DIY Mom by Rachel Lehmann-Haupt

Author:Rachel Lehmann-Haupt [Lehmann-Haupt, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: She Writes Press
Published: 2014-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

Fertility Goddess

I didn't get pregnant during that first insemination despite the auspicious gust of wind, and I didn’t get pregnant on the second try a few months later either. But I was now determined. I was well aware that my age made getting pregnant more difficult and increased my chance of miscarriage, but nothing lost, nothing gained. I threw myself, quite obsessively, into the challenge.

I was still going back to New York to visit my family every few months, so I did my third insemination in the spring at the NYC fertility clinic on a cold examination table. After I didn’t get pregnant on that try, Dr. Noyes looked at me and said bluntly, “Rachel, you’re about to turn 42. You're not young. I think you need to consider in vitro fertilization.”

Even though I knew the statistics, I felt as if she had stabbed me. I didn’t have $15,000 to put toward that procedure, and even if I could somehow come up with the money through loans and financing, I definitely didn’t want to spend even more money if it didn’t work the first time. I’d seen too many women start down this route and, $45,000 later, still not have a baby. If I couldn’t get pregnant through relatively natural insemination, I decided, it just wasn’t meant to be. But I tried to stay in the moment and not freak out.

As a born-and-bred New Yorker, I was raised with the values of scientific and

intellectual rigor—and a healthy dose of cynicism. I’ve always thought that most self-directed New Age programs and philosophies were altogether too woo-woo. I’m generally put off by the proverbial California hug on first meeting, and I cringe at the notion of energy healers and the word channel when used in the context of “I’m channeling your energy” and birthing, as in “I’m birthing a new idea.” Nonetheless, I threw the whole holistic New Age book at the problem. I went back to California and became the kind of person I hated and typically mocked. To get my fertility in the best shape I could, I quit drinking alcohol and went on a strict fertility diet. No wheat. I started to get weekly traditional Mayan massages of my abdomen, which were supposed to help guide the reproductive organs to a more balanced position. Every morning, I listened over and over to a visualization CD called Meditations for a Fertile Soul. In a calming, singsong voice, a woman named Jennifer told me to envision “a golden cord running the length of my spinal column. As you breathe, the cord begins to lengthen out of your body and down to the floor. It grows and grows with each breath going into the ground and running deep within the earth. Notice how you feel as you are anchored into the great power of the earth, all that is nature, all that is being.”

I started talking about how my houseboat (because it floated like a baby in a womb) channeled yin, feminine energy from the core of the earth, and this was good for my fertility.

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