Are You Pregnant or Planning To Be?

Even if you have not been pregnant before, we all know of friends who have complained about a huge range of pregnancy related health issues. The difficulty is that when you are pregnant you are limited as to the medications you can take from your doctor. This is where Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) can be very helpful in alleviating your symptoms but more about that later.

Firstly, you may identify with some of these common, pregnancy related issues (please don’t be alarmed by the seemingly endless list – not everyone suffers with every problem at the same time!):

• Morning sickness
• Heartburn
• Sciatica
• Miscarriage
• Sleep disturbance and insomnia
• Constipation and digestive issues
• Varicose veins and haemorrhoids
• High blood pressure
• Urinary Tract Infection
• Pain in the joints and muscles
• Fatigue and exhaustion
• Anaemia
• Anxiety and depression
• Itching
• Sinusitis
• High blood pressure
• Oedema (swelling)
• Pregnancy related diabetes
• Breech baby position
• Help during pre-birth
• Overdue baby
• Postnatal treatment (retained products, deep vein thrombosis, mastitis, depression, breast feeding problems)

How These Problems Can Affect You

In addition to all the normal, healthy changes that take place in your body when you are pregnant, the less pleasant issues related to pregnancy can produce an uncomfortable and emotionally distressing extra burden on you at this already energetically demanding time. You may feel:

• Physical pain or at the least discomfort (from, for example, heartburn, pelvic pain or varicose veins)
• Sleep difficulties (due to physical pain and discomfort or simply feeling too hot)
• Anxiety or fear about how this pregnancy related issue will impact on your health, the labour, and the health of your baby
• Frustration or anger that no matter what you do to try to relieve the problem, it doesn’t seem to improve
• Blaming yourself and thinking that you could have done something to prevent this issue from arising in the first place

The Transformation You Are Wishing For

• To gain some control over your emotions and understand that you are doing everything in your power to optimise the health or yourself and your baby.
• To relieve the physical symptoms as much as possible so that you can at least feel comfortable and go about your day to day activities.
• For your mind to be sufficiently calm and clear to enjoy a good night’s sleep.
• For you to feel confident and reassured that your pregnancy, labour and childbirth will give you a happy and healthy baby.

How Can I Help You Transform From Miserable to Happy Expectant Mum?

You can see from the list above that a multitude of pregnancy related problems can potentially leave you feeling pretty miserable. Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Acupuncture can offer you drug free relief from both physical pain and emotional distress because in TCM there is no separation between physical, mental, emotional and spiritual issues. They all impact upon each other.

Using Acupuncture, Traditional Chinese Medicine and my wealth of experience I can help you to:

• Manage and relieve any physical pain you may be experiencing.
• Improve your sleep and thereby your energy levels by teaching you how to calm and clear your mind going into bed at night.
• Come up with a plan of simple Qigong breathing, stretches and movement. This will ensure that you can stabilise your emotions and feel more confident that you control them, rather than them controlling you. Qigong is also a safe form of exercise to help relieve any musculoskeletal pain associated with your pregnancy.
• Manage any nausea, vomiting, constipation and digestive issues with Dietary Therapy.
• Learn how to use Moxibustion to help turn your baby if he/she is in the breech position. For more information on this technique click here for an excellent article by Debra Betts.
• Learn some simple acupressure points to help induce birth if your baby is late coming into the world, and also help relieve your pain while in labour.

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