Contraception: The Poll

I got the Mirena because I was betting on my periods tapering off after awhile. Oh-ho, not so! They are now startlingly regular. Like, every 4th Sunday at 9:15PM regular.

Oh shit, really? :/ Do you get cramps?

Nothing too bad and it's a pretty short/light ordeal so whatever. I wish they didn't happen at all but it's a small price to pay for my barren, sterile existence.

lol very true

Double checked & it is both the IUD & insertion that is covered. I have an appt at the very end of April.

Congrats on your insurance functioning like it ideally should!! You are living the American dream.

I need to find a pill that isnt Bad to Take as a smoker, and I dont think there is such a beast. Doc said I could have Implanon ok, so I got that a couple of years back, and THWACK, my libido went through the floor and dug for china. Also I got pretty emotionless. At first I thought I was just blaming relationship slackness on it, but I went off it and everything snapped back into view within weeks.

Fuck if I can find a pill that doesnt mess with my moods, ugh. And no way am I ever going for an IUD or anything *crosses legs and winces*.

you can do progesterone-only pills, but you'd likely have the same libido-lowering effects that you experienced before. You really need to come off of estrogen after 35 if you're smoking, though.

So my iud is coming out and I need to go have it yanked and replaced today. What fun!

Aw shit E, that sucks.

I'm recently off the pill and not sure how I'm feeling about it.

Contraception: damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Having an IUD taken out is a cakewalk, so that part, at least, should be easy.

Oh yeah. This is my second. The last one I got out I was like "Wait, it's out?". It's the reinsertion I'm not looking forward to.

Yeah, that is no fun.

ugh it's been about 2.5 months and still i'm dealing with all the bullshit of of a mirena. it's not a big deal but boy am i looking forward to not bleeding one day in the hopefully near future.

I have been putting off having a new mirena inserted because that shit is unpleasant as fuuuuuuck.

yeah it was pretty fuckin painful (the insertion but also the depth-checking thing). but, TMI ALERT, after using condoms for 6 yrs with my husband i'd forgotten how incredibly better/different condomless sex is. wish i'd had one put in years ago - totally worth the 15 secs of terrible agony.

So I was right, it was partially expelled. She couldn't actually feel it in my cervix but trusted me enough to suggest we take it out and insert a new one. As soon as she pulled even a little the stem (i dont know what else to call it) came out and she was like, "oh yeah, that sucker was lodged in your cervix and the t part was resting on the bottom not the top". She put another in and yeah it really sucked for about a minute but I'm not feeling too bad now.

While there I had blood drawn to check my AMH and FSH levels just to kind of get a general idea of what my egg reserve is looking like.

http://www.rmanj.com/2013/09/anti-mullerian-hormone-amh-testing-of-ovarian-reserve/
http://www.advancedfertility.com/day3fsh.htm

It'll be interesting to get the results. Not sure what I'll do either way but it'll be interesting nevertheless.

ugh it's been about 2.5 months and still i'm dealing with all the bullshit of of a mirena. it's not a big deal but boy am i looking forward to not bleeding one day in the hopefully near future.

:/ Getting one put in around early February, probably.

It's really not that bad, just annoying.

Yeah this newest one was annoying for a couple days but I haven't had any problems since.

I got the results of those two tests back and I'm still "optimally fertile" as measured by both. While they don't measure egg quality they do give an indication of quantity so basically it looks like I have plenty left which is good to know, I guess.

E, how did you know yours was coming out? Just string length? I'm super paranoid bc ican't tell if I'm imagining my strings are longer or not - the np never told me like "ok icut the strings two inches in"or anything, and they've been twisted up.

I checked for the strings absentmindedly (never really do regularly) and felt the hard plastic from the bottom part of the IUD right at the opening of my cervix. The doc said the strings were very long but I hadn't noticed that. The hard plastic was unmistakable though.

that reminds me of one of my favorite things ever said on ilx

Birth Control: Advice and Anecdotes

xp ok good to know - no plastic poking out yet!!

thank you, thank you very much, xpost

I never updated what happened with my IUD a year and a half ago because I didn't want to freak anyone/everyone out buuuuuttttt, it turns out that it hadn't turned around and poked through my cervix, but the t part of it had actually perforated my uterus and was poking out the top of it (way to read that CT scan, doc!). They said it probably happened when it was inserted 4.5 years earlier. I had no adverse side effects, no crazy cramping or bleeding, didn't get knocked up, and it came out super-easily, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(my original post referencing this is upthread of LL's link)

they original dr didn't do an ultrasound to check the placement once it was first inserted??

none of mine ever have

i think that perforations usual cause a lot of immediate bleeding and mine inserts over 300 a year and the ultrasound isn't standard practice for her.

Kaiser is mostly shit but the np did do an ultrasound to make sure she'd placed it correctly.

Yeah, u/s after insertion is not standard of care. Most of the time, it's gonna be in the right spot.

@jiatolentino
Behind every successful woman is 14 even more successful women texting her "Stay strong you're gonna be so glad you got the IUD"