Time for another the Ask the Astrologer question! Once or twice a month, I answer a question in a way that aligns with what you might hear in an actual astrological consultation. This is not your usual advice column, and not your usual astrology column, either.
While this feature has been running more or less monthly since August 2019, I would like to make it twice a month, publishing a letter at the beginning and another in the middle of the month. But to make that happen, I need to hear from you! There are currently two letters in my queue, enough to last only til mid February as a twice monthly feature. See the end of this post for how to submit.
This letter is somewhat different from what I ordinarily address. It moves in the direction of medical astrology, which is outside my area of expertise. Still, I accepted it, because there is enough material here I can work with, and when I received it, I had recently heard a podcast on fertility astrology that made me feel I had enough of a basic understanding to address it, at least in a (relatively!) short answer. As a rule, because I am not a medical astrologer, I do not answer medical questions. I’ve chose to publish this one as a conversation (actual email conversation between me and the letter writer edited for relevance and brevity) rather than a flat question and answer.
I have suffered two miscarriages (December 2018 and March 2019). I am desperately wanting children and was wondering if you could look at my chart and offer any advice to my situation? - S.S.
Birth chart: S.S.
Placidus houses, true node
Source of birth information: Mother’s memory (time of birth not on birth certificate)
Megan: This isn’t the kind of question I ordinarily answer. I can't give you a hard and fast prediction. If you're really asking when you'll have a baby, I can't say. There are far too many variables, both astrologically and in the real world, to be able to say with certainty, and I'm very far from being an expert on fertility astrology.
But we could explore what this means to you. What does it mean to you to have children? What does it mean to you to have had these miscarriages? If you really couldn't have children, what would that mean to you?
Have you received any medical opinions on why this happened? Any testing?
Have you ever had any surgery on your reproductive parts, either related to these miscarriages or in the past?
Did both miscarriages happen at the same point in the pregnancy, or was there a big difference (i.e. one at four months and one at two months)?
Another angle to explore--and this is going out on a limb, but I think it's worth considering--do you know if your mother, grandmother, etc., had any problems carrying a pregnancy? Twelfth house Moon suggests a strong relationship to ancestral issues, having them play out in your own life, and it's Moon along with the fifth house that indicates fertility.
S.S.: Here are some answers to your questions:
- Both miscarriages technically happened around 5-6 weeks (only saw gestational and yolk sacs on ultrasound, no baby or heartbeat) but my body carried them for much longer (9 weeks and 12 weeks).
- Both miscarriages required D&C surgeries to remove the pregnancies, as my body showed no signs of things happening on their own (no bleeding, spotting, cramping, etc.)
- Both pregnancies were conceived in the first month of trying. I tend to get pregnant quite easily with little effort.
- Both pregnancies were genetic/chromosomal abnormalities (did not have the correct number of chromosomes for a healthy human).
- Both my husband and I have been thoroughly checked out. They cannot find anything wrong with either one of us. I have been checked for hormones and physical abnormalities and everything looks great and looks like nothing would prevent a normal pregnancy. Two specialists have told us we have had bad luck and to try again; they have also mentioned hyper fertility and my body accepting any embryo to implant, even ones most women’s bodies would not let “stick”
- No women in my family have ever had any miscarriages (mom, sister, maternal grandmother, etc.). My mom had me at 35 with no problems at all.
Regarding what being a mother means to me: I have never pictured not having children. I can’t picture my life without kids. I can’t wait to care, nurture and educate a little being and fill them with love.
Also, my husband is adopted, and at one time he had a serious health condition (not affecting fertility, but at one point, before he saw an amazing specialist, he was told he would die). I would love to give him a blood relative and have a piece of him with me in my life.
Megan: So there are no clear physiological reasons for miscarrying, except chromosome abnormalities. As far as predicting when would be a good time to try, I really can't go there. There are astrologers who would, but I'm not that far versed in medical astrology and predictions.
Here’s what I do know about astrology and fertility: no one’s birth chart definitively shows that they are or are not fertile (well, almost no one’s). There are several factors--testimonies, in astrology speak--that can indicate very strong fertility, very weak fertility, or fertility that is neither especially strong nor especially weak.
We have to consider all the factors to get a picture of how fertile you are. If every last fertility indicator in your chart points to very strong fertility, you’re likely to be a “fertile Myrtle”--someone who conceives so easily that it seems all your partner has to do is look at you, and you’re pregnant. If every last fertility indicator points to weak fertility, you probably will have a lot of trouble having a child if you try. In reality, though, most people with that kind of chart don’t even try, because the most common way for an “infertile” chart to manifest is in the native having little or no desire for children. This may even be the person who chooses to be sterilized because they can’t stand the idea of procreating.
But most birth charts have what we call mixed testimony regarding fertility: some of the indicators point to strong fertility, some to weak fertility, and some are neutral. Or maybe all of them are neutral. Usually, how that plays out is that you can have biological children, and will probably choose to (or at least seriously consider it), but conception and pregnancy may work out better at some times in your fertile years than others, and much depends on other factors: for example, how fertile your partner is. Yours is a mixed testimony case.
For fertility, as I mentioned above, we look to the Moon, the fifth house, and the fifth house ruler (fifth house indicates children, especially your own, and Moon is the mothering planet, sometimes in a very literal sense). Your Moon sign, Pisces, is one of the highly fertile ones. All water signs are.
In addition to being a water sign, Pisces has expansive and warm/moist* Jupiter as its traditional ruler, which makes it especially fertile. Your easy ability to conceive, so easy that your womb holds onto even chromosomally abnormal embryos--which a less fertile woman’s probably would not--sounds like a Pisces gift to me. But, paradoxically, this gift of easy conception (mirroring that of your close female relatives--another Moon indication) is making you seem infertile.
Your fifth house sign, though, is not a fertile one. Leo is, for this purpose, a barren sign, because, being a fire sign, its qualities are hot and dry*, and its ruler, Sun, also has hot/dry qualities. For fertility purposes, hot and dry tends to deny. Mars also has those qualities, and you have Sun conjunct Mars, bringing more hot/dry into your fifth house. Between your Moon and your fifth house, part of your fertility is a swamp (swamps have all sorts of life forms in them, and breed them easily) and part of it is a desert. But not the driest desert, because your Sun is in Scorpio, which is one of the fertile signs. Your fertility desert is more like one with monsoons and wildflower seasons than like a truly barren one.
So, your chart is showing us what we already know: you are highly fertile, in one sense, and you have some barrier to children in another. You can conceive extraordinarily easily (Pisces Moon!), but the problem has come in carrying the pregnancy (anti-fertility testimonies regarding your fifth house). And it's resulted in surgery, which I suspected when I saw Mars conjunct your fifth house ruler (Sun), because one thing Mars can indicate is surgery.
Mars with the fifth house ruler, in a woman’s birth chart, suggests surgery related to pregnancy or childbirth at some time in your life. Adding to that testimony, your Mars/Sun conjunction is in Scorpio, which rules the reproductive organs, and in your eighth house, too, which doubles down on the Scorpio message: surgery on the reproductive parts. Pluto is also conjunct your Mars, even more tightly than your Sun is, adding even more of the same testimony (Pluto indicates exploring and exposing what’s hidden, which can describe surgery; Scorpio can also indicate this, and so can the eighth house), and Chiron, the namesake of surgeons and the symbol of wounded healer in our charts, lies in your fifth house. Taken together, we have even further testimonies to a likely experience of surgery on your reproductive organs, or problems with them, or both.
Surgery in and of itself would not cause infertility (unless the surgery scars your uterus so badly that you can’t conceive again, which does not sound like what’s happened for you), but it might correlate with the cause of not having a child: for example, having a surgical abortion, or an ectopic pregnancy, or, like in your case, needing surgery for miscarriages. For you, that prophecy has already come to pass. That doesn’t necessarily mean it will happen every time you get pregnant, but it has happened in your life.
All that said, I’m no fertility specialist. My expertise runs to astrology--though not much in the way of medical astrology--and some herbalism, mainly on the energetic/spirit level. What I'm hearing in your story makes me think the main problem is spiritual/emotional. No clear physiological cause, except the vague “chromosome abnormality,” which is essentially medical jargon for, “We don’t know why you miscarried, but you did.”
Astrologically, I see a couple of suggestions in your chart that the root of your miscarriages is mainly spiritual/emotional in nature: twelfth house Moon can speak to it, and let’s take another look at Chiron in your fifth house. Chiron represents both a profound woundedness and the healing process for it. Typically, this is emotional in nature, and sometimes there’s a physical manifestation as well. Whichever house Chiron is in indicates what area of your life it manifests in. Fifth house Chiron is a Chiron involved in your childbearing process. (And possibly, your creative process, too. Fifth house is also creativity. What do you do to be creative? Do you let your creativity out, or have you been suppressing it? Do you remember to play?)
There are also some details of your story that make me think trauma is involved, and not just for you personally. Your husband being adopted: adoption involves trauma. Even if the process goes smoothly and the adoptive family is very nurturing, it’s still traumatic for the baby to be separated from the birth mother, and traumatic for the mother, too, and there are usually traumatic circumstances surrounding the birth. Babies aren’t given up for adoption when everything is fine. You want to give him a blood relative because he, it sounds like, deeply feels his lack of them. In a way, having a baby is a redo, and the process is likely bringing all this deep seated trauma up.
Having believed for a time that your husband was fatally ill is another detail that leaps out at me. Have you both really processed that?
There could also be other contributing factors in your own background, or his, or both of yours, that you haven’t mentioned.
This also speaks to the self undoing quality of the twelfth house, and to Chiron in the fifth. I suspect some energetic block against this procreative process. Yours, for sure, and possibly your husband’s, too. With the highly sensitive and empathetic element of water being one of your dominant ones (Sun, Moon, and a couple of planets in water signs), I expect you’re deeply tuned into the emotions of others, especially someone as close to you as your husband. You may be taking on his emotions, fears, and any unresolved issues he may be carrying, and holding them as if they were your own.
What I would suggest, based on my understanding of energetics and plant spirit medicine, is that both of you work with whatever this blockage may be. Give it a while, and after you've both done some processing--in whatever ways work best for you--then revisit the idea of trying again.
Who knows, if you're both making good progress, you might even have an "accidental" conception of a viable embryo before you consciously decide to try. If that happens, it's a sign that you're ready. If that doesn't happen, then you can make a conscious decision about trying again when you feel you're ready.
*Signs and planets have hot/cold and wet/dry qualities. This is like the concept of heat/cold and wet/dry in TCM (traditional Chinese medicine), also found in Galenic medicine and used by Western herbalists to this day. Medical conditions and the herbs that treat them are likewise classified along the hot-cold and dry-wet continuum. Astrology includes methods for identifying physical constitutions, ailments, and their treatments (remember, astrology was developed back when all medicine was herbal medicine) based on either the natal chart or horary charts, mainly utilizing the hot/cold and dry/wet qualities that turn up in the charts. None other than Hippocrates said, “A physician without a knowledge of astrology has no right to call himself a physician.”
That said, I am not a medical astrologer. Everything I currently know about medical astrology is in this post, and I have chosen to focus more on the psychological and spiritual implications of this question, both because they seem especially relevant and because that’s what I know best.
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