Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (95 page)

This technique also helps relieve many other conditions, including inability to reach orgasm, severe recurring menstrual pain, irritable bowel, painful intercourse, endometriosis, and pelvic pain. Numerous studies in peer-reviewed medical journals have documented the effectiveness of the Wurns’ work. (For more information, read
Miracle Moms, Better Sex, Less Pain
[Med-Art Press, 2009] by Belinda Wurn and Larry Wurn, with Dr. Richard King, or contact Clear Passage Therapies at 352-336-1433 or visit
www.clearpassage.com
or
www.miraclemoms.net
.)

Maya abdominal massage, a technique used for centuries by in digenous healers in Central America, is another form of deep tissue massage that has been used to successfully treat infertility as well as other reproductive and pelvic disorders. (See the dysmenorrhea section of chapter 5, “The Menstrual Cycle,” page 134, for a fuller explanation; for a directory of certified practitioners of Maya abdominal massage, visit
www.arvigomassage.com
.)

Women’s Stories

Grace: Childhood Fears

Grace was a successful businesswoman from the Midwest when she first came to see me about her infertility. Married for three years, she had been unable to conceive. Like many of my patients, she preferred to avoid extensive and invasive testing to in vestigate her problem unless it was absolutely necessary. Her reason for this was that she didn’t want anyone “mucking around in there.”

Grace ovulated regularly, had a normal pelvic exam, and experienced regular pain-free periods. She had no history of infection, IUD use, or prior pelvic surgery. In short, nothing about her history would lead me to think that there was anything wrong with her reproductive system. Her husband’s sperm count was normal.

Over the course of her care, she got in touch with a memory from when she was four years old. At that age, she recalled, she had become so ill that she passed out with a high fever and ultimately had to be taken to the hospital. Though she’d felt sick for several days, she had not said anything to her parents until she was quite ill and had devel oped urinary retention. In the hospital she had to be held down by sev eral nurses and orderlies while they inserted a urinary catheter into her bladder. Her mother felt that this represented very unseemly behavior on her daughter’s part.

After Grace’s recovery, her mother took her by the hand and made her apologize for being a “bad girl” to each of the nurses and orderlies who had taken care of her. She remembered acutely how ashamed she had felt. She had always felt that she had had a happy childhood, though she admitted that she couldn’t remember much about it. But her hospital experience and her mother’s abusive behavior had left a very deep wound. I suspect that her childhood was not nearly as happy as she remembered it.

After Grace told me about that childhood hospitalization, her reluctance to undergo invasive testing became understandable. As of this writing, she is working with a therapist and has decided to put her fer tility workup on hold so that she can transform her old fears. She recently told me, “I realize I’m not ready to have a child now. I have too much work to do on myself. I don’t want to pass my own unfinished business on to a child.”

PREGNANCY LOSS

Miscarriage

Approximately one in six pregnancies ends in miscarriage. I tell women that miscarriage is usually nature’s way of getting rid of conceptions that will not result in healthy babies. Generally speaking, healthy babies don’t just miscarry, though there are some factors that may cause that to happen. Women who smoke, unfortunately, do have two times the usual rate of miscarriage, and it appears from studies of the miscarried fetuses that a much higher than usual percentage of them were otherwise normal. Smokers also have decreased success in all aspects of fertility treatments. There are also some data on the link between mercury exposure (usually from dental fillings) and subsequent miscarriage. Mercury should never be used for filling teeth in any case and it should
never
be used in pregnancy. Far better, less toxic materials are readily available. A study by Claire Infante-Rivard, M.D., Ph.D., of McGill University in Montreal, found that consuming an amount of caffeine more than that in three cups of coffee a day during pregnancy nearly tripled the rate of miscarriage.
⁶⁹
However, a later study of 5,144 pregnant women from the State Department of Health Services in Emeryville, California, Kaiser Permanente Division of Research, and the University of California at San Francisco found no significant in creased risk for miscarriage: Among heavy users (300 mg caffeine or three cups of coffee per day) the miscarriage rate increased only slightly. Given that caffeine is a well-documented stimulant and neu rotoxin, it’s advisable for women to decrease or eliminate caffeine consumption before conception and during pregnancy.
⁷⁰

Some more-recent studies have reported recurrent miscarriage secondary to blood clotting or platelet disorders.
⁷¹
In a recent case report, this syndrome was completely healed in a patient using acupuncture and an allergy elimination technique called Bioenergetic Sensitivity and Enzyme Therapy (BioSET), which is similar to NAET; the woman went on to have a normal pregnancy. Given the intricate and intimate connection between genes and the environment, I consider this a very encouraging collaboration between Eastern and Western medicine and would certainly recommend giving it a try if you’ve had recurrent miscarriages.
⁷²

Women who mis carry still must grieve the potential child, though, even if they believe the pregnancy wasn’t “meant to be.” In some cases, they go through as much grief as women who deliver stillborn babies. After a woman has a miscarriage, her chances of having another one are not increased, but many women nonetheless lose trust in their bodies after miscarrying. Grieving and learning to trust again are major issues for women following miscarriage. Another major issue is guilt: Many women have the mistaken impression that something they did must have caused the miscarriage. If you’ve had a miscarriage, don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out
why
. Just stay with what you’re feeling, and give yourself time to mourn your loss.

Several studies have indicated that in women who have repeated (three or more) miscarriages, there may be an interplay between emo tions and the hormonal systems involved in pregnancy. Dr. Robert J. Weil, a researcher on the emotional aspects of infertility, and C. Tupper write, “The pregnant woman functions as a communications system. The fetus is a source of continuous messages to which the mother responds with subtle psychobiological adjustments. Her personality, influenced by her ever-changing life situation, can either (1) act upon the fetus to maintain its constant growth and development or (2) create physiological changes that can result in abortion.”
⁷³
The ways in which a woman’s body modulates her feelings about her pregnancy are diverse, but all are mediated by the immune and endocrine systems and also by the ways in which our thoughts impact cells directly. Thus, stud ies have shown that there are endocrinological imbalances resulting from emotional stress in women who habitually miscarry (known as “habitual aborters” in medical circles) and in those who have what is known as an “incompetent cervix,” a cervix that dilates too quickly, so the uterus cannot hold on to a baby. Some studies of women who habitually miscarry or who have an incompetent cervix have suggested that some of them have difficulty accepting motherhood and their feminine role. Femininity, to these women, means being self-sacrificing, passive, and suffering and having to serve and cater to their husbands (yet control them). They became pregnant “because their husbands wanted a child so badly.” They also felt that “having a child was a woman’s main accomplishment and that not being able to have children meant being inadequate as women.”
⁷⁴
They frequently chose dependent, nonverbal husbands and had restricted social outlets and low adaptability. Due to their aloofness, they were often unable to take part in life around them. The control group of nonmiscarrying women in these studies had much healthier images of womanhood.
⁷⁵
Another study found that “habitual aborters” basically received their pleasure in life through fulfilling the expectations of others. They appeared to react compliantly to the demands of others, despite tension and hostility building in their bodies. Feeling guilty about directly expressing their anger at other people’s demands, their frustration built until their body responded with a physical illness. Miscarrying the child (the “psychoso matic” or “autoimmune” illness in this case) relieved the tension that had built up in their bodies. Interestingly, when many of these same women later underwent psychotherapy and learned how to deal directly with their anger rather than storing it in their bodies, their success rate for subsequent pregnancy was 80 percent, while it was only 6 percent for those who did not go through therapy.
⁷⁶
Though these studies are fairly dated, they certainly support the role of psychological factors in fertility— factors that are very important to address but not beat yourself up with.

Miscarriage is multifactorial, and there’s still a great deal we don’t know. After his wife had her third miscarriage, science writer Jon Cohen embarked on a thorough investigation of the topic and wrote the most comprehensive book on the subject to date, entitled
Coming to Term: Uncovering the Truth
About Miscarriage
(Houghton Mifflin, 2005). Cohen points out the downside of early pregnancy tests—something I’ve seen repeatedly. Early pregnancy tests have actually increased the rate of so-called miscarriage. By diagnosing pregnancy so early—often before a period is even missed and long before the body has had a chance to say yea or nay to the health of a potential embryo—women with a positive early pregnancy test begin to invest emotionally in the pregnancy. And then when the body says no to this embryo, which was never meant to reach viability, the woman may experience enormous grief and feel like a failure when in fact her body was acting appropriately. I’ve seen women repeatedly fall into utter despair over something that is really a gift of wis dom from the body—getting rid of a defective fertilized egg.

Back before early pregnancy tests were available, this so-called miscarriage would have been nothing more than a slightly late or heavier than normal period. And this experience wouldn’t be perceived as a sign of failure or inadequacy by the woman herself. (Some experts sug gest that up to 90 percent of fertilized eggs never make it to term. And most of these don’t even get far enough to make enough hormone for a positive pregnancy test.) I have watched women put themselves in utter despair over this kind of miscarriage, which leads them to believe that their bodies have failed. Nothing could be further from the truth. The good news, as Cohen documents, is that a woman’s chance of successfully carrying a baby to term actually increases after each sub sequent miscarriage. The books mentioned in the approach to fertility resources for this chapter have helped many women heal miscarriage problems.

Ectopic Pregnancy

A fertilized egg normally implants in the lining of the uterus. Implantation anywhere else is called an ectopic pregnancy. Approximately 1.9 percent of all pregnancies are ectopic, with the risk (higher in nonwhite women than in white women) having increased tenfold from 1970 through 2004. These increases have been reported not only for the United States but also for Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and Great Britain. The most likely causes for this increase in ectopic pregnancy are the following:

1.
The prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases, which can lead to tubal scarring

2.
The ability of transvaginal ultrasound and early pregnancy tests to pick up the diagnosis in pregnancies that would simply reabsorb on their own

3.
The use of tubal sterilization techniques

4.
The increase in C-sections, which increases the risk of ectopic pregnancies in subsequent pregnancies, and finally
5.
The use of tubal surgery to repair damaged tubes

The diagnosis of ectopic pregnancy is made in a woman with a positive pregnancy test when an ultrasound fails to find evidence of preg nancy in the uterus (a small sac of fluid surrounding an embryo and known as a gestational sac). When this happens, a series of blood tests several days apart are drawn to determine whether the amount of pregnancy hormone beta HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) is increasing or decreasing. If it is decreasing, then it is safe to watch and wait and simply follow the patient carefully with blood tests every other day or so. But if the beta HCG level continues to in crease and there is still no evidence of pregnancy in the uterus itself, then the pregnancy is presumed to be in the wrong location. Often it will show up as a mass in one of the tubes on ultrasound. Sometimes you can even feel it on pelvic exam. Since a ruptured fallopian tube can be life-threatening because of hemorrhaging, ectopic pregnancies that are growing must be treated. This is usually done with the chemotherapy drug methotrexate, which kills rapidly growing cells. This works in the majority of cases, and the tube reabsorbs the ectopic tissue over time. When medical treatment fails, surgery is necessary. A woman who has had an ectopic pregnancy has a 7 to 15 percent chance of having a recurrence because of scarring in the tube.

Though ectopic pregnancy accounts for 10 percent of all pregnancy-related deaths, the actual death rate from this pregnancy complication has decreased tenfold in the past few decades, most likely due to improved diagnosis and management.
⁷⁷
Whenever a pregnant woman has pain and bleeding in the first trimester, an ectopic pregnancy needs to be ruled out.