Hypnofertility Session

Last night, I had my first Hypnofertility session with Lynsi Eastburn. This is my second attempt to do some hypnotherapy in relation to IF and I wasn't sure what to expect given my first experience with hypnosis with another practitioner wasn't all that great. I have discovered through this whole journey that you need to keep trying different practitioners with all aspects of your treatment until you find the one that you are most comfortable with because often, it is the connection that makes all the difference in treatment. I have found as well that it is the most beneficial to get someone who specializes in IF rather than a general practitioner (i.e. acupuncturist, herbalist, etc.). I'm glad that I didn't dismiss hypnosis as a possible form of treatment because I found the session to be very revealing. More on that in a minute.

The theory behind hypnosis and IF is that you're trying to get your subconscious mind to be on the same page as your conscious mind so that both are working together. The subconscious is the more powerful of the two and I have always wondered about how to access it and whether there were any unresolved issues that were lurking around in there that was preventing me from getting pregnant. We have unexplained IF - all the parts are there and nothing seems to be wrong with any of them but somehow, they don't seem to be working. It was interesting to hear about Lynsi's approach since she believes that when you get a diagnosis of "unexplained" IF, that the issues that need to be dealt with are psycological in nature not physiological.

Lynsi further explained to me that the subconscious mind is the more powerful one to engage in terms of achieving goals. It is the more creative side of your brain - the right brain so to speak. The conscious mind is the more logical side of your brain - the left side. So, while powerful, the subconscious is not very "smart" about achieving the goal. Let me explain - if your goal is that you want to run a marathon, your subconscious mind will just tell you that you need to run and run some more and keep running. Your conscious mind is the one that goes about formulating a training plan, makes decisions about diet, nutrition, length and intensity of training, everything in support of achieving the goal of running the marathon. Both need to work together in order to achieve the goal of running a marathon. Lynsi believes that in my case, my conscious mind is fully engaged and committed to the goal of getting pregnant and having kids; it's the subconscious mind that isn't on the same page and through hypnosis, the conscious and subconscious minds will be brought together. They will work together rather than against each other.

For this first session, it was done entirely over the phone. I called her at the appointed hour and we just talked. We talked about everything - our whole IF journey, treatments we have done and tried, how long we've been trying, the state of our relationship and the relationships with my friends & family, my family background and my childhood just to name a few topics. I found her to be very perceptive and she drew parallels and connections between things that I had never seen before. In terms of hypnotherapy, we didn't do an actual hypnosis session on the phone. What she did was when we finished our call, she recorded my very own personalized hypnotherapy session that she then sent to me. It was great because it was personalized to me, my life, my issues and dealt with the very things that concern me right here and right now (i.e. the thickness of my lining!!!).

I downloaded the hypnotherapy session Lynsi recorded for me a few hours later and it's on my iPod now so I can listen to it whenever I want. Here's the great thing about hypnosis - you don't really have to pay attention to it because your subconscious mind is picking it up even if your conscious mind is not. I had an acupuncture appointment this morning so I took along my iPod and did the hypnotherapy while the needles were in.

On the recording, Lynsi started off guiding me into relaxation and focussing in on the breath, much like you do in meditation. She called me by my name, used the words I had used while talking to her and she touched upon many of the topics we had discussed. One of the things that I wanted to get out of this was to feel more open to the idea of being pregnant, to embrace that idea more fully and not be so afraid of it. I guess I feel a lot of fear when I think about it because of my miscarriage and then for other reasons that I was about to discover.

The most powerful part of the hypnotherapy was when she asked me to visualize a photo of my DH and I holding our baby - the pregnancy went well, we had a good birth and now we were THERE, the place we've been trying to get to for SO LONG and we were SO HAPPY. That in itself was stunning to me because that was the first time I had that picture in my mind and I just couldn't visualize it before (and I'm a pretty visual person). I felt so much joy that it had finally happened for us that tears immediately sprung into my eyes. So there I am, face down on the table, needles sticking out everywhere, hooked up to electrodes, blubbering away. Then, Lynsi asked me to visualize that the picture was growing larger and larger, until it became life sized and then she asked me to step into that photo and BAM - I became a Mother, I became that which I so desperately wanted to be. A Mom.

The other thing that I realized during the session was that my childhood was characterized by struggle and sacrifice. Nothing was easy. My parents emigrated to Canada when I was just under a year old and things were not easy while they established themselves. My parents worked so hard to provide for us and I remember that while they did a really good job of providing everything we needed, it was always a struggle. We always had to sacrifice and then sacrifice some more. Also, since things were so hard when I was a kid, my parents were very left brained in thinking - everything governed by rules and discipline, lots of planning in order to get everything that needed to be done, done. I was a pretty right brained kid, very creative and always involved in arts & crafts and I think I was slowly disciplined over time into being a very left brained person. It is no small wonder that I ended up in Accounting - lots of rules and discipline to govern myself by (have you seen the size of the Income Tax Act? Talk about rules and more rules!). Lynsi suggested that this caused a disconnect to happen between my conscious mind and my subconsciuos mind.

Lynsi is the first person that connected the struggles I remember from my childhood to the struggles that we have been having now with IF. Could it be that my childhood has conditioned me into believing that everything must be a struggle? My aha moment, my moment of realization was when the thought came to me that everything does not have to be a struggle. My conscious mind is telling me that it is okay to be pregnant, everything has been done to get pregnant, there is nothing wrong with me physically and there is no reason why I can't get pregnant. Meanwhile, my subconscious mind has been programmed from a long time ago that everything must be a struggle and so therefore, pregnancy and getting pregnant must also be a struggle. My conscious and subconscious are not working together.

Life does not have to be a constant struggle.

Huh.

I think I gave myself permission this morning not to have to struggle anymore. I feel that for the very first time, I am fully open to being pregnant, to accepting that kind of happiness and to letting myself be who I really am, without struggling, without sacrifice.

I feel freer than I have in a long time and I am feeling more excitement and optimism than I have ever felt going into a cycle.

I am ready to not struggle anymore.

I am ready to take my baby home.