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ACUPUNCTURE FOR FERTILITY & PREGNANCY

Most people are now aware that acupuncture can be helpful in promoting natural conception and in supporting IVF treatment. According to traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture can help to regulate the menstrual cycle, nourish the womb lining, stimulate ovulation, encourage implantation, and generally strengthen a woman’s fertility, as well as improve male fertility. Considerable research has been carried out in these areas in recent years and there is an increasing body of evidence to support the use of acupuncture to help couples both with natural conception and assisted conception, or IVF.

You may find it helpful to read the British Acupuncture Council's briefing paper on treating female fertility problems. Research has also demonstrated benefits to male fertility where a man’s sperm count, vitality, or motility may need boosting.

Dwara has undertaken extensive postgraduate studies in fertility and obstetrics and seeks to support couples in their journey towards pregnancy and giving birth. In addition to acupuncture, she may give dietary advice and lifestyle suggestions about exercise or rest, which experience indicates have helped couples in the past.

Trying to conceive can be a very stressful experience, especially if IVF is required, and acupuncture is also very helpful for aiding relaxation, stress management, good digestion and sleep.

IVF and acupuncture

Apart from helping to prepare a woman’s body for pregnancy, acupuncture can give specific help when a couple engage in IVF treatment. Many patients say that acupuncture can help to relieve the side effects of the down-regulation drugs.

Where women have smaller numbers of eggs, acupuncture can help to make the ovaries more responsive to the drugs.

And there has been considerable research in recent years, indicating that acupuncture can increase implantation rates. The British Medical Journal has published a meta-analysis of the increase in successful IVF implantation rates when acupuncture is given with embryo transfer.

A useful website on the whole subject of IVF and acupuncture is the one belonging to the IVF Acupuncture Support Clinic in Sydney, run by Jane Lyttleton, an acknowledged expert in this field, whose course Dwara attended in the UK in 2007. Click on this link for research and reviews posted by the clinic.

How acupuncture could help when you're pregnant

Once you are pregnant acupuncture can continue to be helpful in many ways.

Dwara has been treating pregnant women over the last seventeen years. In her experience, acupuncture is frequently able to help in many ways, which can improve your health and energy during the nine months of your pregnancy. If you have not already been seeing her for help to become pregnant, then on your first visit, she will take a complete history as well as asking you to tell her about how you are feeling at the moment. She tailors her treatments according to your needs in each trimester and according to your response.

Women often have acupuncture during pregnancy to help in these ways

• To help strengthen your body’s ability to carry the baby, and lessen the chances of miscarriage. Research shows that regular treatment with acupuncture designed to reduce anxiety offers you important and reassuring support during the first few weeks of pregnancy. Clinical trials have shown that regular monitoring and reassurance reduces miscarriage rates.
• To ease nausea and vomiting, and heartburn.
• To generate energy, especially in the first and third trimesters.
• To calm anxiety and enable more peaceful sleep.
• To relieve the pain of symphisis pubis diastasis (this is pain created by the stretching of the ligaments where the pubic bones join).
• To turn the baby if it is in the wrong position. This is usually done by using moxibustion (a herb smouldered near the skin) rather than acupuncture. New Zealand evidence based best practice guidelines recommend that moxibustion may be offered to women from 33 weeks with breech presentation.
• To help you relax and feel less fearful, as your due date approaches.
• To help prepare your body for labour in the later weeks: In addition to helping you to relax and boosting your energy, midwives in New Zealand have found that acupuncture can help to ripen the cervix and they gathered further data assessing all the benefits of prebirth acupuncture for 169 women.
• To help stimulate the onset of labour when the baby is overdue – this procedure can result in contractions starting gently and naturally, usually within a few hours of acupuncture treatment or over the next day or two. Often, all that is needed is treatment to help you relax. Once a feeling of safety is generated, your body is more likely to go into spontaneous labour.
• To help with any health problem, for which you might normally seek acupuncture treatment.

Help for birth partners

Labour can be a very trying experience for fathers as well as their mothers. Watching someone you love in labour, knowing she is in pain and being unable to help, is quite frustrating.

Many women also hope for as natural a birth as possible and are looking for ways to help manage their birth experience smoothly and safely.

So, towards the end of pregnancy, Dwara can teach prospective fathers or birth partners the use of acupressure points in labour. These are very helpful in any normal labour, although not intended in any way to substitute for proper medical or midwife care.

She demonstrates, on you, the location of about half a dozen points, and makes sure your birth partner knows how to find and use these points, explaining what each point does. She includes an illustrated handout.

Your birth partner can then use these points as you wish, to help calm you, reduce nausea and vomiting, take the edge off the pain of contractions and stimulate contractions if they begin to fade.

Although less intense than acupuncture, acupressure is reported to be really helpful during labour, and there are reports that acupuncture can benefit the condition of babies at birth – it seems likely that acupressure too, will have a beneficial effect.

Safety

Sometimes people are worried about having treatments during pregnancy. However, acupuncture is very safe and is a long-established form of treatment which works on the principle of balancing the body’s Qi (pronounced “chee”). It is a very gentle treatment, using exceptionally fine sterile needles to stimulate the Qi in specific ways, appropriate to each individual patient, and Dwara has been treating pregnant women for many years.

Post natal support

After you have given birth, amidst the exhilaration of having a new baby, women often feel very exhausted and possibly low in spirits. Labour makes huge demands on your energy, as do hormonal changes, night-time feeding and the strain of adjusting to such a dramatic change in lifestyle. You may find acupuncture and Chinese dietary advice very helpful in restoring your energy and mood.