Although we are all different and everyone’s story will have its own outcome, there is definitely some comfort to be found in hearing about miracle pregnancies that beat the odds.

Today I’m really excited to have a guest poster on Seaside Sundays to share her own fertility success story. I’ve known Sonia for over 10 years and couldn’t believe it when she shared her own fertility struggles with me. I’ll let her tell you in her own words;

It took me a long time to get pregnant. More than two years. It would’ve been a lot longer had I not discovered something special.

Maybe for some, two years doesn’t seem like a long time but for me, it felt like an eternity. I really, really wanted a baby.

I cooed over every single baby I’d see in the supermarket. I’d chat with every mom and baby I’d meet on my daily walks (yes, I went for walks every day because moderate physical activity helps fertility).

Every day of me not getting pregnant was another day that was separating me from the beautiful little girl who had visited me in my dreams years ago.

Years before getting pregnant I dreamed I was holding a 3 or 4 year old beautiful girl in my lap while she slept. The love I felt for her in my dream was fierce and so real. I wanted my dream to come true.

After we got married, we tried having kids right away.

We initially wanted to wait but perhaps not so surprisingly, marriage came hand in hand with baby fever, for both of us. So we wasted no time.

I complained to my doctor about six months after trying and failing, and he said I was too stressed.

My cycles have always been very regular, and my paps just fine. Yet my life was not stressful and I knew his answer was untrue. I meditate, exercise, eat healthy (lots of greens and red fruit, veggies and meat).

I also had a good balance of work/life balance.. Anyhow, he told me to come back after another six months. I did.

He scheduled an appointment for me to see a gynecologist and that took another five months.

So now we were at a year and a half of TTC and the OBGYN was also waving me off and telling me I was probably too stressed.

“Go on vacation” was her advice. I told her I went on more vacations than anyone else I knew.

In the meantime, my husband’s parents were constantly asking us what the hold up was. I was called “lazy” as a joke but it hurt.

Little did they know that something was not right and I was being labeled as “stressed”, rather than being tested.

Around this time, I was sharing my journey with a good friend and she recommended going to see a practitioner of Chinese traditional medicine for acupuncture.

Apparently, this woman had helped a few of her friends get pregnant. I toyed with the idea but chose to go and go the medical route instead. Little did I know that these can actually go hand in hand.

With some insisting, ( I kept going to see my family doctor to convince him to have the gynecologist refer me to a fertility clinic), the gynecologist finally scheduled me to see a fertility doctor.

That’s when I realized that to get anything done in a country where healthcare is public, you really need to be aggressive.

It was annoying and not my style but as I said, I wanted a baby! Thankfully, I got my appointment at the fertility clinic and it was fairly straightforward

At the fertility clinic, they did a bunch of tests and saw that I had a low egg supply. It seemed like the only way I’d get pregnant would be through estrogen injections.

I was fine with that because there was nothing else I could possibly do, so I thought. Anyhow, the fertility doctor wanted to do a little bit more probing and I agreed.

After a pelvic ultrasound, they discovered I had a partial septate. Pardon me?

I’d never heard of this in my life. Apparently, I had some extra flesh on my uterus, right where the embryo is supposed to implant.

This was besides the low egg reserve. The partial separate usually leads to infertility or multiple miscarriages. So now we knew what the hold up was.

The fertility doctor explained that I needed surgery to remove the extra skin and even after the surgery, I’d have to do estrogen injections because my egg reserve was less than four. Got it.

Off I went for surgery on a miserable December morning, exactly two years and one month after getting married. The gynecologist told me not to try getting pregnant for two months after the surgery.

I reminded her that either way, I’d have do estrogen injections. Her response was “you never know.” I was scheduled to do a post OP exam on Feb 26. Let me just tell you that the post-OP exam became a pregnancy test.

In the meantime, I kept thinking about that Chinese acupuncturist. I decided to go see her at the beginning of February.

After doing some research, I discovered that Chinese traditional acupuncture can be extremely beneficial for certain women, depending on their fertility issues. What did I have to lose?

The experience was strange, the doctor made all sorts of remarks about how I was too tight in the pelvic area and my womb was very “cold”.

She then left me with 6 inch needle shooting out of different parts of my body while she went off to cook. I felt a bit better once they were out and a lot better in the days to come.

She told me to return in two weeks. And she assured me that one, maximum two sessions were all I would need.

Well, two weeks after my appointment, I was sure I was pregnant so I called her to cancel and three and a half weeks later, I took a pregnancy test.

Lo and behold, I was pregnant – on our first try. I cancelled my post-OP appointment and scheduled an appointment with my family doctor instead.

The fertility doctor was shocked and probably disappointed because he was definitely encouraging us to go the IVF route to speed things up. And IVF is one profitable business.

But I had a secret weapon. Thank you Chinese acupuncturist. And now, I’ve got my little girl who looks very much like the beautiful child I held in my dreams.

For more on acupuncture, herbal medicine and fertility enhancement, please visit www.berkleycenter.com