Sunday, June 21, 2009

I've been going to acupuncture for a couple of months now. I've seen some changes, nothing huge from the outside, but it is helping me understand what is going on in my body more. The qi gong is helping similarly. I can more clearly feel my deficiency, on top of the general fatigue that I was feeling before. My acupuncturists (I'm working with two at the same practice) see that I'm yin and blood deficient. Evidently breastfeeding requires a lot of blood and blood draws on yin, so it is all connected. They also noted that I've been yin and blood deficient before -- though I'm trying to figure out where that came from as it wasn't always my diagnosis. I need to check in with them more about that.

I was taking Chinese herbs but I've been having a hard time remembering and they are a bit gross after a while. I'm trying to get a cup in here and there. I have bumped up my vitamin intake as well. I'm taking two prenatal vitamins, a Floradix tablet and every couple of days I'm taking liquid calcium (with magnesium, phosphorus and vitamin D).

I have also been using my fertility monitor this cycle, in the absence of being able to take my temp consistently. My high has been 5 days long and finally after 20-22 days I've got a peak reading (my cycle started off with heavy spotting which made it a little confusing). Actually, it was interesting to see that I started breaking out the night before I got my first high reading and then yesterday, prior to this morning's peak reading, I started to feel a little depressed -- which I thought was probably due to a hormonal shift. Lovely.

I've been talking to J periodically about how when he's bigger he won't nurse any more and that sometimes we might need to not have ba-ba so much all the time. I see this as part of the progression towards fully weaning from the breast.

Oh, and J still has eczema, though keeping a food journal has helped point out some sensitivities to me (chocolate, nuts, shellfish, dairy, probably corn). My partner took him to the ped last week and they drew blood to look for antigens. Evidently the blood draw entirely overwelmed J's nervous system and he started screaming and cried for 30 minutes afterwards. I'm glad I wasn't there, I think I would have been sick.

1 comment:

Phoebe said...

I have the same TCM diagnosis right now, kidney yin and blood deficiency. I'm definitely deficient in hormones. I've added juicing to my regiment, and it seems to be helping. I think I ovulated late on my last cycle too. My acu says that's better than ovulating early.

BTW, you know me from the East Meets West group on Ovusoft. I use a different name on my blog.