Fertility has many aspects to to it and another expert consult from the Fertility after 40 Telesummit was very helpful to me in clarifying the important issues I need to work on. Marc Sklar, “the fertility expert” used a tool called “the fertility wheel” to isolate some important issues.
Marc Sklar is from San Diego, California, He has extensive experience and expertise in treating and resolving the causes of infertility with classical acupuncture and Chinese medicines. So I guess he would be in a similar vein to Andrew Loosely, but he definitely has his own perspective on things.
His talk at the fertility summit was on four factors to consider when conceiving over 40.
1. Time
I liked the way he talked about how you need to firstly consider the size of the family you want from the start, and this will affect your plans. It’s not just your age, it’s also your patience level and any other medical conditions.
He also spoke about the pressure of time:
As we get older or wait longer to have children and we are trying to deal with making decisions I feel like this time factor shrinks. It becomes much smaller because we have to make very important decisions and we feel like it has to be done in a very quick matter of time.
2. Treatment
This is where the wheel comes in. More on that later. But he suggests starting with natural approaches before going for Western ones.
3. Mental
Infertility is a huge stress. He spoke about one particular aspect: putting your life on hold. I could relate to that a lot. He spoke about a client in tears because of not being able to have coffee or a glass of wine.
If it’s more stressful for you to not have that glass of wine than it is for you to have a glass of wine, then I want you to have a glass of wine. I don’t want you to have a bottle of wine, but I want you to have a glass of wine to help take the edge off.
4. IVF
He says:
I believe about 80% of all couples end up going down the IVF road unnecessarily. I don’t believe that the majority of patients truly need IVF and that’s not why it was intended originally.
I think the most important place where patients really need to consider IVF is: Do I truly have some structural issue going on that really forces me to have to go down that road? When we work with patients that’s the first thing we need to look at. Are my tubes blocked? Are my ovaries not functioning properly? Am I not ovulating? Is there something going on with my husband that’s not allowing for us to get pregnant and it would require us to go through IVF? Is there some sort of genetic issue that he missed?
He did mention that IVF can be useful for other instances e.g. in conjunction with No 1 – time – if you want to have three kids, you can freeze embryos and use them later.
***
Getting back to my consult and my fertility wheel. As you can see, there are some question marks where he did not have the necessary information. But he did identify some issues I need to focus on.
1) Structural: Thin lining. I told him how Dr R had prescribed meds for this (Glucophage) but he said there could be any number of reasons why this is so.
-It could be because of the lap op / C- section
-It could be because of stress / adrenal glands / lack of sleep
Herbs and acupuncture can help, but he said that I do need:
2) Lifestyle and stress management. (Mind, Spirit and Emotions)
If stress is causing my thin lining, I need to do something about that.
I guess I may be “thinly stretched” in my life too.
3) Timing of intercourse: if I have a 26 day cycle, then the window of opportunity around day 13 needs to be 4-5 days before and 2 after.
So, there was a lot to think about.
After having this consult Nicky was sick and puked all night long. What a horrible night. I only slept at about 4am. I love my son dearly and I calmly kept changing clothes and bedding throughout the night, but it got me thinking. Trying to conceive for another child with the demands of another one at the same time is hard. It’s expensive. I’m really not sure how this is all going to pan out but I have to have faith that one way or another, it will all work out for the best.
Leave a Reply