Tea

I generally don't like tea.  To me, it just tastes like dirty water.  I've really tried to like tea.  Others seem to love the ritual of tea oh so very much and consider it their daily treat.  But for me, dirty hot water.

But there is a lot of talk of the various beneficial teas out there in fertility and pregnancy land.  Now, obviously, as an IVF patient, I'm a big fan of science and western medicine.  However, I do think that herbal assistance is something worth investigating.

Here's why.  Up until very recently in human history, a family's survival was dependent on having children.  In agricultural society, you needed so many people to work on the farm in order to produce enough food to sustain the inhabitants.

Also up until recently, a woman's worth was measured by how many children she could produce within her lifetime.  Look at all of the women in history who were basically tossed aside due to fertility problems (I'm looking at you Tudor England!).

So throughout the history of the human race, fertility was right up there with food and shelter on the requirements for living scale.  And throughout most of human history, modern western medicine was not available.  So it stands to reason that the generations before us did a whole lot of study on natural supplements that would increase fertility and pregnancy survival rates.

Does this mean we should throw out modern medicine and go back to the knowledge of the ancients?  Well no, of course not.  But much of modern medicine has its foundation in those supplements.  Heck, even aspirin was discovered because some people would chew on the bark of a certain tree for pain relief.  Some guy named Bayer noticed this, and figured out how to extract the potent ingredient and amplify it's pain relieving properties, and thus invented Aspirin.

So I do think that teas and other supplements can have a beneficial effect and can be a good thing to add to your regimen.  Which brings me back to my original problem - I don't like tea.

One of my colleagues on Artfire.com makes and sells tea and I brought this problem to him.  The fertility teas are generally a raspberry leaf tea so I asked if he could make some for me, but add flavor to it.  He really went above and beyond in customer service.  He created a tea for me with extra cranberry and raspberry flavoring (I prefer fruity over herbal) and sent me a sample within 24 hours along with an ingredient list so I could run it by my doctor and make sure that he added only beneficial supplements and nothing potentially harmful.  Once I tried it, he made up a batch large enough for 50 servings.  So I will be drinking tea during this IVF attempt because every little bit helps!

If you'd like a source of tea, I really recommend you head over to Dreamweavershop on Artfire.  He has just about every tea imaginable and if you don't find what you want, hit the "Contact Artisan" button and ask for what you want.  Both the customer service and the product are top notch.