Bless This Natural Medicine

by Shana Ogren Lourey

Another baby prepares to join me in life this month.  The end of this pregnancy is hard.  My stomach is about to burst and it takes a large effort to make the smallest movements.  I still vomit from continued morning sickness about three times a week, and my back is sore from carrying this child.  Yet I'll take it, perhaps time and time again.

Honestly, it is not just for the prize of getting a new life form out of it.  I am using pregnancy partly for selfish reasons.

Four years ago I became severely brain injured from a car accident.  Since then, I recover my brain daily.  I received the brain damage common with on-going and intense headaches.  On-going frequency means usually daily and intense means requiring the powerful pain killer of Vicodin to get it to temporarily stop.   These headaches largely dominate my life.  I used to love my health luck and take some sort of pride in my lack of necessity for a Tylenol.  Brain injury has changed that.

But I found something special.  By becoming pregnant, my headaches go down significantly, by about 80%.  The change is so significant that it has helped me to determine the future of my labors.

The second time I got pregnant, my nerves frayed when I began to get many headaches three months into it.  I checked in with the doctor, who considered things normal.  Three days later though, I miscarried the child.

Because of distinct lack of headaches, I knew when I was pregnant for the third time.  The at-home test I took said that I was not.  The doctor's blood and urine test also said that I was not pregnant.  But I knew that I was.  No headaches had hit me for three weeks.  Nothing else takes away my brain injury headaches more than pregnancy.  It trumps drugs.  It is magical and dependable in a way no other solution is. 

What is the connection?  How are the brain and uterus linked? There is apparently a sort of joining and exchange of cells during pregnancy.  I am grateful for its effects.  It helps me naturally medicate myself.