In the beginning...

Well here it is, my first post. I suppose now would be as good a time as ever to fill you in on what prompted me to wax lyrical about making babies.

Chris and I have been trying to get pregnant for eight months now - still within a perfectly acceptable, normal conception time frame. Unless you're a low-patience high achiever like me, then it's an eternity. I was absolutely certain it'd be a slam dunk the first month. Oh, how blissfully ignorant I was back then...

After four months of failed attempts, I took action - outside of the bedroom. I enlisted the help of a dynamic duo, a husband and wife team of Naturopathic Doctors whose practice focuses on fertility and healthy pregnancies and births. After my first appointment, I was sent home with a (graphic) handbook titled The Justisse Method for Fertility Management, charts to fill out and a medicine-cabinet full of herbs, vitamins, oils and powders that promised to do everything from cleanse my liver to boost my faltering adrenal glands.

As it turns out, there's something I like to call the Golden Triangle, a nice, helpful trifecta of glands and organs related to pregnancy achievement - healthy ovaries, a balanced thyroid, and robust adrenals. I was seriously lacking in the last two of the three. One month and one $300 "spit test" later, and it appeared I also suffered from slumping progesterone and a.m. cortisol (a.k.a. hydrocortisone, a steroid hormone produced by the adrenal cortex); never a good sign.

Herbs/oils/powders were altered, treatments continued, charts were analyzed, cervical fluid was examined, and bi-weekly acupuncture sessions were commenced. I'm still not pregnant, but my oh my have things changed. I no longer experience the down right unpleasant PMS I've suffered from my whole life and other indicators of success are positively shifting. I'm a believer.