Fun, 1950s Style

I helped to throw a huge party this weekend. For about 120 people. During which we cooked everyone's meals fresh and made-to-order. I wore a real, live (well, not actually barking) poodle skirt. And roped my husband into reliving his table-waiting days and helping me serve the food.

Let me just zoom in on that skirt so you can appreciate the poodle in all her glory.

One of my coworkers made it for me without me even asking. And yes, that is a real Thunderbird behind us in that first picture. We called in the local Thunderbird Club (I didn't even know such things existed before this party) and asked one of the men if he'd like some free publicity.

The purpose of the party was to appreciate all the volunteers who help us run the children's program I help to oversee in my job. Those of us who get paid to do this throw a huge shindig every year to show those who are not paid how much we love them. We wanted to do something family-friendly this year so the volunteers wouldn't have to find babysitters, so we did a 1950s soda shop and diner. Complete with jello, hoola-hoops, yo-yos, slinkies, bubble gum, and, of course, milkshakes galore.

I paid the price all day yesterday. Exhaustion + Mother's Day + working all morning + having people for dinner + PMS = one tough Sunday. And I could break the PMS element down even further, but I think you all get the point.

And yes, I do think I am experiencing PMS. I had an acupuncture appointment Saturday morning, and Katy (my acupuncturist) seemed to think my period would be on its way soon, since I'm nearing day 50 and my last two natural cycles were around 50 days long. I didn't believe her, because I couldn't imagine getting my period without ovulating. That's never happened to me (in my great experience of 4 cycles), and, more importantly, that doesn't seem to happen to those of us who suffer from hypothalamic amenorrhea. We frequently have really long cycles--or no cycles at all--but I haven't heard of any other HAer who got her period without ovulating.

Then I woke up yesterday morning feeling all my normal PMS symptoms. The menstrual cramps. The extreme fatigue. The backache. The sore boobs. And the crappy emotions. Though who knows if they were due to hormones or Mother's Day. And they're all hanging around today, though no signs of blood yet.

So maybe she's right. My acupuncturist, that is. I definitely felt like my estrogen was surging a couple of weeks ago, trying to ovulate. For some reason, it didn't quite surge high enough, or decided to quit half way, and I didn't actually release an egg--based on my lack of a temperature rise. That's a little frustrating, but maybe fairly common among women just starting acupuncture and herbs? Especially since Katy had me go ahead and switch from the ovulation herbs to the luteal phase herbs last week. I don't know. But at least if I get my period, I can move forward and start the next cycle. I'm so over this one. And Katy wants me to take clomid again, so next cycle should be much shorter.

But. I'm not counting on anything. My body has played tricks on me before. Until I see red, I'm still in limbo land.

Dear Sleep, Thanks for the Memories

I have to start out with an honest admission--I really have no idea what to blog about today. I've just set a goal for myself to try to blog at least twice a week, and I know this weekend's going to be a tad insane, so post today I will. With nothing much going on in my lady-parts, I'm really having to be creative here.

Since I would love to have my default attitude in life be one of thankfulness and peace, I thought it might be a good idea to transfer that to my blog. Set my default post-mood on the gratitude setting. I'm not going to set a pattern of Thankful Thursdays or anything like that, but I will post today about something for which I am thankful.

Sleep. I've been hesitant to write about this because I'm afraid of jinxing things or something, but here goes.

Sleep and I have had a conflicted and angst-ridden relationship for quite a while now. I think sleep is considered Yin and therefore more feminine in Chinese medicine, so I'll call Sleep a she. Maybe I took her too much for granted for the first 19 years of my life. Not that I was never sleep-deprived in high school--I was, in fact, perpetually sleep-deprived--but I never had much trouble falling asleep once I got in bed. Lie down, relax a few minutes, and there she was, ready to escort me through a night of strange-but-rarely-scary dreams, straight through to the morning. If I woke up in the night, it was only to be thankful that I still had a few more hours to enjoy her before I had to get up at the excruciating hour of 5:45am.

Then, at some point when I was around 19 or 20, I started having the occasional night where I had a little trouble falling asleep. Looking back now, I wonder if it was somehow related to the dieting and crazy exercising I did that first summer home from college, when I lost 30 pounds and punished my body into hypothalamic amenorrhea. Throwing my body out of balance like that could easily have other results, as well, at least in theory. But it could also have been that I just had more to worry about.

In any case, any of you who have experienced the occasional sleepless night probably know how it spirals and accumulates. Insomnia is so psychological--it's almost impossible to tell if there's something physical going on or if you're just so nervous about not being able to find Sleep that you keep yourself awake. I was still on mostly friendly terms with Sleep. She came to me without too many issues most nights. But I dreaded those nights when she would hide from me for a while. In my mind, there were few things in life that were scarier or more nerve-wracking. Tylenol PM became my friend. I longed to be one of those people, like my brother, who simply didn't worry about it. Who wasn't phased by the idea of insomnia. Who took Sleep for granted, and therefore never had problems finding her.

A few years ago, I think God decided it was time I face my frenemy Sleep head-on. I had just started grad school and was a bit overwhelmed with how much I had to do, and then I stopped being able to find Sleep easily at all. And I was absolutely panicked about it. Even the mention of the word "insomnia" had always caused me to break out in a cold sweat, and here I was, basically an insomniac. My doctor was quick to prescribe me first Am.bien, which was great but too expensive, and then Traz.adone, a cheap anti-depressant with the side-effect of drowsiness. I took the Traz.adone for two nights in a row, and the second morning, as I was standing in front of our bathroom sink getting ready to head to school, I blacked out, fell out of the bathroom and into the hallway, and hit the door of the hallway closet. My husband says that was the scariest moment of his life. I guess my eyes were twitching a bit for the few seconds I was laying there. I came out of it quickly and it wasn't a big deal, but I decided Traz.adone might not be a good long-term solution.

I won't bore you with all the details of what happened for the next few months. I was depressed. I was terrified. I didn't sleep a single night without some kind of chemical help.

I eventually came out of it. I found some herbal supplements that helped. I found some generic Am.bien online for much cheaper. I began to really believe that I was not in control of my ability to find Sleep, so I couldn't change anything by worrying. And I realized that I really could survive insomnia. It wasn't actually the end of the world, as I had previously thought.

I've been back on speaking terms with Sleep the past few years. I still have days or weeks at a time where she's more elusive, and I have to make use of that Am.bien. Then I have other weeks where all it takes is a little valerian or melatonin.

That is, until starting acupuncture. Let me first just say that the verdict's still out on the acupuncture for me. I'm doing it to have normal cycles and get pregnant, and thus far, neither of those seems anywhere in sight. And my acupuncturist assures me that my other occasional minor...disturbances (eczema, digestive issues, nasal congestion) will also subside. All of those are still alive and kickin', though I have been very...um...regular since starting. But the insomnia? Pretty much gone. Seriously. I've surprised myself with how easily I've been falling asleep for the last 40-odd days since starting the acupuncture. I keep waiting for another bump in the road in my relationship with Sleep, but 40 days is a bit of a record. And not only have I been falling asleep more easily, but I also haven't been waking up as often. Just my nightly old lady bathroom trip. But I used to wake up and feel restless 2-3 times most nights.

The only nights I've had trouble have been either when I'm waking up super early the next morning, which always makes me feel more nervous and pressured about falling asleep, or when I've had irritating...ahem...gas issues.

Like I said, I've been nervous about telling anyone about my new-found peace with Sleep, because I'm afraid I'll lose it by talking about it. But I'm on the record now. I'm very, very, very thankful. Sleep, thanks for being my friend again. Katy, thanks for the amazing acupuncture and herbs. And God, thanks for taking me on this long journey through insomnia. It has been really painful at times, but I really have learned so much about you and about myself through it. And I would definitely still be stuck in my anxiety about Sleep had I never experienced the terror of its loss in the way that I did.

Day 34 and Counting

I kept putting this post off because I keep hoping for a positive OPK, so I can jump on and give some good news. But still no positives, and still no temperature rise. However, my boobs have been pretty sore for the past few days, and I feel like I have a large follicle or two ready to burst. So, like I said, I keep expecting that dark second line every day. I will actually be pretty impressed with my body if I get it tomorrow day 35, as that's exactly when I got a positive on my last natural cycle.

I did have another lovely appointment with my darling acupuncturist Katy on Saturday--despite the fact that I was never able to really relax on the table for some reason. She was also a bit surprised that I hadn't ovulated yet, but she said that perhaps this could be my body's normal cycle. What will be more telling, in my opinion, is whether I get a normal-length luteal phase this round. My very first cycle after the pill (which was, like, a 150-day cycle or something insane like that), my LP was 9 days. I've been on progesterone suppositories every cycle since then, since my progesterone keeps measuring low. But Katy wants me to go all natural this time and see what my body will do with all Yang-warming herbs and needles. I'm a little nervous about that--I mean, what if an egg gets fertilized but then gets sloughed off too early because my period comes too soon? But I'm inclined to do what she says. Maybe, just maybe, my luteal phase will do what it's supposed to. Is that too much to ask?

I have to keep reminding myself that chinese medicine is not an instantaneous fix. It takes several months to really work for most people who get pregnant with it. My body has been off-kilter for a long time, so it only makes sense that it will take a while for it to get...um, on-kilter. I'm choosing this route because I'm young and really have no objective reason to be as anxious as I am to get pregnant. And besides the fact that an RE would be astronomically expensive for us, which would interfere with all that we have planned for ourselves in the coming years, I also don't mind the idea of being able to avoid the insanity of medical fertility treatments.

But I do mind the idea of waiting longer to join the pregnancy club. More on that is coming soon...

Nutritional Revelation of the Day: White Rice Is Okay

Ever since I was 19 years old and lost 30 pounds through dieting and exercise (and, incidentally, first launched my poor body into no-GNRH land), I've been really interested in nutrition. I spent countless hours that summer making use of my parents' newly acquired high-speed internet and researching how to lose weight. I'm not sure if I was even using Google yet. Nutrition science is one of only two scientific fields that I believe I could actually endure studying (the other being food science--Alton Brown style).

My understanding of healthy eating has significantly evolved since that time, fortunately for me and for everyone who eats the food I cook. At 19, when I weighed in at 140 pounds (I'm 5'4") and decided some of that needed to go, my only point of reference for "healthy eating" was the low-fat craze of the 90s. The sudden will to lose weight coincided with a sudden desire I felt to learn how to cook, and my mom just happened to own Moosewood Restaurant's Low-Fat Cookbook. And so this was the first cookbook I ever really cooked out of, as my mother was more than willing to let me experiment on the family (especially since I quickly proved that I had a knack for cooking). For most of that summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college, I consumed almost zero fat. Seriously. I had no problem with sugar--I would still drink the occasional soda and fat-free dessert--but fats of all kinds were banned from my lips. If you want to lose fat, then stop eating it, right? (On a side note, I am very thankful that the Atkins diet hadn't really gained steam yet. I don't know if I would have survived that one, and my family would not have been nearly such good sports if they were served hamburgers with lettuce instead of buns.)

By the end of the summer, when I hadn't had a period in four months, I realized my eating might be a little out of balance. I had also lost more weight than I had even planned--I was down to 110 and still losing. In an effort to add a little more balance to my life, and as a result of a little more internet research, I decided to focus on calories instead of fats. My mother insisted that women need to eat some fat, so I figured that focusing on calories would allow me to eat a little of every food group and still keep it all under control. (If you haven't gotten this already, you should know that control is a key word for me.) Fat just happens to contain a lot of calories. So I started counting calories. The first day I counted, I got to the end of the day and realized I had only eaten about 800 calories all day. Can you say sub-clinical eating disorder? No wonder my body had stopped ovulating.

Thankfully, I did ease up on myself a little over the next six years. I maintained my weight (106 pounds), but allowed myself to consume the occasional piece of pizza or cookie. Basically, my diet focused on veggies, whole grains, and healthy meats and dairy. Fats were a necessary evil and a waste of my daily allotment of calories, but I consumed a few. A little 1% milk here, a tablespoon of olive oil in my salad dressing there. I thought I was balanced enough, and since my OB had gifted me with unlimited prescriptions for the pill to force my body into having periods, I had no clue how my hormones were doing. I decided to believe they had figured themselves out after I had settled into my new lifestyle.

Fast-forward to last summer, when I went off the pill and realized I still had lots of work to do. Through much angst and soul-searching (and, of course, googling), I finally admitted that my body was still starved for fat. So I loathsomely reintroduced full-fat dairy, cream, butter, cheese, 80% ground beef, etc to my lips. After I got over my long-held fear of fat, it was actually quite liberating. And I was surprised to discover that after gaining 10 pounds at the beginning and getting my cycles back (reluctant as they are), I've maintained my weight fairly easily without feeling like I'm restricting myself.

So now I have all my eating rules all reconfigured properly, right? Veggies of all kinds? Good. Whole grains? Good. Healthy fats? Good. Meats? Good (a rule for which my husband is eternally grateful). Any kind of white, refined carbs? Bad. So no white breads or pastas or white rice. These have become my biggest no-no now. Heck, I even grind my own wheat and make my own bread (sometimes) in order to get as much nutrition as I can out of my sandwiches.

But this latter point, about the white rice, has always bugged me. I religiously substitute brown rice for white when cooking at home, and I usually ask if brown rice is available at Asian restaurants when we go out. But I've been to China twice, and never have I seen a grain of brown rice there. The Chinese live on and swear by their white rice. And the Chinese way of eating overall seems brimming with wisdom and health. They have 4,000 years of uninterrupted history behind them, so I guess they've figured out how to eat well. So why are they stuck on white rice, when we in the West have figured out that brown rice is clearly better?

I found my answer today as I was sitting in my acupuncturist's office, waiting for my bring-on-the-ovulation session, and picked up a book called The Asian Diet. I read through the first chapter quickly and got to the second: "Grains." The second paragraph began with this: "Of the grains, white rice is the best." I nearly fainted into the couch at that point. White rice better than brown? How can this be? Is one of my food rules being threatened yet again?

The author went on to explain that we in the West have mistakenly lumped white rice in with white breads, white sugar, and white pasta as food "devoid of value." It's true that whole foods and whole grains are definitely more nutritionally valuable than their refined counterparts, but white rice should apparently still be considered a whole food. Brown rice kernels come in their outer germ layer, which we think is better because it contains more nutrition and fiber. But this author argues that our bodies can get just as much, if not more, nutrition out of white rice than brown. Because the germ layer is so high in fiber, it actually sweeps the food through our bodies for us to be able to effectively digest all the nutrition in the rice kernel. At least that's my understanding of his explanation. Might I remind you that I was an English major, not a nutrition science major. Please don't judge the poor author's science based on my explanation.

The argument only makes sense in light of what he has put forth in the first chapter--that the Asian diet works because it gets our bodies to digest food properly. The average Chinese apparently consumes 25-40% more calories a day than the average American (which seems hard to believe), but they obviously weigh less on average. They simply eat a more appropriately balanced diet, which helps their bodies to digest food more efficiently and maintain a healthy weight and overall well-being.

I'm not totally sure if I buy all those claims. I need to check the book out for myself and read the rest of it. In any case, his claims about white rice answer a lot of questions for me. Maybe next time I make jambalaya, I won't go to all the extra work of converting the recipe to work with brown rice instead of white. And I'm thrilled with the idea that I could eat risotto without feeling guilty and angry that brown arborio rice doesn't exist.

My husband was as thrilled to hear about the white-rice-is-okay revelation as he was to hear the more-fat-is-good revelation. He loves his white rice, and even though I've gotten really good at making brown rice that is just as sticky and fluffy, he insists it just isn't the same. Now he's hoping I find an article or book somewhere that argues that white flour is actually just as good as whole wheat flour.

Rejecting Predictability

I've determined that my body has been influenced by my husband. I'm a creature of habit in most areas of life. I like to find a routine that works and keep doing it. I know it works, so why rethink it? So I eat generally the same thing for lunch every day (, I have a pattern for what I eat for breakfast (cereal , and I have a routine for what kind of exercise I do and when. My husband, on the other hand, hates any form of routine. From my perspective, he goes out of his way to make sure he doesn't fall into routine. From his perspective, "falling" into routine takes effort and he'd rather not think about it. I guess we're just wired differently.

I think my body has decided to take its cue from him. Routine? Predictability? How boring. Why would I want to ovulate on the same day each cycle? Or have temperatures that give me a clue about what's coming next? Or have periods that are of the same length and heaviness? That would just be silly.

I wrote about my last ovulation, and how dodgy it was, a few weeks ago. And then it turned out to be even dodgier than expected, of course. My latest surprise has been my period this time around. I was quite pleased with how heavy it was the first couple of days. Not super heavy--I could have left the same tampon in all day and been fine--but still heavier than last time. It started Wednesday afternoon and was flowing pretty nicely through Friday, tapering off a little Friday but still going.

I had my acupuncture appointment on Friday, and KB (my acupuncturist) said she stimulated points and gave me an herbal decoction that would help my period to be really effective, cleansing out the old blood and all, to give this cycle a good start. I noticed that my cramps subsided quite a bit after the session. And I wasn't too surprised to wake up in the middle of the night that night to find quite a bit of blood flowing, although it's very unusual for me to have much going on at night. I thought maybe the acupuncture really had gotten things going.

However, I was surprised when essentially nothing happened Saturday or Sunday. No blood. No brown, red, or pink on the pads or tampons. (I know this is a bit graphic, but if you're reading infertility blogs, you should know what you're in for.) So I thought I had just had my first three-day period ever. I've always had basically five-day periods, ever since I was 12 years old and got my first one. On the pill and off, always five days. But hey, I'm not going to complain about three days. I was a little concerned that a short and not-too-heavy period might indicate a thin lining, but that's why I'm doing acupuncture--to fix things like that.

I was all ready to skip on the pad and go for a pantiliner this morning. But guess what? She's back! After two days, I guess my uterus decided it had a little more lining to shed. Today being CD 6, when I'm usually done bleeding. And might as well add some cramps to that just for good measure. More cramps than are warranted with the amount of blood, which is hardly more than spotting. I guess I'm glad that what's coming out is coming out. But couldn't we have done this Saturday morning? Did we need to stretch it out?

Of course I can't help but wonder if the acupuncture and crazy herb decoction I'm drinking twice a day have encouraged my body to get a little more out than usual. In which case I should be happy that it's working.

Speaking of the traditional chinese medicine, I came across one practitioner's website (after googling "traditional chinese medicine fertility statistics") that claimed his clinic had about a 60% pregnancy rate for infertile women who came for treatment. But, for women who were willing to drink cooked herb decoctions, that rate was 75% within three months! Impressive. I'm just hoping not to defy any statistics in this case. Just to let you know, dear body of mine, statistical predictability is different than routine predictability. So go ahead and defy routine. But we don't need to defy statistics, okay?

Maybe the Needles Will Help

I just had my first acupuncture session yesterday. It's really kind of random that I'm even trying acupuncture. I get regular emails from a site called Groupon that offer me amazing discounts on all kinds of things in the area where I live. My husband makes sure I don't take too many of the offers. But one came through a couple of weeks ago for an acupuncture treatment and initial consultation for only $29--regularly $120. I've always wanted to try acupuncture, and now I actually have a really good reason. So of course I went for it.

I should preface this by saying that as frustrated as I have been about not being able to see an RE, a very small part of me is thankful that I'm not undergoing the craziness of regular ultrasounds, injections, or whatever else an RE might put me on. In fact, I have been rather disillusioned with modern medicine overall through this experience of infertility. I long to trust that my doctor knows everything. But really? She only has a tiny bit more of a clue than I do after reading scientific papers. And with hypothalamic amenorrhea, it seems that many doctors have less of a clue than I do. And I'm very turned off by the piecemeal, fragmented approach of modern medicine. They treat whatever small complaint you have as a separate issue, usually by throwing some drug at you. You know what? I don't want a drug. I want to know what is causing the problem.

On the other hand, I've always been skeptical about so-called alternative medicine. Probably because my husband is an extremely skeptical scientist. Also, being brought up in American schools, we're bred not to believe in anything that science doesn't understand. But you know what? I believe 100% in God, and science doesn't understand him at all. Not that medicine and religion are on any sort of level playing field, but could it be that science doesn't understand everything about medicine yet? Gasp.

So, as my ramblings are probably evidencing, I was quite excited about my acupuncture consultation and treatment. I have no idea how all those tiny needles up and down my spine could possibly help me get pregnant. But my acupuncturist assured me that her treatments could get me back on a regular cycle in 3-6 months! I didn't think a regular cycle was even possible for me. And with no weird chemicals? She also informed me that my pulse was a little weak, whatever that means, and that she would want to see it get a bit stronger before my body tried to support a baby. I think she was implying that we should stop even trying before I get 3 months of treatments under my belt. Well, that's not going to happen. There's no way DH is going to be donning any kind of rubber apparatus in bed any time soon. And yes, next time I ovulate, we will BMS it up. If I get pregnant and my pulse isn't quite as strong as she would like...well, I'll just have to do some jumping jacks to get it stronger.

Beyond the more natural and holistic perspective, the cost of acupuncture is also very attractive. If we started going to an RE, we would probably rack up anywhere between $2000 and $20,000 in costs within the first month. Regular acupuncture with this particular woman would probably cost about $700 in six months, and that's including any special herbs she might recommend. Awesome.

I think my hubby would still like to at least wait this cycle out before starting anything new. That makes sense to me. It is my first try with clomid, so chances are somewhat favorable. However, I'm on day 20 today with no ovulation yet. Sigh. My body is just so stinkin' slow.