Anastasia was desperate for a baby. Besides 2 pregnancies in 3 years that ended in miscarriage, making love 4-5 times a week did not result in her dream coming true. Anastasia, being an expatriate wife thousands of miles away from friends and family, was sad and lonely. In fact, she appeared depressed to me and she admitted that for her everything revolved around getting pregnant again. Homeopathy was about to help her in ways she hadn’t expected, and much quicker than she could have hoped for!

Ivan and Anastasia were happily married for three years when they came to see me. As soon as they got married they tried to start their family and so they were ecstatic when Anastasia fell pregnant shortly after. The heartbreak was however all the greater when after 8 weeks the baby’s heartbeat stopped.

The second pregnancy they were not any less positive. Surely this time baby would stick! Sadly after 9 weeks Anastasia miscarried again. They never managed to conceive afte that despite making love almost every other day.

Charting & detoxing

They had “all tests run imaginable”, as Anastasia said, and all results came back normal. Another couple stuck with the label of “unexplained infertility” Anastasia’s periods however were all but normal. She described them as being so painful every month, she felt “like almost dying” every time. She had been put on the contraceptive pill for this in her teens already, but it had not really helped the severe cramps.

Since being off the pill and trying to conceive, her cycles were always around 30 days. When this is the case, this usually means one of two things

• a woman is ovulating a lot later than the textbook cycle day 14
• or she is not ovulating at all.

Which it was for Anastasia, we’d have to figure out through charting. Especially since with the frequency they made love, I would expect them to have caught the egg monthly easily if she was indeed ovulating.

I figured that charting would help the couple also see when the window opened so they could make love when they wanted to outside of the window instead of feeling pushed to it by their fertility goal. Also charting often helps anxious women like Anastasia to have some peace and control over their fertility. Knowing when you are fertile and when not, and if you can expect a possible positive pregnancy test and when, can give a lot of peace of mind. (Learn how to chart for free!)

Remedy wise, we needed to detox the years use of contraceptive pill. Also her symptoms such as being tearful and needing comfort and reassurance (a word you’ll see repeated a lot in the rest of this article!), craving cakes & sweets, and her menstrual symptoms suited one of my favorite remedies Pulsatilla. So I prescribed that alongside as support.

BFP!

We worked closely together so I could coach Anastasia on how to interpret her charts. We soon discovered that she indeed did not ovulate around cycle day 14 but on CD18. Although this worried her, I was able to reassure her that knowing this would help us treat it and help her and Ivan time love making well!

She received her remedies very quickly after that and was able to start them at the beginning of her new cycle. When CD14 came around without any sign of a positive ovulation test I was able to reassure her again that she likely always ovulated later and she should keep testing.

CD19 came around and she ovulated. Looking back, this is also when she conceived because when her temperature was still high at 17 days past ovulation I suspected she was pregnant and suggested she’d take a test. It was positive! (In fertility communities known as Big FAT Positive, or BFP :). Two days later her temperature spiked even further and the nausea kicked in.

Preventing miscarrying & no scan

My fertility work is never over at the positive pregnancy test. Treatment continues well after that because those first months are so fragile, particularly with couples like Anastasia and Ivan that have suffered several miscarriages already.

That my work was cut out for me was clear on the first follow-up when she was 7 weeks pregnant. She could not stop crying. Although she now was pregnant which she had longed for so much, her anxiety and focus was now completely taken up by the fear of miscarrying again. Between her sleepless nights and throwing up sessions, all she could do was cry and then be upset with herself for stressing and further risking losing the baby because of her stress levels.

Since she had responded so incredibly well to the remedies already and fallen pregnant so quickly, I knew – and so could reassure her again – that she’d feel a lot better quickly on a new prescription. A courier service was arranged so she could start remedies the very next day for her exhaustion & nausea so at least she could start to rest. As with all my newly pregnant patients I also prescribed hormonal support so the ovaries would continue to produce enough progesterone until the placenta could take over at 12 weeks.

We talked about not risking her early pregnancy with ultrasounds and she was determined to not have another early scan like with her previous two.

Pushed down grief

As the nausea subsided on the remedies and Anastasia could finally catch some rest, it was clear that she had never properly grieved over the miscarriages. Now that her dream of falling pregnant again had been fulfilled, the pushed down grief came up like a constant nightmare. My go-to suppressed grief remedy Natrium Muriaticum came to save the day again though! A few doses in a very high potency soon brought peace and at 9 weeks she wrote me “I am well and no longer have crying spells!”.

Anastasia managed to hold off the ultrasound until the 12 week mark. Armed with the remedy Ultrasound, she had her scan and was reassured that indeed all was well with her rainbow baby to come. She lived up to her name and was “reborn” as a mother with the arrival of her little one.