How Infertility Has Brought Out My Inner Hippie

I've joined a CSA.

I've started biking to work.

I only buy clothes that, as far as I can tell, was made by fairly paid and treated workers.

I do yoga twice a week.

Not only do I shop with reusable shopping bags, but I also reuse produce bags and wash out and reuse all my ziploc bags.

I'm a recognized customer at both a natural food store (where I get all my supplements--and we don't need to go into how many of those I'm taking) and a Chinese herb store.

If you need to find me, just look behind your nearest large tree.

Seriously, when did I get to be such a hippie? Please don't tell my father-in-law. I don't want to jeopardize that relationship.

One of the biggest obstacles between me and full-on yippiness has been meat. I've known about the evils of the American conventional meat-packing industry ever since a couple of my college friends decided to start farming grass-fed/free-range animals and began to indoctrinate me with their philosophy on food. But I've held out. I just haven't been able to gather my courage enough to pay $9.99 for a cut of beef that would I could purchase for $3.99.

My coupon-clipping, sale-hunting mother raised me on the notion that frugality was a kind of virtue. Not one of the most important virtues, but a virtue, nonetheless. We lived on less so that we could give more. Sometimes we lived on less because less is all we had.

Since the dawning of infertility in my life, I have gotten closer and closer to making the move towards eating animals that were treated nicely. I've switched to more "natural" beauty products and mostly organic produce and just hoped that eating enough good veggies will somehow cancel out the harmful things that may be coming through my meat. If I didn't have hypothalamic amenorrhea, I would probably just cut way back on the meat. But, because of my HA, Katy the Needle Lady (my acupuncturist) gave me strict instructions to eat meat, and lots of it. Especially red meat. And fewer salads. Please don't hate me because you think I have the most enviable diet prescription ever given. I'm also supposed to avoid cold foods (ie ice cream), sugar, and chocolate.

But this weekend finally put me over the edge. On Saturday, Katy informed me that eating organic/grass-fed/free-range meat was far more important that organic produce. Apparently, she had a former patient whose cycles had gone wonky after she moved from India to America. They couldn't figure out what the issue was until they realized that meat in India is raised the way it's supposed to be. The conventionally farmed meat in America was throwing her whole hormonal system out of balance!

And then I watched Food, Inc (this is what I do when Pete's gone: watch movies he wouldn't want to sit through). I've been meaning to watch this for a while but have putting it off because I knew I wasn't ready. I knew it would send me on a guilt trip that I didn't want. But I finally felt ready this weekend.

And now I hope I never have to buy meat from our evil American conventional meat-packing industry again. That's all I can say. If you're interested, watch the movie. But don't do it if you're not ready to very afraid of the meat aisle in the grocery store.

I also know that's a bit of an over-the-top reaction, and I do plan to be practical and not legalistic. I still have a freezer full of conventionally farmed meat, and I don't plan to throw any of it away. But I'm also finally willing to put a little more money into buying good meat. It may mean that we have to give up the CSA, but I can get organic produce at the store without being locked into to the expensive weekly subscription.

Pete's also calling around to his hunting friends in Montana to see if any of them would be willing to shoot a deer for us. Because you can't get much more free-range than Montana game animals. If that works out, it will save me from being a complete hippie.

What about you, my dear readers? How many of you have significantly changed your eating and shopping habits since beginning the infertility journey? How important do you think food is to our fertility?

Now, back to my meal of organic sweet potato, organic chard, and grass-fed lamb (another treat I get to enjoy while my lamb-hating husband is away).

My March Resolutions

First of all, I'll give the TTC-related update. I'm officially 15 dpo today and finally saw the faintest hint of brown last night. I took that as good enough reason to skip on the progesterone suppositories this morning and hope that AF comes in full force soon so I can move on to the next cycle. I was expecting more of her today but have only had the faintest hints of blood--accompanied by lots of cramping and back pain (and hip and butt pain, and thigh pain, and....) As always for me--at least since going off the pill.

Also, Pete and I went for his SA yesterday, since he was leaving (and left) for a conference this morning. We wanted to have them processing the results while he was gone. He wanted me to come in case he had trouble... finishing the job and needed me to sneak in and show some cleavage or something. But he did great and was finished rather quickly. I guess a few days of abstinence will do that. He brought out his brown bag and went to turn it in to the guy at the check-in counter, and the guy started shaking his head as soon as Pete started walking up. Guess what? Apparently they only accept "specimens" before noon. Which completely makes sense. But, um, shouldn't he have told us that before Pete went and jacked off? He clearly should have seen him heading back towards the "specimen collection rooms." The exit was in the opposite direction. So Pete had to throw all his little guys away, and now he can't go until Monday since he's gone until Sunday. Boo.

I am quite excited to start in with acupuncture/herbs/TCM on Friday. I was hoping AF would start tomorrow, as I've read that it's best (according to chinese medicine) not to have any treatments on days 1-3 of your cycle. But at this point, I'm not sure when day 1 will actually be, so I'm just going to go on Friday no matter what. I'm ready to get this show on the road and maybe start fixing some of the screwy things going on with my cycles.