Med Free

Guess what I'm doing? I'm going med-free!

No, no, no, not those meds. (Speaking of which, lupron is going fine, except I think my tummy is getting tired of the nightly puncture....little does it know that it's about to get two punctures per night!!.. follistim should start tomorrow night.... my RE will call to confirm because they don't want to start a ton of girls on stims at the same time, so they try to stagger "us"....like some people start tomorrow, some start friday, etc.)

I'm talking about cramp-fighting meds!

You read that right. I am proudly mid-day on CD2 without having taken anything for cramps so far! Are you proud of me? I am!

It all started with my acupuncturist. At our very first appointment, I didn't mark "Cramps" on the "symptom" list. She asked about it ("you don't have cramps?"), and I said, well yes, I do, but they are mild compared to what I hear others' are, so I didn't think it was anything to mark.

She went on to say that in Eastern Medicine, any pain or stress or discomfort is a sign of unbalance.

And that got tucked away in my head.

Fast forward to last Thursday, when I brought it up again. From what she had said about any pain being a sign of unbalance and that even the mildest cramps matter in Eastern Medicine, I made the shaky connection that if a person were to be 100% balanced, they would not have period cramps.

Hello, bizarro world!!!

So I asked her about it! And much to my surprise, she confirmed my suspicions!! She said that cramping is basically viewed as some sort of stagnation and that with better blood flow around the entire body, during your period blood will flow better and reduce the cramps (to nothing? I am still in sort of disbelief.). She mentioned that the traditional chinese do not even have a word for menopause symptoms- like we do here. Because of their diet, exercise, and traditional medicine, the women there did not start to experience the negative menopause symptoms until western society began to pervade their culture! Of course the dropping of hormones was always there, but because of the way they lived, they didn't have the side effects. Isn't that crazy?

So anyway, my acupuncturist has been working on kidney points for blood flow, and so I decided that I was going to put this concept to the test. Normally, I take 2 advil every about 4-6 hours for the first 3 days of my period or so.

But this time, so far, so good without pain meds!! And I do think that the cramps are less in intensity!! There were a couple times yesterday when I would have taken some advil previously, for fear that the cramps would get worse, but yesterday at those moments, I just focused on something else! Actually, one time I even focused on the cramps, to really feel how it felt. (Do you think I've lost my mind?) It was pretty neat, to be honest. I mean, we take medicine to mask the pain, but maybe it would be better to learn how to meet the pain and make our way through it!

After all, I'd love a med-free birth, and I'm pretty sure that will be a tad more uncomfortable! And I figured, this is the last time I'll feel these cramps until our baby is born, so might as well try it out now. Ha!!

So anyway, I am really enjoying this new period experience. (I'm pretty sure I have gone bonkers- did I just write that?!) I feel strong- don't need no stinkin advil!! I am so glad that my acupuncturist brought this up- I don't think it would have occurred to me to try a period without advil otherwise!!

I have a faith-based post rattling around in my head- stay tuned!!