The Yoga Poses You Shouldn't Do While Stimming on IVF, While Bleeding, & in Your TWW

Yoga and IVF, The Two Week Wait and While On Your Period

Hi Birds

In yoga this morning I started to panic a bit, thinking, the ladies making babies need to know when and how to yoga to protect their bodies in each phase of fertility. Why do I panic? Because no one told me not to do inversions while I was stimming for IVF. Which is a tad important as swollen ovaries turned upsidedown during inversions can cause accidental ovarian torsion, in other words your ovaries can flip and cut off their own blood supply, then worse things happen from there.

Not cool and not on my watch. 

So here's your tips on Yoga and TTC (not to be replaced with medical advice from your MD or the wisdom of your own sweet body).

During IVF and IUI

No inversions or twists while stimming! Again, can cause ovarian torsion.

While bleeding

Many holistic practitioners caution against flowing while you have your flow. We TTC ladies need to have cycle regularity and your period is the bodies opportunity to cleanse and start fresh each cycle. We want that process to be uninhibited, allowing gravity to do its charm. All of those downward dog inversions and upside down pies can't help and, in my opinion, might hurt. In fact, there's some suspicion that retrograde menstruation (blood unable to fully exhume itself through your hooha) might cause or exacerbate endometriosis. Which is a really difficult inhibitor of fertility. 

Also, flow-time is a great time for respite, for detox.

Also, also, no tampons, same reason about retro flow, but also, why put chemically bleached products into your sacred zone. See our post for more about this. It was one of the first things Jeiran, our resident expert, had me change about my lifestyle when I came to her to TTC and it passed my simple logic gut check.

The Two Week Wait

When in the TWW, treat yourself like you are pregnant, and when you are preg there are certain poses dangerous for a wee lill babe and I theorize that if it's not good for the goose of full pregnancy, it may not be good for the gander of implantation and early embryo growth. 

Common poses to avoid ::

Deep twists (all the poses w/ prayer hands then going into a super deep twist at the waist - think of how compacted and narled that makes your insides.) 

Inversions only if you are an inverting pro

Plow pose and other related exercises that have you folding over can put too much stress on your core in order to get into and out of those poses.

Boat pose it’s a good idea to avoid any exercises that put additional stress on your belly, such as boat pose, low boat pose and other “crunch-type” poses. This could increase the severity of diastasis recti (abdominal muscle separation). There are many other poses and exercises that are much safer and more effective for properly strengthening your core during pregnancy (or pre-conception).

Off-topic side note, is it wrong that my new thing is to check out cute young girls? Not for a threesome, well, yes, actually, for a threesome, but a medically supervised one where I borrow, but never return her eggies. #donortinder where are you?