Laura Bicker
Acupuncturist & Chinese Medicine Practitioner, Laura Bicker – Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioner
Category:
Emotions and Support, Failed IVF Cycles
Her cycles were irregular, sometimes as long as 6 weeks, so as a practitioner, I started to think, why are her cycles long, is she ovulating really late, why is it taking so long for it to ovulate, has a body got a sufficient yin and blood to nourish her follicle to grow.She had a Hysterosalpingography (HSG), and everything was clear, so it was all still unexplained. She did her first round of IVF, she had 13 eggs, 9 of those fertilized at day 3, there were 2 top grade and 5 good embryos, but by day 5, only 1 good blastocyst. That IVF cycle did result in a pregnancy, she did miscarry, so she had a 6-month break, and she did her second round of IVF. She got 12 eggs that time, all fertilized, then at day 3, she had 4 top and 6 good at day 5 embryos. This time 2 embryos were transferred, and it resulted in a low HCG level and a period shortly after, at which point her clinic suggested that she think about egg donation. She had a stressful job, and she wasn’t sleeping enough, therefore, Laura asked the patient to focus on those things and to just try and address that work-life balance. She and her husband got some recommendations on diet, and so they also decided to take a long holiday, after that she and Laura started to do some treatments to focus on this blood stasis and nourishing the spleen and the heart, in these deficiencies seen in her body. One of the things that go hand in hand with heart yin deficiency are signs of anxiety, so it’s important to reduce the stress and balance her body back.
She started IVF, and everything was going well, and we worked throughout her cycle on all of these factors, and her cycle, she had 16 eggs 8 fertilized, and she had 1 blastocyst on day 5, and still at this point, she was fairly negative because the pattern had followed very similar cycles before with not many blastocysts to transfer. I saw her after a two-week wait, and what I could see was that she had very good kidney energy, her pulse was really strong, and that’s the thing that we look for in Chinese medicine. Because of her history of miscarriage, I used herbs to support her pregnancy, and she got past that 6-week stage that she’d never passed before, she got past the 8-week stage which for me is crucial because once you get past 8 weeks that chance of miscarriage reduces to less than 1% and she had a 12-week scan and baby was healthy. She’s now progressing along beautifully. I think that’s a nice example of how we can look at a failed IVF cycle and find the things that just need tweaking a little bit to give us that successful pregnancy.
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Contact details: The European Fertility Society C.I.C., 2 Lambseth Street, Eye, England, IP23 7AGNecessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
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