We were at about Week 10 of the pregnancy and the 7cm subchorionic haematoma that I had mentioned in our previous blog post, was not going away anytime soon. The problem was, we were. We were due to go to Japan in under 2 weeks and the doctor advised us that unless the bleeding improved significantly, she could not give us medical clearance to get on the plane for fear that I would haemorrhage on the plane. We had travel insurance so it wasn’t an issue being able to reclaim everything if we needed to cancel, though the insurance wouldn’t actually cover any pregnancy-related complications that arose whilst we were travelling. For us, it wasn’t the hassle of cancelling everything that made us really want to go, it was the fact that we’d just recovered from the miscarriage and had booked this trip months in advance to celebrate the completion of our postgraduate Masters which we’d spent the past 2 years completing. It was a break we needed to have.
Unfortunately from a medical perspective there wasn’t anything that could be done except the ‘wait and see’ approach, which of course was so damn frustrating. So, being a bit of a research nerd and still having access to my university library account, I started reading up research papers on any small trials that they’d done to reduce bleeding in these cases. Western medicine offered nothing and most papers spoke about ‘bed rest’, which for me wasn’t an option given that I work full-time. I continued to read through different papers until I came across one article (no I didn’t evaluate the quality which I typically would!) which suggested that Chinese medicine could reduce bleeding in pregnancy if also managed with Western medicine. This small chance was the only hope I had.
As a physiotherapist, I am typically drawn to Western Medicine, but being Asian, part of me also believes that Eastern Medicine has a role in treating ailments also, after all it has been around much longer and even though the basis of Eastern Medicine aren’t easily understood, doesn’t mean it doesn’t have it’s place. My husband had severe eczema and psoriasis flare-ups with certain foods and drinks (especially tomato, chilli and alcohol) which dermatologists and doctors suggested cortisone. This would only temporary stop the itch but the only prevention was really just ceasing the food. We tried Chinese medicine which involved initial elimination of the food followed by Chinese tea and cream and within a matter of months his symptoms resolved and was able to go back to eating those foods again. 7 years later, just around the time of the miscarriage, his symptoms returned, likely due to the stress of everything. This time the approach involved Chinese tea, acupuncture and cupping, and after about 5 weeks, his symptoms had resolved and again he is back to consuming those foods again. So yes, this is all anectodal and I know isn’t proof that it works, but when you are desperate and have no other options, you start searching around.
So I booked myself in to Yang’s Chinese Medicine in Sunshine where she told me my pulse was ‘weak’. The Chinese doctor recommended taking a Chinese tea (in powdered form) twice daily for a couple of weeks ($70 for a week’s worth) and see how I go. To my surprise, after taking it for about 5 days, my bleeding significantly reduced. I went back to the doctor at the hospital and they redid my scan and this too showed that the haematoma was shrinking significantly which meant she gave us the all clear for Japan! We were over the moon – not only because we were going on holiday, but this meant our precious girls had a much stronger chance of survival. I took a couple of boxes of tea with me to Japan, and by the 4th day of our trip, bleeding had completely stopped. So after roughly 45 days of daily bleeds, 10 days of drinking a potentially placebo tea, stopped my bleeding and gave us a boost of hope! And that was the last of the bleeding we ever had 🙂
Ann & Jason x
The Momo Twin Experience 