My journey from infertility to pregnancy — Ayurvedic fertility treatment
My journey to pregnancy is not a unique one. Many women suffer from fertility issues. About 10% of women in the US ages 15–44 have difficulty getting or staying pregnant. According to the Indian Society of Assisted Reproduction, in the land of booming population, almost 27,5 million couples who are actively trying to conceive suffer from infertility. Another estimate is that infertility affects about 10 to 14 percent of the Indian population, with higher rates in urban areas where one out of six couples is impacted. In my native Finland, as many as 15% of all couples are estimated to have experienced involuntary infertility. However, most of them have been able to conceive and birth a child later on.
This is a phenomena I have also witnessed on my YouTube channel. In my pregnancy announcement, I mentioned that my husband and I had battled fertility issues for several years, and ever since, I have been requested topic to make a vlog about my fertility issues and how we finally managed to conceive — and carry until 34 weeks so far.
August 2020, about 13 weeks pregnant
Due to the sensitivity of the topic and the strong emotions couples go through in their battles, infertility is still a bit of a taboo, even though it has gained more visibility in the media in recent year. Even for me, generally an extremely open person, it was impossible to open up to people about the pain I was experiencing before finally conceiving. I was sometimes able to share my feelings with my husband, mother and therapist, but over all I felt completely alone with the gaping hole in my heart. Which is why I really want to share my story from infertility to the not-so-common solution we finally found.
Most women don’t know they have any fertility issues until they start trying to conceive. And I most certainly never thought I’d have any problems to get pregnant when the time was right for having a baby. I got pregnant when I was only 20 years old, even though I was on the pill and wasn’t having regular sex with my boyfriend of the time. I had an abortion — which is a story for another time — I saw this as proof of being “super-fertile” regardless of health issues I had in my teens and early 20s.
Being a mother has been my biggest dream since I was a small kid myself. But as I had “nothing to worry about”, I focused on other things throughout my 20s. I worked on healing from childhood traumas and mental health issues, and just over all growing up to be a mature person who could take care of herself. I got a nice job in a field that I liked and became financially independent. I focused on hobbies and learned to enjoy being by myself. I had fun with friends.
I thought it was difficult to find someone even for long-term dating, so I focused on being a better person myself. I was in no hurry to start a family and didn’t want to make compromises about my standards, so I spent years asking myself not only if I’d be ready to have a child, but if I truly wanted one someday. Finding a partner who I could settle down with wasn’t a priority, until 2016 when I was 27 and realised that everything else in my life was going well and I enjoyed life so much that I was ready to start thinking about that next big step in my life. I stopped casual dating and kept my eyes open only for serious partners.
August 2020
I met my now-husband in 2016 and from the get-go it was clear to me that he was going to be the father to my future children. We discussed our ideas about having a family very early on and once things got physical we decided to carry on without contraception. I had got off the pill a couple of years earlier due to the side effects and was absolutely unwilling to use any hormonal options. Neither of us wanted to use a condom. We used the withdrawal method for a while — do note that this is not reliable at all! — but then gave up on that too. We weren’t actively trying to conceive, but would’ve been ready for the consequences if I ended up pregnant. We mostly relied on the realistic probability of nothing happening, as we spent most of the year in a long-distance relationship and even when we were in the same city we only met once a week.
And nothing happened, in more than four years. Not when we moved together and started sharing our daily lives together. Not even when we actually started to actively try to get pregnant. Slowly, I faced the terrible possibility that we might have issues with fertility.
To this date, I have no idea what exactly is the reason for our difficulties in getting pregnant. I first visited the most popular fertility expert in Visakhapatnam in March 2019. After extensive blood and urine tests and scans, she informed us that everything is okay. I could stand to gain a couple of kilos though and start taking folic acid supplements daily to help conceive. If there were still no results in six months, I should book another appointment, so we could take some further tests.
Weight gain didn’t happen due to existing health issues, but I was doing my best to eat more and have lots of nutrients in the next months. I was regularly taking my supplements. And together we were, well you know, trying too. We didn’t get to go to the specialist in Visakhapatnam again, because we relocated to the other side of the country about 6 months after our first checkup. We had some issues with getting a new house in Kerala, so we had to travel for a few months after our move. All the while nothing was happening and I was growing ever so desperate, I felt the modern/Western medicine was failing me. At least there should be a reason why I wasn’t getting pregnant!
October 2020
I visited another gynaecologist in Finland when I spent a month in my hometown in February 2020, almost a year after my first fertility checkup in India. I felt a need to also see a doctor in my native country, in my native language, to be able to completely “trust” the information regarding my fertility situation. My Finnish gynaecologist also ran some blood tests and did a full internal examination with scans. As a result, she confirmed what the specialist in Visakhapatnam had told me. There should be no biological reason for me to not get pregnant. Again, I could just gain a bit of weight, avoid stress and keep taking my supplements. If nothing happens in one more year, I should see a doctor for more extensive testing.
I honestly hated doctors at that point. I was almost 32 years old and had been sexually active with the same partner, without contraception, for four years without any results. And all the doctors did was tell me to keep trying and come back later if nothing still happens. I was left without reasons and solutions. I had had co-existing health issues for several years, especially ever since I had arrived in India for the first time. But no one was paying much attention to these issues and their probable impact on my fertility. “Eat more and gain a few kilos.” “Don’t stress and worry so much.”
On my first trip to India in 2016, I got a pretty severe stomach infection. Once I returned to Finland and got more treatment, I found out I had got parasites — blastocystis hominis. The medical care I received didn’t help at all though. I got several antibiotics treatments, but I only ever had a bad reaction to those and the parasites wouldn’t go away either. I developed a chronic diarrhoea and everything I ate basically came out of me for several years. My body wasn’t absorbing any nutrients.
In the course of the first year of my illness, I lost almost 25 kilos in weight and had very less muscle and no fat left in my body at that point. I also lost my period for the first time in my life for several months at the end of 2017 and had to get those medically started again. Eventually, my digestion stabilised a bit. There were some normal times as long as I was careful about what I ate and took some digestive aids daily. Sometimes I had diarrhoea and sometimes constipation. And I was able to gain a couple of kilos back. I also got a B12 treatment and iron infusion in Finland in the summer of 2019, which helped me to feel a lot healthier. But the vitamin treatments weren’t enough to help on the baby front. Also, in the summer of 2019, my father suddenly passed away, which triggered a severe PTSD reaction in me. Being sick for many years at that point and dealing with many major changes in my life had already had quite a toll on my mental health. But my father’s passing was too much for me and I dealt with anxiety and PTSD for several months after. To top this with the fear of infertility, how could one not stress a bit?
January 2021
I’ve had a severe case of baby fever ever since I met my husband, the strongest physical need to have a baby that is biologically ours. Even when we weren’t seriously trying to conceive, I always had this little secret hope in my heart every month that I just might be pregnant. Due to irregular periods, I sometimes missed the bleeding here and there for a month or two. And my hopes would get just a little bit higher until a negative pregnancy test would bring them back down again. I must have done 20–30 tests in the last few years and eventually even just the sight of the first few drops of period blood would make me feel utterly depressed.
I’ve always been pro-adoption and willing to consider the option. But I could’ve never imagined how intensely I would feel about having my own biological child. About creating a little human being who would be the perfect combination of my husband’s and my genes. About carrying a baby inside me and having him or her come out of me.
I tried to deal with my hopes and expectations. I did my best to lower them and be happy with what I already had, considering other options, but to no avail. I had complete meltdowns at least once a month. I was often crying hysterically, raging at my husband and just dwelling in my misery constantly. I didn’t want to always keep waiting for a miracle while running out of fertile time. I might have got over it eventually with the years passing by, but infertility would have always been my greatest grief. So I was willing to try pretty much anything before giving up or resorting to really expensive, modern fertility treatments.
January 2021
I was travelling around South India with my husband just before going to Finland in February 2020. We spent a couple of weeks relaxing in Varkala, which is quite a wellness hub especially for foreign tourists with lots of options for yoga and ayurvedic lifestyle. I had had good experiences with Ayurvedic remedies in some milder ailments, like constipation or colds. I wouldn’t necessarily trust Ayurveda to be the answer to all kinds of medical issues and wouldn’t advocate it as any kind of cure or preventive measure to cancer for example. But I had a pretty open mind to use natural options as an aid in lifestyle-related ailments, boosting the possibility for positive outcomes, which I thought might be causing my fertility issues too. So I booked a consultation with an Ayurvedic doctor at Mother Ayurvedic Medicines — I thought the name of the clinic must be a sign from the universe.
I had an extensive chat with Dr. Bindu Ajaykumar in my consultation session. We talked almost 90 minutes about everything relating to my situation at the time. She covered my childhood and grownup years, family and health history, my life in India with my husband, mental health and all the issues I was suffering from. I answered multiple questions to help determine my tridosha, body constitution, and the doctor also checked a few physical qualities to do the same. Just talking with her about it all, and feeling like she was truly listening and understanding me, helped me feel a lot lighter and more hopeful in my heart.
As a result of our consultation, I purchased treatments for my IBS and fertility, even though I was still a bit sceptical if Ayurveda really could help me with such issues and “cure me completely”. The doctor explained my tridosha to me — I’m pitta-vata, but was greatly imbalanced at the time with vata dominating me — and told me in detail what kind of a lifestyle would best fit a person like me and help me find balance. She also gave me a few specific recipes for home remedies, if I for example ever find myself in digestive imbalance in the future.
And most importantly, she made two different short-term treatments specifically tailored for me. First let me just mention that she gave me two different medicines to cure and clean my digestive tract, and help me get rid of using daily medicines for IBS. I took these for about two months until they ran over and have not been taking any digestive medicines ever since. My bowel has been working regularly, without any issues, for the past year and I can’t even begin to explain how good it makes me feel!
I got five different medicines for two different stages to boost my fertility, and a promise that I’d be pregnant in the next six months. In the first stage, I started by taking a spoonful of medicinal ghee preparation on an empty stomach every morning. After lunch I had a fermented herbal drink to clean my reproductive system and create more fertile conditions. The first stage lasted about a month or so, after which I began stage 2 with the remaining medicines and continued taking my morning ghee too. Unfortunately I can’t recall all the medicines I was taking for the next months, but I’ll never forget the disgusting taste of my “evening tea” — herbal powder boiled in milk and water and then filtered to drink.
I was religiously following my treatment every day. I hoped that if I just followed the instructions to a tee there would be a miracle. I was panicking if I missed even one evening tea. My husband was much more relaxed and calm about these things, doing his best to be supportive and help me relax too, but I’m not completely sure if he understood the depths of my desperation and anxiety that made me basically jump on the walls.
Months passed, a few more disappointments followed. But by the end of May, after about five months of treatment, I was so sure I was pregnant. I felt extremely optimistic about it for the first time in years. Two negative pregnancy tests were trying to prove me wrong though, but at the end of June I finally saw a test turn positive in front of my very eyes. In less than six months from starting my Ayurvedic fertility treatment, I was finally pregnant after all these years. I’m due to give birth pretty much any day now and have my life-long dream come true.
