The Joy of Needles

One of the interesting little detours I've taken along this crazy infertility road is to the acupuncturist. I'd read some research showing that having acupuncture treatments before and after retrieval and transfer can increase blood flow to your lady parts and thus enhance one's chances of a) popping a good number of quality, mature eggs, and b) having the embryos implant after transfer. Do I believe this? Well, yes....and maybe no.

The bottom line is that it doesn't really matter. I tried acupuncture for the first time and was immediately hooked. First of all, there's something strangely seductive about the fact that I know NOTHING about how Chinese medicine works -- after all of the doctor visits of the last two years, and all of the endless research, and all of the questions I've thrown at all of the doctors and nurses I've encountered, it's nice to kind of just let it all go. Secondly, the treatments are just so effing relaxing that I don't particularly care how they work. The needles burn a little teeny bit going in, and then I am off to my happy floaty place. If all these treatments do is provide me with 30 minutes of floaty sanctuary every week during this process, they are worth every penny.

Yesterday, before my fourth treatment, I experienced the wonder of a "reproductive organ massage". While this definitely does not sound like something one should be able to pay for with one's flexible spending account, and definitely was not as interesting as my husband THOUGHT it was going to be, it was both weird and wonderful. I get "regular" massages pretty frequently, so have pretty much seen (felt?) it all, but this was totally different. I have never had my, um, midsection massaged quite so thoroughly. And the scalp and neck massage (not sure how this fits into the "reproductive organ" theme, but see previous paragraph about knowing nothing and not minding one bit) -- I almost slipped the guy a couple of twenties to keep on going. And then, the needles after that.....heaven. Floaty heaven.

All I can say is: with all this attention, my ovaries and ute had better step up! In the meantime, I'm going to keep getting needled and loving it.