While I was pregnant with our third child, my midwife took my pulse and said I had an irregular heartbeat. I don’t know when it started, as I hadn’t noticed it before. She referred me to the cardiology department and joked that, as I was in my mid-thirties, I would be the youngest, healthiest person in their waiting room. It didn’t worry me because I felt fine at the time. Little did I know that this arrhythmia would evolve or that I would find acupuncture helpful in treating it.
When the cardiologist asked me if I was the type of person who stresses easily, I immediately replied no. I didn’t think I was stressed, just busy. In fact, being in the hospital was quite relaxing as it was a couple of hours off work. I loved my job teaching secondary school students science in the north of England. Working with young people is always the most rewarding type of challenge. Although, it was getting harder to keep up now I was heavily pregnant, and I had already had a couple of misunderstandings with my new line manager. The cardiologist booked me in for an ultrasound.
Due to concerns about our baby’s growth, I was also having extra ultrasounds to check on her size. At first, I thought maybe she was just naturally going to be a bit smaller than my previous two boys. But near the end of my pregnancy, the baby stopped growing and I had to be induced early. Thankfully our daughter was small but ok. I had developed a nasty chest infection from work though, and it quickly turned into pleurisy. So, I spent the start of maternity leave coughing and struggling to breathe, never mind sleep.
I thought my irregular heartbeat would go away after pregnancy, but it didn’t. It gradually got worse and worse. I remember sitting down at snack time with my two boys and being overwhelmed with a feeling of dread like a dark cloud had settled over me. This feeling kept reappearing whenever my arrhythmia played up, on days when I was having an irregular beat every two regular heartbeats. This was not what I wanted maternity leave to be like; I wanted to enjoy spending time with my children.
Even after I had gotten over pleurisy, whenever I was trying to get to sleep, my heart would suddenly skip a beat and then do a huge thumping beat to make up for it, jolting me awake. Not what you need when you are looking after a newborn! To top it off, I was trying not to think about how on earth I was going to cope with returning to work. Just thinking about going back to work, and my new line manager, gave me palpitations.
The ultrasound of my heart had shown no reason for concern, everything was structurally fine, and I was awaiting further tests, but they found nothing. I have always had slightly low blood pressure, so feeling dizzy when I stood up too fast was nothing new. But now I could get that feeling at any time and was frequently grabbing door frames to steady myself. One day I almost blacked out while sitting on the floor when a colleague dropped by to see the baby. How could you nearly pass out while having a sit-down and a chat? That was when I felt that I better do something.
While I was at university, I had joined a free workshop on acupuncture. The needles hadn’t hurt at all, and I had felt a lovely tingling sensation flowing up my body. For some reason, I remembered this and thought that this physical intervention might help my physical symptoms. I looked online and found an acupuncturist living less than twenty minutes away, in the middle of a rural village. Although money was tight, I thought it would be worth trying acupuncture to treat my arrhythmia. I was fed up with feeling ill and miserable and just not like myself anymore.
The acupuncturist was so warm and professional, and the setting was extremely relaxing. It was such a change to do something for myself, and really nice to have someone solely focused on my wellbeing. She was so easy to talk to. I found the acupuncture treatment itself very relaxing and felt so rested afterwards. In a later session, she said she wanted to try some acupuncture points but it usually hurt a bit. I said to go for it! She needled some points near the ends of my fingers. It didn’t hurt as much as I expected, and it was like having a jump start!
For me, having acupuncture was both relaxing and energizing. It gave me important time to myself and someone to talk to and genuinely interested in my holistic wellbeing. It prompted me to reflect on my life and focus on my priorities. Since then, I have moved house, changed jobs, and had a complete lifestyle change, and I feel like acupuncture helped me muster the energy to achieve that. I also felt that acupuncture helped big time with my arrhythmia as my palpitations got less and less frequent. Now I feel like myself again, and I can enjoy spending time with our three children, with no more feelings of impending doom.
Looking back, I see how I mistook being stressed for being busy. If you feel like you are too busy and have so many important jobs to do, it might be a sign to make some time for yourself and perhaps try out a complementary therapy. Acupuncture worked wonders for my health (and my arrhythmia), and I will always be immensely grateful for that.
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