When Gabi Metz couldn’t get her period back after coming off birth control, she didn’t turn to medication or a fertility clinic. She turned to the moon.
Doctors diagnosed the Australian mom with a prolactinoma—a benign tumor on her pituitary gland that floods the body with prolactin and halts menstruation. They told her pregnancy would only happen with prescription help. “She just said to me, ‘The only way that you’re going to fall pregnant and get your period back is if you take this medication,’” Metz told Kidspot. She did once, and hated how it made her feel. “It made me feel so horrible the first time around. It made me drowsy.”
By the time she was ready for a second baby, she’d made up her mind. “Watch me. Just watch me, girl. I’m going to do this my way.”
Mom Turned To Lunaception Instead Of Medicine To Get Pregnant
Her way was lunaception—the belief that light exposure can guide a woman’s natural cycle, syncing it with the moon’s phases. Metz found the concept in a blog at 2 a.m. and decided to treat it like an experiment. “You basically sleep in absolute darkness, and then for two nights of the month, you sleep with the curtains wide,” she said. “If the moon can control oceans, why can’t it affect my body?”
She began sleeping in pitch black, ditching screens and lamps. She adjusted her supplements and waited. Four months later, she felt a pain she hadn’t felt in years. “I remember standing in my kitchen one day and thinking, wow, it feels like I’ve got period pain. That day I got my period.”
Within months, she conceived naturally. “I just trusted my body so much and all the things that came with it,” she said. To her, the experience wasn’t about magic or rebellion. It was proof that her body wasn’t broken. “You don’t have to believe me,” she said. “The only other outcome is it wouldn’t work, but it could work.”
Metz still has the tumor, but she manages it without surgery. Doctors once told her medicine was her only option. She chose moonlight instead.
The post Forget IVF—This Mom Used the Moon to Help Her Get Pregnant appeared first on VICE.