly and my luteal phase was good. His sperm count and morphology were better than average. We’d done the post-coital test with very encouraging results. “Too many to count,” the doctor told us. But month after month, the pregnancy test turned out negative. We wanted to find out what the heck was holding us up!
I was reluctant to take more drugs, perform more tests or experiment with new medical procedures. My feeling was that if everything was working as it should, why do they need treatment? The RE had prescribed drugs to make me ovulate although we had established that I was ovulating. That didn’t work and the side effects made life absolutely miserable (insomnia, rashes). I wasn’t going to try that again.
My white blood count was consistently low. The doctors didn’t think it was a big deal. Some of them had it retested at my insistence and their conclusion tended to be “sometimes that’s just the way you are. If you don’t have any symptoms, then it must be normal for you.” I wondered why normal ranges were created if falling outside of them didn’t count. Another doctor told me that low white blood counts were common in slender, Caucasian females. I work in a blood analysis clinic, and I have reviewed thousands of blood reports. While I was flattered to be called “slender”, I have never seen the correlation between slender Caucasians and low white blood count. Once I started paying attention to this, I encountered 3 cases where the patient had a clinically low white blood count as well as infertility and/or the use of fertility drugs. But three cases out of thousands were insufficient to make a scientific conclusion. I didn’t want to be a researcher that came to a conclusion and then found the evidence that supported it. Besides, no one was going to believe me. I didn’t (and still don’t) have any letters of significance after my name. All I could do was search for “white blood count” and “infertility” to see if there was something to support it. I found articles that said high white blood counts could be a problem for fertility, but nothing about low blood counts. I decided to act on my hunch anyway and do something about the low white blood count. It wasn’t going to hurt.
I sat down with the doctor I work for, and we made a plan. I was already on a nutritional program, which was helping everything except my white blood count. Now we started on some things to pinpoint the white blood count and treat it more aggressively. I started taking the natural supplements that my boss normally recommends only for those with serious immune deficiencies and cancer. I started to feel better. I had a little more energy and felt like I could think a little clearer. I didn’t know if my chances of getting pregnant were any better, but at the very least, I was healthier and there were none of the nasty side effects that I had with fertility drugs. But I still wasn’t pregnant.
So my online searches continued. I discovered many natural forms of fertility treatment. Although I didn’t know if any of them would solve my problems, I knew they would not have any nasty side effects. Once again, I couldn’t see how they would hurt. If they didn’t work, I will only be out a few hundred dollars, not the tens of thousands of dollars and the lifelong side effects that came with IVF.
I followed many of these – Homeopathy, Feng Shui for fertility, flower remedies, meditation, herbs, acupuncture, astrology, basal body temperature, LH strip tests, saliva hormone tests, Qigong, yoga, the infertility diet and hypnotherapy. I couldn’t say for certain that any of them helped much, but none of them hurt much either. Like my unexplained infertility, I suspected that the resolution may be unexplained too. Maybe just doing a lot of little things would make the difference.
It was while I was doing some research on Body-Mind therapies for a Resolve (infertility support) group that I came across a website about infertility and massage therapy. I was amazed at what I saw. I expected that relieving tension and promoting relaxation may improve fertility, but the evidence was much more impressive than that. They claimed to have a 60% clinical success rate without surgery or drugs. Their website stated that “Adhesions and poor reproductive mechanics are the cause nearly half of all female infertility. This alternative infertility therapy uses non-surgical soft tissue physical and massage therapy to focus treatment on decreasing adhesions and increasing function of the organs, rather than bypassing them.” This made a lot of sense to me. I had a few things that potentially put me in that category: namely my tipped pelvis and retroverted uterus. I had asked doctors and lab techs if this could affect my fertility. They basically said it could have some effect but lots of women with those conditions still get pregnant so they didn’t really think so. I never got any suggestions as to what I could do about it.
I was also impressed by their published studies in medical journals. They had documented evidence for their claims. I decided to ask my doctors about it. My RE said that I’d have to take that with a grain of salt. My OBGYN shrugged it off as nonsense. As much as I liked these people, the bottom line was that they didn’t have any idea as to why I wasn’t getting pregnant and nothing they had tried had worked, so I figured I have to start thinking outside the box and act on my own. However, this infertility massage therapy involved significant travel, time off work and considerable expense. In fact, the entire sum had to be paid up front, which made me a little uneasy.
While reading their article in medscape.com the footnotes referenced a physical therapy technique that was done in the Czech Republic. It was called “the Mojzisovŕ method.” The method seemed to combine hands on therapy with a home exercise program. Like the infertility massage therapy, it worked with the principle that small restrictions in the pelvis and the low back area could affect the workings of the reproductive system.
I instantly googled “Mojzisova method.” I found a little more information, but not a whole lot. I found out why it was called the Mojzisova method. – basically it was created by a Czech physiotherapist Ludmilla Mojzisova. I also found a translated study on the success of the technique. I think it was around 40%. It wasn’t as good as the infertility massage results, but it still held my interest. Most of the other information was in Czech or German. The internet also mentioned a book on the technique. It was called Children of your own: The Mojzis method : a new, proven treatment of infertility by Ludmila Mojzis. Unfortunately, it was out of print and I had no luck finding a used copy.
Pooling my resources, I wrote to my aunt in Toronto. She was married to a man from Czechoslovakia and I thought I’d get her input on where to go from here. I sent her the Czech articles. She thought I had grossly overestimated her Czech language skills, but was still able to provide a lot of help. The resourceful lady that she was, she contacted the Ontario physical therapists association and found all of the Czech therapists in the province. I was surprised that they kept such information, but my aunt explained that in the culturally sensitive province of Ontario, it proved useful to keep track of PT’s that speak different languages. I decided to see if I would have the same luck if I called the Ohio Physical Therapists Association. With a tone that said “this is America, honey!” they told me they did not keep track of such information. Oh well! At least my aunt was checking out our options in Ontario. A few of the therapists she spoke to said they were familiar with the method, but they were not actively engaged in it. I found an acupuncturist in California and a chiropractor in England who had information on the Mojzis method on their websites. I contacted them and they were both very helpful, but again, I was not convinced. If I were going to travel, spend time and money, I wanted to be fully immersed in the Mojzis method as if I were part of the Prague study. I was seriously ready to travel to Prague, hire a translator and start on the Mojzis program, but I didn’t even know how to find the resources there.
Then my aunt came back with an answer. She had found a Mojzis method practitioner that was using the method on infertility clients in Ottawa. I got her number and after working out with her schedule, we made plans to visit Ottawa for vacation time that summer.
Luckily, I had a supportive husband who was willing to change vacation plans. He even rented an airplane that he would fly so that we could squeeze Mojzis treatments in Ottawa along with other family obligations in Toronto into our vacation. Generous family members in Ottawa gave us a place to stay and a car to borrow, which helped us out. I spent approximately 3 hours a day with the therapist, Katerina. She had been a medical doctor in Czechoslovakia, but due to the bureaucratic regulations in Canada she was practicing as a body worker. She had 10 hours of patients to see every day and was obviously well respected. We worked on posture and breathing techniques. She gave wonderful treatments that made me feel looser and seemed to shift my center of gravity. I actually felt a little different when I got up and walked. She taught me the Mojzis exercises and made all the little corrections that I wouldn’t have been able to identify if I had tried to learn by the book.
Our vacation was a little harried. We were flying back and forth between Ottawa and Toronto, we got into an accident in our borrowed car, and I was practicing Mojzis exercises all while my husband was working in libraries and internet cafés to get a grant proposal done. So much for “just relax and you’ll get pregnant.” All this made the “vacation” less than thoroughly relaxing, but I got what I came for. Now I had to keep up with the practice and see if it worked!!
The studies I had read usually gave the method 6 months to work. I had also heard that it would take 3 months for tissue in the pelvis and low back to regenerate, so I knew not to expect anything before that. I didn’t always get in 2 practices a day as recommended, but I almost always got in one. While I was traveling for work, I would do what I could in hotel rooms or even at airports.
Just to keep all my bases covered, I decided to go ahead and do laparoscopic surgery. My RE had mentioned that it was the next thing that I should try although I didn’t have any symptoms of endometriosis. The surgery was relatively uneventful. Although my doctor didn’t really think it would make any difference, I was glad I had it done. Even if I never got pregnant I could sleep better knowing that this was not the reason for our infertility.
I was still using LH strips every month to make sure that we got our timing down. BBT charts were never easy for me and sometimes I didn’t know if it was my body or my thermometer giving me the problem. Peeing on a stick was much easier. In early December, I got another positive LH strip: Time for the baby dance. Since we had been trying several things over the last 5 years, I wasn’t expecting anything magical this month. It had just become pretty much routine. We just kept trying and we hoped one of these times our luck will change. It was the season to be jolly and I was attending Christmas parties and eating shell fish, soft cheeses and having the occasional glass of wine. It didn’t really occur to me that I shouldn’t do any of these things in case I was pregnant. I had stopped playing those games years ago. Just before Christmas I saw my first sign that my luck may be changing.
When I saw that very faint purpley-pink line show up on my pregnancy test, I didn’t know what to think. The line was extremely faint and took a long time to show up. On the other hand, I had taken lots of pregnancy tests before and never seen anything like this. I’m not even sure why I took the test that early morning. I wasn’t late yet. I was looking for a way out of working that day. I was scheduled to give a massage for a client and I wasn’t feeling enthusiastic about it. I was tired and I knew I would have to drive 60 miles to meet the client. If I were pregnant I would have a reason not to go!
After seeing that faint line I wasn’t ready to jump up and down, wake my husband up and say “We’re pregnant” but I didn’t feel like going back to sleep either. At first I ignored it and went about other things, but every once in a while a mild jolt would run through me. “What if this is it?” Where were those pregnancy test instructions? I had thrown the instructions out. Maybe I would find them on the internet. I looked it up and found that the line should show up within 5 minutes for a positive indication, although a faint line may show up after 10 minutes even if you are not pregnant. I couldn’t remember how long I had waited, so I took another test. A ghost line showed up in 8 minutes. It only showed up clearly after about 10 minutes. Not positive enough to cancel my massage, but I was definitely going to retest.
The next day the same faint line showed up in about 7 minutes, the day after, it took about 7 minutes again, but the line was a little darker. By now I was late and I was starting to realize what this might mean. I still couldn’t celebrate until I saw that line show up in less than 5 minutes. My husband was excited, but cautious about the news. He didn’t want to get his hopes up until we were absolutely positive.
By now I had used up all my pregnancy tests. Due to a snowstorm and the Christmas holidays I couldn’t get to the drugstore for another 3 days. Well, I’d waited 4 years for this; another 3 days didn’t kill me. Finally I got the answer: POSITIVE in less than 3 minutes. I was pregnant!
If you haven’t been through infertility – and I mean real infertility, not mere impatience – this all may seem a little drawn out. But there’s nothing more drawn out than years of waiting and hoping that you may be able to have a family… and knowing you may not. I don’t know if every woman feels this way when she first finds out she is pregnant, but I had a hard time believing it. Everything felt pretty much the same. I’d go about my business and then suddenly think “Hey! I’ve got a baby inside me!” The realization came slowly over time and as time went by I became more and more confident about what was going on. We would be having a baby, and if the tests and check-ups so far are any indication of what is going to happen it will be a beautiful, healthy baby.
So 4 months after starting Mojzis treatments and exercises, we were pregnant. Since we were given a 3-6 month window, I’d say it worked or it was a heck of a coincidence. Many people I tell this story to dismiss that sooner or later it would have happened anyway. They are skeptical of any technique that is not accepted by the prevailing medical system. The truth is we don’t really care if people believe us or not. We got what we wanted. The side effects were zero, and the financial cost was a tiny fraction of a single IVF treatment. Although most of the alternative therapies we tried did not work, this one did, and it was well worth it.
My husband and I often say to each other “how did this happen?” “Why now?”. Although I feel confident that the Mojzis method helped us get there, there is still something really magical in all of this. Every day I thank God for this miracle and hope that more couples that have love and a home to give a baby will be blessed as we are.