The Vessel of the Mother: Fertility Healing with Acupuncture in Santa Rosa, CA

I just re-read my original post from several years ago for this blog. What is alive for me today in that writing is my hope and vision. Now that I have a lot of experience under my belt dealing with various kinds of infertility, recurrent miscarriages, and then later helping women through pregnancies and occasionally doing things like turning breech fetuses or inducing labor using acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, I must say I have positively a more sober additude. My compassion also, however has grown for some of the suffering that goes with infertility and I realize it is not always an easy road to pregnancy and the struggle can sometimes continue after the positive test comes.

This weekend I met up with an old friend whom I hadn't seen in eight years. She shared with me the IUI cycles they had been through, the testicular cancer diagnosis her husband had been through and her second trimester miscarriage. Although my own journey to motherhood had been relatively easier and simpler I could truly empathize with her in a way I wouldn't have been able to eight years ago, a time before I began my formal acupuncture practice specializing in infertility. The truth is I feel like I journeyed along side these women through the "failed cycles," the losses, the trepidation and finally embracing of success, which for some came in the form of adoption or even moving on from the process and for others did include their own child in arms. I recalled to my friend one particularly gut wrenching story of a mother who struggled with habitual miscarriage and saw me to help her retain a pregnancy. Just when we thought she'd stabilized in terms of no longer experiencing bleeding and cramping (signs of threatened miscarriage) she found out the baby had one of those conditions thought to be incompatible with life known as trisomy 18. She chose to keep the pregnancy and the baby actually had a good outcome for a boy with this condition and lived for several days. Although I recounted to her the sadness I felt in assisting her with this pregnancy, I also noted the gifts that came to me through this case. This woman proved a mother in a very selfless manner that showed me something of the vessel for life women are in pregnancy and child birth. She gave this little soul a chance to express in form when many others would not have. I told my friend that this woman had been a surrogate and I felt like this is part of what allowed her to hold and let go of her own son so gracefully. "It is like she knew she was just the vessel for spirit to come through, I said, like she knew she was just bearing a gift that was not hers to keep."

Although often things are more cheerful and "successful" than some aspects of my care with this woman, the experience emphasized something important for me of the grace that can come through even when a woman does not take home the "little miracle" of a baby. The process of conceiving and bearing a child are just that--miracles, and we must not get lost in the material aspects of that creation so much that we forget to connect to the divine in the receiving of the gifts of children. While I teach women to attend to practical aspects of childbearing such as better diet and self massage, in this process we must forget to beseach the divine for its blessing, allowing our own divinity be illuminated by our expression as mothers or caregivers (in my case) in this world.

For more information about having a healthy and divine conception visit http://www.santarosa-acupuncture.com or call Kat Delse Mardirous, L.Ac. at 707 775-8311