Today is August 21, 2012 and I am 19 weeks pregnant as of yesterday. As I had explained in my post before this, I didn’t think I could pregnant naturally especially after the fertility specialist told me back in March 2010 that BOTH of my fallopian tubes were blocked. Of course, I was upset about the news. Since last year (2011), I was doing a lot of research about alternative healing techniques and possibly getting pregnant through acupuncture, herbal medicine or energy medicine. From what I read, and from speaking with various wellness professionals in the alternative medicine arena, it was definitely possible to get pregnant using alternative healing techniques. Apparently, many women have gotten pregnant this way, so I thought, “okay there is hope for me”.
I was so focused on my career for so many years and I neglected my health. From July 2007 to August 2011, I had worked as a Director of Marketing for a Los Angeles-based insurance agency. I was able to validate myself in the insurance industry. From 2010-11, I was President of the Los Angeles Chapter of the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA). As a woman in this male-dominated industry, you can just imagine the pressure I was going through. I had to go through so much criticism from some of the people in the “good old boys” club. First of all, I was female. Second, I was under 40 years old. Third, I was a minority. So, I had to work even harder to prove myself. Talk about stressful. I didn’t realize all of this mental stress had already affected my health. Well, to make a long story short, I proved the naysayers wrong. Our NAIFA Los Angeles chapter received the top GOLD Achievement Award. I had worked very hard as I wanted to have a spectacular year. I recruited new people, specifically women, to chair key positions on the Board of Directors. It was funny because many people advised me NOT to recruit newer Board Members due to their inexperience. Of course, they were speechless when they saw what we were able to accomplish. I just love it when people assume you don’t know anything, and then they ‘praise you to death’ when you do something bold, and succeed beyond their expectations. So, I ended my stint as President on a very positive note. When my term ended at the end of June 2011, I knew it was time to do other things. In March 2011, I noticed that my health deteriorated significantly. I was exhausted all the time. In April, I found out that my vitamin D levels were close to zero. No wonder I was feeling extremely tired and sluggish. I was advised to take 50,000 IUs of Vitamin D for 12 weeks.
In August 2011, the insurance company that owned my firm had restructured, so it was the perfect time for me to focus on developing Wellness-Spring, a company I founded back in 2009, but was not able to develop due to my full-time job and other professional activities. I started incorporating wellness in my lifestyle back in September 2011. It certainly helped not having to commute 4 hours a day to and from the office (which I did at my last job). In addition, I was able to exercise more, and lost 15 pounds. I also did yoga for the first time, practiced meditation, and started the blood-type diet. I truly believe that incorporating wellness in my lifestyle has enabled me to conceive this child naturally…no drugs, no invitro fertilization treatments, no hormones. Science and conventional medicine cannot explain how I got pregnant.
I had my last menstrual period on April 9, 2012. I missed my period in May 2012, and thought maybe it was just delayed for a few days, a week at the most. My period never came for the month of May so I figured I was stressed out especially since I was very busy with my Wellness-Spring business. Then I recalled that this also happened to me a few years ago. That was back in 2005. I had missed my period and thought I was pregnant, but it was a false alarm as I did a pregnancy test, and it came out “negative”. So, when I missed my period in May 2012, I decided to do a home pregnancy test. Lo and behold, it was “positive”. I woke up my husband and told him the “positive” news. We were both happy but shocked. Since I didn’t want to get my hopes up, I waited another 3 weeks and did a second home pregnancy test. Again, it was “positive”.
I was happy that I was pregnant. My husband told me that I needed to see a doctor. I didn’t want to see the doctor yet as I was freaking out. I kept thinking about a conversation I had last year with one of my good friends. She was in the medical field. We were talking about my blocked fallopian tubes and how I was looking into invitro fertilization to get pregnant. I told her that I was hesitant to get pregnant through invitro fertilization because I wanted to do it naturally. She told me that due to my blocked fallopian tubes, it would be dangerous if for some reason, I did get pregnant naturally, and the fertilized egg gets stuck in the blocked fallopian tube causing an ectopic pregnancy. I was freaking out when she told me that. So fast forward to June 2012, I couldn’t help but think “what if this is an ectopic pregnancy?” I wasn’t feeling any pain, though, which would be a sign of an ectopic pregnancy. But I couldn’t help but think: “what if?”. I am very analytical. I question everything. I analyze everything. As you can imagine, I was a nervous wreck for most of June.
Finally, on June 27, I finally went to get an official pregnancy test at the Santa Clarita Valley pregnancy center. It came out positive. They did an ultrasound and it showed that I was already 11 weeks pregnant. I was almost done with my first trimester of pregnancy! I asked the radiologist if everything looked good as she knew about my concerns. She said not to worry about an ectopic pregnancy because the fetus was definitely in the uterus, where it is supposed to be! I was so happy! Alleluia!
(Wellness Adventures by Edna Dimataga-Fernandez, 8/21/2012)
Pregnant at 39 story to be continued…
