The Tao of Fertility: A Healing Chinese Medicine Program to Prepare Body, Mind, and Spirit for New Life

303 Pages·2008·2.25 MB·English

by  Daoshing Ni

T H E

T A O F E R T I L I T Y
o f
A Healing Chinese
Medicine Program to
Prepare Body, Mind,
and Spirit for New Life
Daoshing Ni, D.O.M, L.Ac., Ph.D.
and Dana Herko
To Sum Yee,Yu Ming, and Yu Chien and to my parents,
Hua-Ching Ni and Lily Chuang
To Ted, Mila, and Nick and to my parents,
Wladzia and Nicholas Herko
For teaching us the profundity of love.
CON T E N T S
Acknowledgments v
Prologue vii
Introduction xiii
PART ONE: THE JOURNEY BEGINS: PREPARING MIND,
BODY, AND SPIRIT
Chapter 1: Finding Your Footing 3
Chapter 2: The Power of Herbs 33
Chapter 3: Acupuncture—Restoring Harmony 44
Chapter 4: Exercise—The Key to Balance 52
Chapter 5: Examining Your Readiness to Have a Child 69
PART TWO: ON THE PATH
Chapter 6: The Twenty-Eight-Day Fertility Program 85
Chapter 7: Signs in Chinese Medicine 106
Chapter 8: Diagnosis in Western Medicine 113
Chapter 9: Your Fertility Map 122
Chapter 10: Detours and Obstacles 136
PART THREE: INFERTILITY CHALLENGES
Chapter 11: Ovulation 145
Chapter 12: Pelvic and Tubal 152
Chapter 13: Uterine 158
Chapter 14: Cervical 166
Chapter 15: Autoimmune 176
Chapter 16: Miscarriage 183
CONTENTS
Chapter 17: Constitutional 193
Chapter 18: Unexplained 199
Chapter 19: Male 206
PART FOUR: A NEW BEGINNING
Chapter 20: Pregnant at Last 213
Chapter 21: Motherhood and Beyond 220
Chapter 22: When Dreams Don’t Come True 227
Chapter 23: In Balance for the Rest of Your Life 234
APPENDIX
Recipes 239
Patient Fertility Questionnaire 245
Basal Temperature Chart 250
Resources 251
Glossary 261
Index 269
About the Authors
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
iv
AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S
W
e gratefully acknowledge all those who helped us on our journey
in making this book a reality. To Toni Sciarra, our wonderful
editor at HarperCollins who guided us along the path with wisdom, un-
derstanding, and encouragement—we truly couldn’t have done it with-
out you. Thank you to Nicola Ferguson for her elegant design, and to all
the HarperCollins marketing, production, and publicity people who
gave their time and expertise. To Robert Graham for providing us with
beautiful illustrations, and to Hua Ching Ni, whose words resonate
throughout this book. To Maoshing Ni, for his support and his expert
suggestions, and to the doctors at the Tao of Wellness, especially Jessica
Chen and James Evans, as well as Amy LeSage and Sharon Skok. To
Richard Marrs and Guy Ringler for their unwavering support of Chi-
nese medicine. To Rupert and Wendi Murdoch for believing in this
project. To Ted Frank and Sum Yee Wang, our spouses: No words can
convey how much your love and support mean. Most of all, to those
women who so generously shared their stories and experiences: You are
truly the heart of this book.

PROLOGU E
From Dr. Dao:
As a male health care professional working in traditional Chinese medi-
cine with an emphasis on fertility, I have had the privilege of seeing thou-
sands of women patients. I have learned a lot from them. They have
taught me humility, compassion, and the strength of the human spirit.
But for all I have learned—and regardless of how well I have come to ap-
preciate and understand women—I can never be a woman living through
the actual experience of her fertility challenges. I needed a woman’s voice
to help me better communicate the wisdom passed on to me and what I
have come to know. I am fortunate to have Dana as my coauthor, who has
had personal experience with the struggles of infertility and who can
communicate this material with special sensitivity and awareness.
From Dana:
I first met Dr. Dao over ten years ago. I was sitting in the back row of a
Santa Monica hotel ballroom packed with hundreds of other women who
were trying to have a baby. My friend Ellen was with me; like me, she had
married in her thirties and was finding that getting pregnant wasn’t as easy
as we’d been led to believe. The conference was sponsored by RESOLVE,
a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping women deal with fertility and
adoption issues. One of the speakers was a doctor who spoke about the ad-
vances in reproductive technology; another was an advocate for domestic
adoption; yet another talked about foreign adoptions and foster children.
The final speaker was a Chinese medical doctor. He spoke about acupunc-
ture and holistic medicine and how getting healthy could help women im-
prove their fertility.
Frankly, my friend and I weren’t terribly interested. Adoption, fertility
drugs, in vitro fertilization (IVF)—these seemed like sure things—maybe
PROLOGUE
not immediate, maybe expensive, but guarantees of having children. Chi-
nese medicine sounded so . . . basic. Yes, it was good to be health-minded,
but it seemed like a long road to take when all these other options were
available and the clock was ticking.
Little did I know.
Three years later, after a few stalled adoption attempts, multiple
rounds of IVF, and several miscarriages, I found myself sitting in the of-
fice of yet another fertility doctor—fortunately, one whose expertise in
assisted reproductive medicine was matched by his compassion. He slid a
small business card across the desk and said, “His name is Dr. Dao. I
don’t know exactly how it works or even why. But it might just help if
you’re willing to believe . . .”
Willing to believe. At that point, I was willing to believe in anything
that would result in a real, live baby. The African fertility god sculpture
sent by a well-meaning friend, the St. Anthony medal from my church
back in New York, the little artifact from Lourdes . . . I was armed and
ready for a miracle. But Chinese medicine? What seemed like a long road
back in that Santa Monica hotel now looked like an impossible detour. I
wasn’t sure I was ready to make that journey because, to put it bluntly, I
was worn down and flat-out exhausted from trying to get pregnant. I was
nearing forty with nothing to show for my efforts except a growing pile of
bills for examinations, fertility drugs, specialists, hospital stays, sonograms,
and endless blood tests to see if anything—let alone, anyone—was grow-
ing inside of me.
Most of all, I was tired of doctors. I had naively thought that when it
came time to get pregnant and have a baby, one doctor did it all. I wasn’t
prepared for the stream of specialists who poked, prodded, and pro-
nounced judgment each time another pregnancy attempt failed. It was
my uterus; no, it was my blood; it was my age; no, it was my immune
system; it was my tubes; it was my pelvis . . . it was, as it turned out, sim-
ply unexplained. But each doctor had a theory, and perhaps each doctor
was even right. The trouble was, they were all looking at my parts. None
of them were looking at me as a whole person. Having grown up with
Western medicine, it wasn’t odd, just frustrating. It was simply the way
things were.
One day, while waiting in yet another doctor’s office for results of
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