My new routine, including supplements

I got laid off in early November, and on the positive side my diet has been WAY better, now that I'm not surrounded by all the candy and soda that was in full stock at the company I worked for.

I try to eat a big salad every day. I TRY to have this healthy 12 grain breakfast (mentioned in the last post) on a more regular basis now. And I take a good amount of supplements almost every day.

It definitely helps to keep them in a pill minder, that way I don't have to keep unscrewing bottles and I can keep track of how good I've been doing during the week. I try to take the fat-soluble vitamins (eg vitamin D) when I have some fat (eg. milk or pizza, which is not a usual thing), and then the garlic and prenatal with dinner or when I have a big salad. I try to take the antioxidants in the morning.


The supplements include:


-Vitamin D (I heard it helps you absorb 3 times more calcium!). I started taking it because I was suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder, and was pleasantly surprised I had a HUGE reduction in back pain after taking vitamin D. Actually I think the one I am taking may be Vitamin D3. I got it at Costco. The pills are super tiny, like 1/2 the size of a typical vitamin E pill. They're 2000 mg and I take 1 or 2 a day. I think it also helped me quite a bit with the seasonal affective disorder.

On another note, ladies: Vitamin D has been shown to help women undergoing IVF treatment! Check out this article: http://living.health.com/2009/10/07/vitamin-d-conception/

-Prenatal Vitamin from Costco. They're these big red pills - like a liquid / gel pill. I really like these. On the downside, they make my hair grow so friggin fast I have to keep coloring it (I know, you're not supposed to color your hair but I can't help it, I may have to go childless if that's the case).

-Pycnogenol. I heard this can really help women who have endometriosis. I started taking this before it was determined that I don't have it, but it's a really good antioxidant so I keep taking it anyway. You can read the endometriosis article here by the way: http://www.nutraingredients-usa.com/Research/More-evidence-for-Pycnogenol-endometriosis-benefit and here's one more: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/64791.php

-Resveratrol, from Costco, 1 pill

-SOMETIMES I take some ACAI (a friend gave me a bottle)

-Multiple B Vitamin.

-Odorless garlic tab from Nature Made.

-CoEnzyme Q10. I don't always take these, just if I've eaten enough during the day and feel like it. I feel like I'm taking so many things I don't want to overdo it.

-Folic acid. It's a tiny little brown pill (just found one the cats chewed up, on the ground). I think it smells like fish oil. Anyway there is folic acid in the prenatal vitamins but I take an extra one of these for the hell of it.

-Vitamin C. I am on the fence about taking this, as I think it helps keep me healthy but at the same time, having an acidic environment "down there" kills sperm. So I kind of stopped taking these. I do try to drink extra milk around ovulation time because I heard it makes your body more alkaline, which is more favorable for sperm.

WHEN I'M OVULATING, I take:
- Evening oil of primrose (a really big tablet)
- Mucus relief tablets
- Fertile CM (it's pricey so I save it and only take it between about day 10 of my cycle and day 20.

I TRY to drink 2 pots of tea a day but that doesn't always happen. It does help if I make it at night in the coffee pot, let it cool down by morning and pour it into my favorite bottle (an alhambra 33.8 oz. water bottle... go figure why it's 33.08 instead of like 32 but whatever). I've heard it's not great to drink out of those bottles (because of the plastic residue... BHT? BBT? shoot I forget the proper name) but I'm praying it's still doing at least SOMETHING good.

Fertility Breakfast - 12 Grain "Cereal"

Just wanted to share this yummy breakfast I've been eating for a while now. It's 12 grain "cereal" (though it looks more like bird food than cereal) and you can get it at Whole Foods or Rainbow Foods, in the section where you scoop stuff out of bins into a plastic bag, write the item # on the twist tie, and pay by the pound. It doesn't look very glamorous but it tastes GREAT when you cook it right, has tons of fiber, and best of all, it gives me a REALLY GOOD ENERGY BUZZ that I just do not get from other breakfast foods. Particularly NOT cereal, which tends to either make me sleepy and wanna crash, or it just makes me feel hungry later.

The only downside is it takes 5 minutes to cook it and, being the most impatient eater in the whole world, sometimes that's too long for me to wait. When I'm hungry I want to eat right that very second, and you actually have to cook this for 5 minutes (I managed to overcook / burn it every time until I realized my microwave has a kitchen timer, so I can get it to beep and remind me when to take the pot off the stove!)

When it's done, it's really good.

This is how I make it.

-1/3 cup 12-grain cereal

-2/3 cup water

Bring to a boil on stove (cook for 5 minutes total).

Halfway through cooking I throw in:

-handful of fresh cranberries, cut in half (or a small handful of dried cranberries)

-a whole apple, diced

-a small handful of walnuts

-MAYBE 1/2 a banana sliced up, if I feel like it (added after removing from heat)

Then when it's all done I put it in a bowl with:

-big spoonful of brown sugar***

-2 tbsp. ground flaxseed / pumpkinseed mixture (you can get both from whole foods or rainbow foods and i grind them up in my Magic Bullet that I LOVE).

I pour about 1/2 cup of soymilk over the whole thing and mix it all up. It is sooo good!

(***NOTE: I'm making an addition to this blogpost on 1-27-12: I no longer use brown sugar and soy milk. Now I just mix my morning visalus shake into the bowl, after cooking, and it's perfect. I'll pour about 1/2 the shake in, and drink the rest because i love the shake too.)

It's really high in fiber and the pumpkin / flaxseed mixture give it a really good nutty taste. I heard from Fern Reiss' book on fertility that it's good to eat pumpkin seeds, and I really don't like the taste of raw pumpkin seeds but for some reason when I blend them up like this, they taste really good! I blend up the flaxseed (which must be ground in order to give you the beneficial effects) and pumpkin seeds in my magic bullet (that I got at Costco for $40 with a coupon... one of my best investments EVER). And I keep the stuff in a plastic container in the freezer (flaxseed goes rancid very quickly unless you refrigerate it).

Ground Pumpkinseed / flaxseed mixture, before putting it in the freezer.

It's really inexpensive to make this for breakfast and it's soooo good for you. Go try some!

An herbal treatment for Endometriosis : Pycnogenol!

One of my aunts recently told me that she had complications with her pregnancy (in her early 30's), due to endometriosis. And I found out another one of my aunts (her sister) was never able to get pregnant because she had it also (this was in the days before they knew what to do about it). In addition to that, my mother was told that she had better have children early, because she got cysts and heavy periods, and this could make it harder for her to have children if she waited until her 30's.

Being in my 40's, this isn't sounding really good for me! I also seem to have some major "risk factors," according to this site (greeeat). See highlighted parts below.

Who is at risk of endometriosis?

It is estimated that endometriosis affects over one million women in the United States, and most cases are diagnosed in women between 25 and 35 years of age. However, because many women have no symptoms, the exact prevalence is unknown. The condition is very rare in postmenopausal women. Other risk factors for endometriosis include being white (compared to African American and Asian), being tall and thin with a low body mass index, being infertile, and delaying pregnancy until older ages.

But luckily, we have the internet and tons of resources and information to help us now.

I've never been officially diagnosed with Endometriosis (I'm not keen on the idea of having a lacroscopic surgery to find out for sure) but even before I knew all of this about my aunts and mother, I suspected I might have it. I do tend to get bad menstrual pain, sometimes pain with sex, and sometimes pain with orgasms.

Years ago I had heard about how good Pycnogenol (pine bark extract) is for the skin. An aesthetician who was doing microdermabrasion on me had flawless, really young looking skin and she swore the Pycnogenol she was taking had a lot to do with it.

Well, yesterday I was at the library, reading a book called "Perfect Hormone Balance for Fertility" (you can read about it here).  And it said a certain type of pine tree is known to have bark that contains a potent antioxidant / anti-inflammatory called polyphenols. I am for the most part quoting what was said in the book:

In 2007, a large study randomly assigned women with endometriosis to take either a 30 mg. capsule twice a day of a pine bark extract, or to take Lupron. In just 4 weeks all women experienced a reduction in their symptoms. Women using the herbal extract reported that pain was reduced BY ABOUT 80 PERCENT and cramping ABOUT 75 PERCENT, which were about the same as those on Lupron. But the women on the extract continued to have regular menstrual cycles, whereas those on Lupron didn't, and those on the extract didn't experience the menopausan side effects of Lupron. What's more, at least FIVE WOMEN ON THE PINE BARK (Pycnogenol) EXTRACT BECAME PREGNANT. Women on Lupron had a rebound return of symptoms when they went off the drug, whereas pine bark had no such side effect.

 



You can read more about the benefits of pycnogenol (for endometriosis) here (or just google "endometriosis" and "pycnogenol"... you will find a TON of stuff!!!). http://www.pycnogenol.com/media/media_press_releases.php?action=detail&id=479

On another note, I also recently discovered that Progesterone cream can greatly help reduce endometriosis! Since it took me 5 years to learn this one, I really want to share it with others. You can read more about it on this page.

Good luck!

EB

 

Using an Instead Cup - ROLLED UP - to get pregnant

I had tried the instead cup a few times (to keep the sperm closer to my cervix and also prevent them from leaking out) but it didn't seem to be doing much. True, I could have other issues going on but I was totally jazzed about this idea. I love these instead cups. I even got to meet the woman who invented them - she gave me a bunch of free ones and I was determined to put them to the ultimate good use.










It occurred to me that I could roll it up slightly (imagine rolling a condom so tight there's hardly any space in the reservoir tip). While the instead cup does do a decent job of keeping the sperm from leaking out, you have to remember that those cups are designed so that there’s plenty of room to hold blood during a heavy monthly flow, so there’s a lot of extra, empty space for the sperm to pool around in. If you're dealing with "barco lounger sperm" (like my husband suspects he has)... you want to get them as close as possible to the entrance of your cervix!

Be sure to roll it up with the "smooth" edge facing outward (if you do it the other way the sperm could get stuck in the crevices along the edge). It can also help to coat the cup with pre-seed, as it helps the sperm live longer! (See my post on pre seed).










Part of the reason I wanted to try this is, my gynecologist informed me that I have scarring on my cervix, from cryosurgery I had done almost 20 YEARS AGO. I couldn’t believe it. How come nobody told me that before? She made it sound like, the opening to my cervix was only about ¼ the size it is supposed to be, so it could be harder for the sperm to get where they're supposed to go (i'm hoping if I give them less distance to travel, less of them will get lost!). She did say that I could have some success with IUI treatment, but I’d rather see if I can get knocked up with some creative methods before that.

During my last cycle, I used the instead cup in this “rolled up” manner, while I was ovulating, and I swear it did something. Less than 48 hours after me and my hubby (we got married recently) did the deed, I woke up in the middle of the night, feeling some strange kind of hormonal weirdness I couldn’t explain. My boobs felt really big and swollen, and it lasted for about ten days, until one weekend I drank a rum drink and coffee, and then some hot tea in a non-BPA-free plastic bottle (I’m paranoid that the plastic from the bottle got into my system). Suddenly I got sick with a burning sore throat and a runny nose, sneezing, coughing. Just like that, my boobs were "deflating" and I no longer felt pregnant.

I guess I don't know for sure if the cup had anything to do with my temporary feeling of pregnancy, but... I’m definitely going to try again next month.

Positive Testimonials

I'm currently taking fertility supplements and realized it's so easy to get distracted by new things, but I need to keep focusing on one course of treatment at a time. I have barely been taking FertilAid and Fertile CM and drinking the Fertili Tea, and have already let myself think, well it must not be working so I'm going to try something else. It's crazy how easily I can get distracted and let to try the new thing when I barely even gave the first thing a chance (it's hard not to when you have friends who are a lot younger than you, getting pregnant with barely any effort at all).

It reminds me a lot of when I was dieting in my 20's. I got caught up in the whole process of trying new things and focusing on what was WRONG, rather than focusing on what I was supposed to be doing - putting foods that I felt good about, into my mouth! I need to focus on what is truly important - being healthy. For me and whatever potential baby I might bring into the world. And that means taking supplements REGULARLY, drinking lots of water, and eating healthy. In my experience with weight loss, I found that the thing that was preventing me from achieving it was all my anxiety around it. I was focusing on the wrong things. God tends not to give you the best things in life, when you do them for the wrong reasons. So I need to continue to think fertile thoughts, and keep doing what is good for my body.

I think it's also important to psyche myself out to be prepared for this to take months to work, and know what I will do if it doesn't work. If I use all these products regularly for 4 months and it doesn't work, then I'll try not using fertil aid and see if that works (i could be one of these women who should NOT use the stuff). If that doesn't work, I'll try Fertil Plus. And if that doesn't work after 4 months, I'll try that herbalist I mentioned a post or two ago. And if that doesn't work I would consider IVF or adoption if I could afford it. If not, I would look into becoming a foster parent.

Anyway, to encourage myself, I'm adding links for the testimonial pages, of the stuff I'm taking, that I really like and would recommend to others:

Fertil Aid: Fertil Aid: http://www.amazon.com/FertilAid-Women-Female-Fertility-Supplement/product-reviews/B0002G2M9Y/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R2SOFW9NEC5SON

Fertile CM: http://www.amazon.com/Fairhaven-Health-FertileCM-Veggie-Caps/product-reviews/B000GQSMOE/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

Fertili Tea: http://www.amazon.com/FertiliTea-Natural-Fertility-Tea-Blend/product-reviews/B0006SFQGO/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

Pre-Seed: http://www.amazon.com/Pre-Seed-Personal-Lubricant-Multi-use-Tube/product-reviews/B001DNIMH6/ref=cm_cr_dp_all_helpful?ie=UTF8&coliid=&showViewpoints=1&colid=&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

This is a GREAT video showing how herbs can help your fertility...

Fertility herbs

The video is about Sharkey's healing center, and how "A curent affair" in Australia, featured the center and suddenly thousands of women were getting pregnant!

Fertil Plus

This place has really good testimonials. I sent this link to a friend of mine a few months ago but then couldn't find the email or remember the name of the site. Luckily I actually remembered to bookmark it. I love it that there are AUDIO testimonials. It makes me hopeful just to hear them.

http://fertilplus.com/

UPDATE JANUARY 2012: OK people, as it turned out, I tried this stuff and it actually WORKED FOR ME. YES, FERTIL PLUS REALLY DOES WORK! I am proof and living testimonial! You can read my story here: http://knockknockbaby.blogspot.com/2012/01/omg-im-actually-pregnant.html  and what I did to get pregnant (including taking FertilPlus here: http://knockknockbaby.blogspot.com/2012/01/omg-im-actually-pregnant.html).  Soooo happy I finally bought this stuff!!!!!