At Kim Gatenby Acupuncture (T/A Sydney Natural Fertility and Wauchope Acupuncture), treatments are available for a wide variety of health concerns. If you aren’t sure if your particular concern would be helped by acupuncture and/or Chinese medicine, please get in touch and have a chat about your personal health requirements.
Acupuncture is the most well known facet of Traditional Chinese Medicine. When you come to see us in clinic, you are likely to receive acupuncture as part of your treatment, unless you just want advice or herbs/supplements instead.
Acupuncture involves the insertion of very fine sterile pins into points that lay along channels. Each point has various functions associated with it’s use, allowing your practitioner to guide your body in healing.
After your acupuncture pins have been applied, you get to enjoy a beautiful 20 minute rest under the infrared heat lamps, listening to calming music. Acupuncture will quickly become your favourite time of the week!
Acupuncture is cumulative, meaning the more you have the better you feel. This is why we do a ‘course of acupuncture’. This often starts as weekly treatments for around 6 weeks, then either spreading treatments further out, eg fortnightly, or moving to a maintenance schedule which could be monthly or quarterly.
For fertility treatments we recommend weekly acupuncture until the end of your first trimester. This allows us to support each phase of your menstrual cycle, leading to faster conception and a healthier pregnancy.
Chinese herbal medicine is a fine art of selecting individual herbs and combining them into a formulation that supports any underlying imbalances in your body that are creating disease.
In Chinese medicine, we diagnose conditions based on TCM theory (traditional Chinese medicine), so you may come in with a Western diagnosis the same as someone else, for example endometriosis, yet receive different herbs. This is because the underlying imbalance of the endometriosis could be different, eg blood stagnation or yin deficiency (TCM diagnosis terminology). This is why Chinese medicine is so well placed to improve health conditions that are often difficult to treat with standard therapies.
Being totally honest with you, the herbs don’t usually taste great, but they’re very good for you! We can create formulations that are powdered/granulated that you make into a tea and drink, or we can make standard formulas into pills to be swallowed with water (best option if you have a sensitive palate).
Kim has been treating infertility for her patients for the past 18+ years, and has furthered her education with a Master of Reproductive Medicine, with top honours. This is the type of training OBGYNs and fertility specialists undertake. This specialist training allows Kim to support you whether you want to achieve pregnancy naturally or need to prepare for optimum outcomes for an upcoming IVF cycle.
An initial fertility consultation is very comprehensive and will give you a detailed plan for maximising your fertility. If you haven’t had comprehensive blood tests with your GP prior to the appointment the plan will be finalised in your second appointment so that we can give you the most tailored treatment possible. The first appointment will always include dietary and lifestyle advice, as well as acupuncture and some supplements as required based on your history.
The initial fertility consultation is geared towards the female partner and includes basic advice for the male partner. If the male partner has known infertility, he can book his own standard Initial Acupuncture appointment for a more detailed plan. Kim has entensive experience in maximising semen parameters for male factor infertility, which is important for both natural conception and assited reproductive technology conception.
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