Dear Friends at Mama Lounge,
I want to share a brief testimonial, aka. my acupuncture love story. I wanted the opportunity to put into words why I’m willing to rearrange my schedule every few weeks to lie on a table to be poked with needles, and I hope it can help other women out there, like myself, who are confused as to their birth control options and trying to understand the transition from hormonal contraception to fertility.
Something that I want to share specifically with your clients, is that acupuncture helped me to heal from damaging side effects of birth control pills.
Please don’t get me wrong, you know that I am a passionate advocate for reproductive justice and a woman’s right to choose, and I think hormonal contraception has served a great role in liberating women, but my body personally did not jive with synthetic hormones. I was grateful to have them available in my late teens and early twenties when I was nowhere near ready to become a mother. However, my hormones went absolutely haywire in my late twenties, when I decided to stop taking the pill and explore fertility awareness methods of birth control.
As my body adjusted to a synthetic-hormone-free existence, my natural hormone levels plummeted and blood tests revealed that my body was essentially in a state of perimenopause. I stopped menstruating regularly, my hair became broken and brittle, my skin exploded with acne, and my moods fluctuated by the second. Luckily for me, this is when I found acupuncture! And with a dedicated acupuncture habit & regular herbal regimen, these symptoms subsided. I feel very fortunate, in fact, to have found my way off hormonal conception at an early age- I was 28 when I came off the birth control. It took me about 2 years to balance my body and I found myself pregnant at 31 without much effort.
While I cannot claim that I loved pregnancy, I did attend acupuncture religiously, and gave birth to a hearty acubaby on my due date, after being induced with an acupuncture treatment. The labor was quick and complication-free and my little one experienced an infancy completely free of illness or complication. Though I personally did struggle through the tumultuous post-partum period. Once again, my acupuncturist was by my side, offering balance, nourishment and valuable insight.
In the end I believe the work I did up front to transition off birth control and let my body balance on it’s own before pregnancy allowed for a smooth and natural fertility, pregnancy and childbirth. I see a lot of my peers needing very strong hormonal interventions in their 30’s, and I am beyond grateful to have been spared that.
Thank you, Mama Lounge!
