no boys allowed in the room!!!!

i don't understand how someone like elaine benes could be all about em!

You know, I was actually thinking about that on the way home from work today! It was pretty irresponsible of her.

Also, I had my IUD for two years, I think, and I am also pro-IUD even though it turned out not to be right for me, if that makes any sense. It's a really good option. My least favorite bit of IUD misinfo is that you can't get one of you haven't had a child. I know women whose gynecologists told them that!!!

http://www.todaysponge.com/about.html

Justine, where do you live? In the US, they are located in the condom aisle. A box of three is $15 in Chicago, so probably a lot cheaper elsewhere.

...condom aisle of the drug store, I should say. And it's not really a whole aisle, just sort of a little section at the end of an aisle.

the thing i like best about condoms is the ~material-ness~ of it, as a contraceptive. like, when i was on the pill i would look at the little bugger before popping it in my mouth and think to myself 'how the shit is this gonna stop babies???'. and i always lived in fear that i would be one of the 2% or whatever that ended up pregnant. but with a condom at least you know if it worked or not (had to make an early a.m. pharmacy visit early last year, but just that one time).

would like to take this opportunity to give props to my husband, ytth, for doing most of the research when i was considering an IUD (i've had exes who wouldn't even pick up tampons on their way home because EWWWW)

think i'm gonna have to find some stats of the efficacy of this sponge first - an unplanned pregnancy WOULD be pretty much a complete disaster for us right now

Copper IUDs can cause an increase in cramps and bleeding for the first six months (I won't lie - I experienced this) but it wasn't anything that some extra strength OTC pain meds couldn't tackle. After six months the body usually adjusts and it sort of evens out/returns to normal. For me the potential benefits outweighed that risk but I can totally understand being nervous about that given your history. I was willing to chance it and it worked out in the end. Cost - even if you pay full price (which I believe is about $200) an IUD is the most cost effective method of BC provided you intend to use it for two years or more. Also, if your insurance doesn't cover it, Paragard let's you set up a payment plan pay it off over 12 months. OK, /IUD commercial. I promise they're not paying me ;).

How effective is the contraceptive sponge against pregnancy?
The contraceptive sponge may be less effective against pregnancy for women that have already had a baby. The contraceptive sponge is 87% effective with typical use. This means that if 100 women use the contraceptive sponge, 13 women will become pregnant in a year with typical use.

http://www.todaysponge.com/images/pdf/sponge-pregnancy-chart.pdf

so that's around as effective as condoms right? i always wonder about that "in a year with typical use" standard for bc, how much sex does that actually involve? as in what is the per-act probability of pregnancy? i am v. much a numbers person and it drives me crazy that i can't break it down, even though i know that statistics are not predictive.

btw can i just say that i hate nonoxynol 9

Summary of Clinical Efficacy Study:

Today Sponge is 89-91% effective, what does it mean?
• Over 1,850 women used the Today Sponge over a 1 year period
• Over 230,000 acts of intercourse produced 179 pregnancies
• Translation: One Pregnancy for Every 1287 Acts
..of Intercourse*

Pregnancy Rates for Birth Control Methods
(For One Year of Use)

In clinical studies with Today® Sponge, the pregnancy rates per 100 women during the first year of use were:

= About 1 out of 10 women (9-11%) became pregnant when using this correctly all the time.

= The possibility of getting pregnant increased to about 1 out of 7 women (13-16%) when this product was not used correctly.

^ posted for the extra numbers for Maria.

I believe that condoms are a little more effective overall if I'm reading these stats correctly.

it seems like it might be easier to use condoms 'effectively' than a sponge which requires specific placement or something?

xpost holy shit i memorized the numbers from high school health class and i thought the pregnancy rates were much lower for most of those methods.

xpost again - than you jenny! that maes me feel better, as someone prone to pregnancy paranoia

You can at least see where condoms are going. You have to insert the sponge and position it so it is like a little cup over your cervix, which can seem tricky at first, but you can feel when it's in the right place pretty easily.

But yeah, with a condom you can visually verify that all is well, which you can't do with the sponge, unless you have a special attachment for your Conair three-panel make-up mirror.

lolol

looool that reminds me of the time my doctor insisted that i 'feel' my cervix (right there and then) and get to 'know' it.

Sadly I've had to beg off all hormonal contraceptives at least for now. I smoke, so regular pills arent a wise idea... and I've tried both Implanon and Depo Provera and both sent me into nasty depressive episodes. Condoms for me, oh well.

Aaaah I have tried so many different kinds of pill hoping to find one with no side effects but no luck so far. I had just found one which only gave me migraines on the week off and was like "well fine then, I will just not have any weeks off (even though my GP says not to do that)" but then some other side effects appeared and made it clear that my hormonal levels were wrong so I got put on yet another kind instead.

Anyway you didn't need to know that but I got all excited by seeing that I was not alone because I had kind of been thinking "this cannot be normal, why does universe hate me" etc about it all, esp. given that I am partly on the pill because NOT being on the pill = bend-over-double acetominophen-resistant ovary pain for 3 days a month

sorry for tmi but excited that I am not quite as weird as I'd thought! though this does mean that if the universe does not hate me especially then the universe hates women even more than was already apparent so that is less pleasing news.

No contraceptives just generally suck. :(

we should post mysterious fruits in our facebook statuses to illustrate how much contraceptives suck and raise awareness about their chronic suckage

can i ask what brand(s) of pill u all were on that was so bad and hated? i loved it, i had like the opposite of side effects. i need to go to doctor to get a new script though so not currently

I'm ok with the nuva ring fwiw.

i am off the pill now but had no problematic side effects while i as on it (was using a generic called trinessa). i don't particularly want to start using it again because i kind of like this whole learning my body's cyclical patterns thing but i might at some point if it seems like the best option.

My least favorite bit of IUD misinfo is that you can't get one of you haven't had a child.

I asked for one years ago and was told that no doctor in that practice would do the insertion on a woman who'd never been pregnant. Stick that in you--no, just don't.

They've changed their policy now and I may be asking again soon. I'm sad that the different designs of IUD approved in Europe haven't been approved for use here -- the insertion is supposed to be a lot easier on other models.

My primary care physician said something similar when I first approached him about it. Ugh. If someone tells you that next time you ask then go see someone else. It's blatantly not true. As I said before, there is a slightly higher risk of expulsion in women who have never been pregnant (not to be confused with women who've never given birth) which it's good to be aware of but that does not mean that nuliparous women should not use IUDs.

Also PRO TIP, the rate of expulsion is related to the experience of the provider doing the insertion so that IUDs inserted by practitioners who have loads of experience doing the procedure are much less likely to be expelled. Make sure that the person inserting yours is comfortable doing so and has a lot of experience.

that is an excellent and useful protip!

nuliparous is a great new word! i would like to remain nuliparous for a good long time. there, i used it in a sentence.

I realize I'm coming off very captain save an IUD here but I really do believe that they can be an excellent choice for many women. I wound up interning at a FP clinic with the NP who inserted mine and saw many women who were extremely happy with theirs for a number of reasons.

Also for certain populations (ie. the one I'm working with right now) they can be esp great. A lot of the girls I work with now aren't able to take BCPs as directed and are nervous about Depo because if the horror stories they hear from friends. Some of their partners don't want them on contraception at all but with an IUD they don't even have to know. I'm particularly sensitive to this issue right now because one of my girls who I've been trying to get fitted with an IUD or on Implanon since the day I started is now 7 weeks pregnant and in no way shape or form is this girl ready to be a mom. Also, one of my co-workers is sitting in P Parenth0od right now with a couple who are both under 24 and already have 4 kids between them. :/ Because of situations like these I've sort of made it my personal mission to ensure that all of the girls on my caseload are on a BC method that I think they can really follow and use consistently. All of them, btw, are either currently pregnant or already have at least 1 kid. I know the above doesn't really pertain to this discussion but I guess I needed to vent.

Erica, what is your job? Because it sounds awesome.

I am not being sarcastic - it sounds like you are doing something really great and worthwhile and stressful but necessary and awesome.

Awww, thanks Jenny. I work at a youth/community center on a team that deals with extremely disconnected and at-risk young ppl between the ages of 16-24 who are all either gang, court or street involved and often all three. Right now I have a caseload of 16 kids. The ultimate goal of the program is to get them into educational or pre-vocational programming and hopefully out of extreme poverty and violence. I've only been there two months but I absolutely love it so far but still have so much to learn. I won't lie - it can be really frustrating and heartbreaking but also really rewarding and fun in a lot of ways.

<3<3<3

That's good stuff.

oh man I WISH I had thought of the IUD for a co-worker/friend who is my age (27). She's a single mom who started seeing a guy (37) who insisted she go off the pill for some douchebag reason, and she went with it, she got pregnant, he was there when she found out so he knew right from the start. Next day she found out he'd been cheating on her for entirety of their 6 month relationship. She doesn't want it, wants to try to give it to him when it's born and concentrate on raising her own daughter. She scheduled two abortions and chickened out each time - this fucking asshole has told her he'll "cut her into little pieces" if she gets rid of the baby, but also wants her to keep it, raise it, etc so he can pop in and out of its life and feel like a Dad without much of the effort. the whole situation makes me sick and an IUD would have been the PERFECT solution when he insisted on not using condoms/letting her continue to take the pill. Ugh.
/rant, sorry about that

^^^ I hear this sort of thing a lot. Sadly it's not all that uncommon. :/

x-post The fact is that it would be really really easy to dismiss most of these kids as lost causes or something similar and most in their lives have done so. The thing is that most of these kids have experienced extreme trauma in their lives pretty much since birth and I'm talking the kind that would fuck someone up for life esp when coupled with growing up in an environment of drugs, violence and crime. I think keeping that in mind is what keeps my co-workers motivated and unwilling to give up even when things are at their most frustrating.

we have a program like that which feeds students (if they're interested/willing/ready) into our school. many of them wind up in my developmental writing class. i was sad because this past semester one of my best students stopped coming because she lived like 3 bus transfers away and her mom refused to give her money for the bus pass because she's on disability. i had to fail her. it sucked, but she never called me or anything :(

she didn't have kids, but many of them are 19 year girls with 2 kids, etc. i am in no position to talk to them about their reproductive health unless they explicitly ask me for help, but it would be nice if someone had told them about IUDs.

Abusers often exert control over their partner's reproductive options like that. This asshole is abusive, and I am so sorry for your coworker/friend. It's an awful situation. xp

Yeah, IUDs are pretty perfect for these situations.

it sucked, but she never called me or anything :(

Yeah, that happens a lot where they'll just drop off the face of the Earth and stop showing up for months at a time. Part of our whole thing is relentless outreach so that we'll go try to find these kids wherever they might be. I haven't heard from one of my girls for a couple weeks and I'm pretty sure she's using right now so today my supervisor and I are going to go out and try to talk to ppl and find out where she is. It's really frustrating because he phone is turned off so I don't have any other way of contacting her right now.

not on topic, but

another irredeemable romcom? here you go:

http://blog.onlinemoviesunlimited.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/leap-year-movie-poster.jpg

the premise of this movie makes me physically ill -- it's what 13 year olds watch (who else would watch this?) and it warps their brains and then they have difficulty being happy until they're 30. sweet jesus stop this movie before it starts next time.

But Amanda! This one is DIFFERENT. The girl is going to propose to THE GUY!!! Wacky!!!

yeah in some loophole day bc she's been waiting so long for him to be prince charming and he isn't. and doesn't her father put her up to it? that movie looks terrible.

spacecadet, i had the same issues as you with the pill. it was almost like withdrawal during the off week or something. i'd get crazy headaches and just feel like my body was being fucked with for a week. it was really unsettling. and this was a low dose one, too!

fuck i hate this movie so much

Someone needs to stab that movie in the face.

i just read this about 2 minutes ago: http://jezebel.com/5443630/leap-year-a-movie-only-in-a-strictly-technical-sense. "When The New York Times compares your latest film to "a load of poo," there's a problem."

The ads for it on USA and Bravo are non-fucking-stop. Enough already, Universal.

just to go back to the contraception issue: a few years ago i was having a really hard time on the pill - i was so depressed and crying all the time and unhappy, and really wanted to stop taking it... but my bf at the time completely refused to deal with the situation - he didn't outright 'refuse' to use condoms, but he wouldn't buy any, wouldn't be proactive at all, just wouldn't participate in the ~contraception conversation~ at all. like it was all my problem to sort out and take care of.

Ugh thats awful J :(