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Avoiding Bruising During IVF Injections: Tips from an Acupuncturist

Avoiding Bruising During IVF Injections: Tips from an Acupuncturist

I’m an acupuncturist who has been supporting fertility patients for the last several years and I recently finished my own first round of IVF. Having gone through the onslaught of multiple daily injections, I realized I may have an approach to injections that the average fertility patient may not know could help them. So here’s how I avoided bruising during my treatment and you can too.

The basics? Palpate, ice, alcohol swab, let the alcohol dry, distract, inject, sustained pressure, ice again.

Let’s go over this in more detail including why these steps are helpful:

Trying to Conceive: Is Your Lube Getting In Your Way?

Trying to Conceive: Is Your Lube Getting In Your Way?

When you’re trying to conceive (TTC) there are already so many things you’re told you can’t do. And things no one tells you that could be getting in your way. And then on top of that you’re not supposed to stress out about it!

If you’ve been diagnosed with unexplained infertility, you’re trying to figure out what you could do to improve your chances of conceiving. Whether you’re continuing to try naturally or as you add in assisted reproductive technologies like medicated cycles with Clomid or Letrozole, IUI, or IVF, make sure these simple tips are on your list:

Treating Stress, Anxiety, and Depression with Acupuncture

Treating Stress, Anxiety, and Depression with Acupuncture

Positive Vibes Only? Definitely not. Negative emotions are natural and can signal a need to change our relationships, environment, or behavior. It’s when negative emotions become chronic and feel like they arise without cause, that you turn to guiding practitioners like therapists and acupuncturists who can help you figure out what forest of feelings you've wandered into and how you can find your way back out again.

Whether your depression, anxiety, and stress are chronic or not, tamping down negative feelings or denying them in favor of only positive feelings is neither realistic nor helpful. What is helpful and what acupuncture helps facilitate is giving all your feelings a space and distance from yourself to be acknowledged, fully felt, and then allowed to pass. That can be an extended grieving period and or as short as a few minutes to recognize that you're getting frustrated and need to breathe deeper and take a walk.

Understanding what you're feeling, giving that feeling space, and then letting it go is essential in our modern world. With these skills, you can begin to move past the thicket of a bad stretch. And when you have one bad day, you'll realize that's part of being human, not a sign that you're broken.

Needle Free if Need Be: Gentle Japanese Acupuncture Alternatives to Needles

Cupping has had a news moment lately with Michael Phelps and it has been fun to hear from many friends and patients wanting me to see that what they already know is great is being shared more widely. I wanted to take the opportunity to share back that cupping is just one of the many ways that Japanese Medicine can help that has nothing to do with needles!

When I tell people I am an acupuncturist, I often hear some variety of statement about how they've heard good things about acupuncture, but..."I'm scared of needles."

I myself was terrified of needles* when I first started going to acupuncture and there was no way I was going to drink bitter herbs!** Luckily, I was met with a first acupuncture practitioner who was open and wanted to help me based on my comfort level. She didn't mind my many questions about why she wanted me to do something or how that was going to help. Given how successful that was for me (I ended up training as an acupuncturist, after all!) I believe in working just that same way. I will meet you where you are and use the wide variety of tools at my disposal to treat you. And believe it or not, that means we can do entire treatments with absolutely no sharp objects! Perhaps that means we have an eventual goal of using needles (maybe just one?) or maybe you don't even want to put that on the table. Either is absolutely fine.

What can we use instead of inserted needles?