Feng Shui and Fertility
I never knew that a woman could yearn for a second child as intensely as craving a first. It seemed greedy to me. Surely one child should fill the maternal yearning. Shouldn’t one be enough?
Yet here I was, watching my biological clock ticking louder and louder, obsessed by ovulation charts, desperately wanting to produce a sibling for our beautiful three-year old son. So far, the visits to the specialist had been inconclusive and the fertility drugs weren’t working. The doctor couldn’t find any reason why I wasn’t conceiving.
Life carried on. I continued working during the day and, as a diversion, took an evening class in Feng Shui. The subject had always intrigued me, and it was also relevant to my job as an interior designer. I bought additional books and started trying to align our house – calculating where energy was stagnating, attempting to increase our finances and nagging the men in my life to put the toilet seat down so all our positive energy wouldn’t drain away.
A large poplar tree stood close to our house, just by the garden gate, its shadow creeping across the garden in the summer evenings, its bulk blocking a large chunk of our view into the valley below. Most importantly — according to my Feng Shui books — this tree could be blocking the flow of energy. Could this have a bearing on my current infertility?
My husband was happy for the tree to go, and we agreed that it did little to enhance our garden. So, as we didn’t need planning permission, he arranged to chop it down with a friend of ours who was a landscape gardener.
The day before the event, I saw my husband return from visiting our neighbour. I asked what he said.
‘I just apologised for the noise we would be making over the weekend.’
‘Was she okay about it?’
‘Yes, she was fine,’ he replied. ‘I just told her that we needed to cut down the tree because you wanted to get pregnant.’
I gulped! From that day on I had the distinct feeling I was viewed as an oddball, although I never did try to explain any further.
All went to plan. The tree was removed and immediately our garden seemed lighter.
On the Monday I was due to visit my fertility specialist for a routine test. He wasn’t at the clinic that day, but his nurse carried out the procedure. She looked at my notes.
‘Oh,’ she said ‘I see there’s one thing that Mr Thompson hasn’t checked. I’ll just have a look. Won’t take a minute.’
Simple, simple, she said. The remedy was very simple.
My PH levels were too acidic and my husband’s sperm was being killed off before they had the chance to fertilize an egg.
She told me what I should do. The following week, when I was ovulating, I followed her advice — only once — and immediately fell pregnant. Nine months later we had a beautiful baby girl.
The advice? During ovulation, I should douche with a mixture of sterilised water and baking soda prior to intercourse. Simple.
This was in 1997 when the world wide web was in its infancy and Google hadn’t even been born. Would I have found this advice on the internet if I did a search today? There’s a lot of advice out there, but sometimes you don’t know what you’re looking for, until you know what you’re looking for — if you get the gist.
Out of interest, prior to writing this article, I briefly researched the effect of baking soda on fertility. It is out there, but then I worked backwards so it was easier to find.
One letter in the science forum was from a woman who had undergone nine rounds of unsuccessful IVF procedures. She finally went to a different fertility expert who said that there was no reason that she and her partner couldn’t conceive apart from her PH levels. He advised her to douche with one qt distilled water to one tbs baking soda. She fell pregnant immediately!
I’m not, for a moment, suggesting that this is the answer to many women’s problems. There can be a multitude of reasons why women can’t conceive. But I do think it’s worth checking.
We had been trying to conceive for over two years and I had been on fertility drugs for several months before my PH levels were even checked. Surely this should be one of the first tests to be carried out. And what about the poor woman and her partner who went through nine rounds of IVF before this simple solution was discovered? Think of all the anguish and expense.
And what did this all have to do with Feng Shui and a tree?
I still maintain, to this day, that it was cutting down the tree that set things in motion. Some friends insist that it was the placebo effect but isn’t that all too much of a coincidence?
We cut down the tree over the weekend and on the Monday a definite solution to my infertility was discovered. Couldn’t you say that the blockage to energy had been released?
I maintain my good fortune was a mixture of Feng Shui and synchronicity. And a very clever nurse.
