I'm a baked potato.

I'm a baked potato.

I just got home from my first acupuncture appointment. Seriously, I felt like a baked potato. You know... you prick a potato all over with a fork and then cover it in tin foil? That was me.

After Dr. A+ (she's A+ because she seems to know what she's talking about and did a great job) finished putting the needles all over me, she placed a foil-like blanket over my body to keep me warm and left me to lay and relax while listening to some ocean sounds set to slow music. I fell asleep... but not before I had a major case of the giggles at the baked potato thoughts I was having. That was followed with a few tears... not due to pain or anything just, I don't know. I guess a release. I started trying to meditate and did some qi gong breathing techniques I learned, and then I fell asleep.

The actual acupuncture itself wasn't bad at all. I didn't even feel the first few needles and really I only felt a couple that caused a momentary "Ooo... felt that." The ones that I felt were in my left ear, my inner left ankle and my left wrist. I know if it hurts a little it means it's hitting something that is unbalanced. Hmm... now that I think about it, all of the pain was on my left side and as I was laying there, my left side started getting tingly and numb and kind of sore. It's hard to explain the feeling. I'll have to research that.

The weirdest one by far has to be the forehead one. It's strange because you can see it and it moves around if you move any muscles. Very weird.

Anyway, backing up, the first hour of the consultation was spent talking to Dr. A+ about everything. She was very thorough and said that my kidney qi is stagnant, which is what I was thinking from the reading I've been doing. Although her Western medicine training wasn't specifically in infertility, she has a lot of experience with it and seemed to know what she was talking about... especially with PCOS and Male Factor. She said that everything to do with periods comes from the kidney qi and that she should be able to take care of all of my crappy (ha, ha) issues I have like clotting, horrible cramps, diarrhea (get the crappy joke now?), spotting, etc. Resolving the stagnation should get me ovulating and hopefully pregnant... of course that also depends on Neal's side of things, which she also said she can help with.

She gave me a thumbs up when I told her I was already switching to organic and free-range food and she suggested Trader Joe's for shopping, which I hadn't even thought about.

My next appointment is Thursday of next week and she said we'd discuss herbs then. Neal's consultation is on Friday. He's excited about it - he's always wanted to try it - and I think it'll do him a lot of good to be forced to lay and relax for a specific reason. My one fear is that he's hesitant to try the organic stuff I've been buying... no clue why... and he hasn't cut back his alcohol/caffeine intake yet, which he knows he has to do. I'm hoping having Dr. A+ explain to him exactly how it can effect him will help him to cut back.

Neal mentioned earlier today that he'd like to get another sperm analysis done just to see if there have been any changes since he stopped smoking. (His last analysis was in October and we only ended up with 1 million good swimmers.) Turns out there's a branch of the Jones Institute that shares the same office with the acupuncture place. I'm going to call them tomorrow and find out if they have an andrology lab there or if all of that is done down in Norfolk at their main office.