A couple of weeks ago, I married my baby-daddy. We had hoped to have a second child by the time we got hitched, but after 27 months of trying, it still hadn’t happened. I imagine wedding-planning stress is pretty good birth control.
So anyway, after the wedding, we left our 3-year-old daughter in the care of her grandparents and hit the road for a brief honeymoon in Big Sur. On our way up the Pacific Coast Highway, we stopped at Pismo Beach for lunch and found ourselves drawn to a psychic’s storefront. Her prices were steep, but for $10, I could have one — only one — palm read, and I decided to go for it.
“You’re married,” she told me. I gave her my best “you’re going to have to do better than that” look and pointed to my shiny new wedding ring. “You already have a child,” she continued. “Do you want to know if you’ll have another one?” Now she had my attention.
“I see a boy,” she offered. “And you’ll be holding your son in your arms in 2015.” This was the good news. The bad news was that she told me exactly how old I would be when I die — information I wasn’t exactly looking for. I was a little freaked. My husband, ever the optimist, said “It’s win-win, babe. Either we get a baby next year, or you don’t die when she says you will.”
A few months ago, in my never-ending quest to conceive, I did something a little crazy and a little desperate. I drove 90 minutes from my home to see a mystical “energy healer” …
Maybe we wouldn’t have put so much stock in the psychic’s prediction if it hadn’t confirmed something we’d already heard. A few months ago, in my never-ending quest to conceive, I did something a little crazy and a little desperate. I drove 90 minutes from my home to see a mystical “energy healer” who spoke only Mandarin Chinese (we communicated through a translator). My friend swore by her, crediting the healer with getting her pregnant.
Here’s how my appointment went: I sat fully clothed in a chair opposite the healer while she stared at my midsection for a long, long time without speaking, because that’s not awkward at all. “You have a tipped uterus,” she finally told the translator, who told me. What’s interesting about that is that I do have a tipped uterus — it’s not something that prevents pregnancy, just a quirky fact of my anatomy that I’ve long known. But how did she know?
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Then she told me that my uterus was cold. Too cold to make a baby. I needed to warm up my chilly uterus by wearing enclosed shoes (no flip-flops), taking warm, ginger-infused foot baths, drinking homemade bone broths and giving up ice cream. That last part could have been a deal-breaker — no more salted caramel? — but I decided to put all my trust in the healer. I blindly agreed to these conditions and more, like a meditation exercise and rhythmic foot-slapping (36 times on each arch) that would improve circulation in my baby-making parts.
Then came the big moment. What did the healer “see” for me in the future? She said that despite my ripe old age of 43, she saw me having another baby soon. A son. Upon hearing that, my cold uterus and I burst into crazy lady tears.
As anyone trying to conceive knows, it’s hard to want something so much, something you have so little control over. But the healer’s prediction gave me the hope I needed to keep going, and it only cost me $300. I know, I know, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared with IVF, right?
So now I’ve got a mystical Chinese energy healer and a roadside psychic named Diane in my corner. Time will tell if there’s really a baby coming my way, or if I’m just another sucker.
