Taking charge

I am still loving The Fertile Female by Julia Indichova. The link is two or three posts down. I have read it twice now, and I really feel energized by it. My therapist was telling me that I have to see this delay in the IVF as a positive thing, to think about the benefits and blessings. And so I'm trying to jump in with both feet and think that what I really need to do is go at this IVF with everything I've got. Oh sure, I said for previous IVFs I was really giving them everything, but I wasn't. Not everything.

You see, I was still giving the power for my own health and fertility to other people. To the doctors and acupuncturists and manufacturers of herbal preparations. I was looking for healing to come from the outside in, whereas I need to look for healing from the inside out. I need to figure out what it is that's holding me back, that's blocking me, that's preventing me living in the moment and potentially conceiving. While of course availing myself of the best that modern medicine has to offer, but in a partnership, not a giving-over of power.

So I cancelled this week's acupuncture session. And every alternate session thereafter. I'm not ready to give it up entirely, but I'm going down to once every two weeks. I figure I've got all the healing out of acupuncture that I'm going to get, but I can keep going as a prop. Routine maintenance, as it were. I may switch down to once every month if I get brave. And I gotta say, it felt like such a rush. Like I was finally taking charge. Just because Randine Lewis says that acupuncture is the Infertility Cure doesn't mean that it's MY infertility cure. So even though it may seem on the outside to be such a small thing - after all, I'm still going to be going, albeit less often, on the inside it feels much bigger than that. Much much bigger.

I've also been experimenting with foods, and I made a kick-ass miso soup yesterday, even if I do say so myself. I've never made "real" miso soup before, just always used a packet mix. But I made a kombu broth, and then mixed in fresh miso paste. Oh the heavenly smells that wafted up! It was like my body was saying "yes, yes, yes!" Seaweed and miso! Gimme, gimme, gimme. Who knew? When I thought my body craved ice cream and dark chocolate, eating this stuff felt like manna from heaven. And it was so deeply satisfying to eat it. I felt that finally I was nourishing myself. I mean, don't get me wrong, I try to eat healthily anyway, but I feel that Julia has shown me which foods really deeply nourish me and which foods I should avoid.

So, there we are. I'm putting a positive spin on the delay. And, hell yes, I'm going to avoid church tomorrow. But next week I intend to start going again. Of course, by next weekend, I will know the score with the Hep C. I have to say, it's going to be so much easier to keep up the positive thinking if I have no viral load and am cleared to cycle again. If I have to have interferon treatment, I'm sure it'll be very easy to crumble and fall. But I'm determined to cross that bridge only if I get to it. I very easily fall into worrying about things that may never happen and basing such worries on imaginings (like imagining that a positive Hep C means no more IVF ever and no adoption - not true). So, here's hoping. Here's hoping that I can maintain the momentum, and not fall into the pit of despair if the test results don't go according to plan.