Towards the end of the break I took from medical infertility treatments and while using acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine to treat my unexplained infertility, my husband returned from an appointment with his acupuncturist excited about Mayan Abdominal Massage. I had never heard of it before and I was intrigued. My husband’s acupuncturist had taken a training course with one of the first certified practitioners of Dr. Rosita Arvigo Techniques of Mayan abdominal massage who happened to live in Manhattan and so I was referred to her. Mayan abdominal massage, also known as the Arvigo Techniques, is an ancient, non-invasive treatment for a variety of ailments including infertility. I love any excuse for a massage and so I was all for it. This was truly [...] Read more »

After eight months of ineffective medical fertility treatments, I was exhausted, depressed, and generally unwell.  I wasn’t ready to give up on having a child of my own, but I couldn’t stomach another invasive treatment or round of medications that supercharged my hormones and yanked my emotions around like a yo-yo.  I turned instead to the ancient practice of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). TCM is a holistic approach to healing where everything is connected.  It is based on the theory that energy (called Qi) runs through the body along paths (called meridians).  When this flow of energy is blocked or out of balance it causes illness.  I think of it as a four car pile-up on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE) at rush hour, you [...] Read more »

After struggling to conceive for about a year, I scheduled an appointment with my OB/GYN to see if anything was wrong.  She couldn’t find anything unusual and so referred me to a private fertility clinic in New York City for additional testing. We had been using an ovulation predictor kit, but I traveled a lot for work so we didn’t always get it right.  While we were starting to worry that there might be a larger issue, we still felt that our chances of conceiving naturally were pretty good. We hoped that the additional testing would give us a clean bill of health and alleviate some of the stress we were feeling, which, in turn, would help me get pregnant.  For us, going to this [...] Read more »

Unexplained infertility is the diagnosis given when a woman is not getting pregnant and there is no medical reason found to explain why.  It is a particularly frustrating diagnosis because as you go from intervention to intervention you get increasingly desperate.  If they don’t know what’s wrong, how can they fix it? Treatment Options: There are a number of options anyone experiencing unexplained infertility can try.  I’ll explain them here from least invasive to most invasive. Keep Trying When I look back on my journey to motherhood, I regret jumping into the medical interventions so quickly.  Once you are on that trip it gathers momentum quickly and you can soon feel like you are spinning out of control. From where I am now, I think [...] Read more »