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 viii