Contraception: The Poll

Can't make a withdrawal without making a deposit, Catholics.

At the moment it's condoms, but when I'm dating someone regularly, it's obviously whatever she prefers to use. Mostly that's been the pill, but I've heard positive comments from people who've used the ring.

(xxpost) other missing poll options:

- celibacy (voluntary)
- celibacy (involuntary)
- homosexuality

Yeah, the lack of a celibacy option is a big problem here.

I know it says "do/did" but I... can't... remember!

Could celibacy really be considered a form of "contraception" though? I mean, how many people are celibate only because they don't want to get pregnant?

You'd be surprised.

Also, "I am past the menopause and don't give a fuck" is not an option (but will be my method of choice soon.)

how

Also, I'm not being entirely disingenuous here... considering that in parts of the world, abstinence is promoted as the ONLY acceptable option, I do wonder if anyone finds this in any way workable option.

I do realise that there's quite a big difference between my self-imposed lifestyle choice, and that of a young person raised within the confines of a political ideology/religion which imposes it upon them.

Being someone who is celibate, I know that it requires a certain kind of person/mind/sexuality - so I would never impose it on others, but there are vast amounts of people who would.

sarah palin to thread

does willful impotence count

more importantly, why am i listening to spacemen 3 on last.fm

What does willful impotence mean exactly?

obstinate contraception

Tantric sex?

er that shoulda been obstinate celibacy rather

damn thread title's got me oh-so confused

cross+post, natch

withdrawal worked for me

when

for about 15 years

- celibacy (voluntary)
- celibacy (involuntary)
- homosexuality

contraception is not needed in these situations

As someone is involved from the other end can I vote nuva ring FTW. Seems to be the least hassle for all involved.

withdrawal rocks

uh oh TMI

yeah it really worked for you guys!!!!

jk

right on

haha. its like gambling with the odds v slightly in your favor!

plus mandatory cs on something

^^otm

does anyone use the pills made to be taken continuously such as seasonique or lybrel? maybe i could start a thread about this. thinking baout things.

Hang on... I'm just trying to get my head around the logic behind this.

Contraception = trying to avoid pregnancy.

So you say that abstinence is simply not a contraceptive method. Despite vast amounts of money being poured into "sex education" in the US that claims abstinence is the *only* contraceptive method.

Are we quibbling about words here (that abstinence may be birth control, but isn't technically contraceptive because no sex was involved) or is the political/ideological nastiness of the latter of those two options above making you throw out the entire idea that it could be used as a form of birth control?

I mean, granted, I didn't choose to be celibate *solely* with the aim of avoiding pregnancy, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a big plus. (It's 100% effective, after all.)

I'm certainly NOT advocating or promoting it as an option for anyone else - but I think it's naive - and perhaps politically motivated - to say that it's *not* an option at all.

(I mean, perhaps my annoyance is based on those yearly checkups where the doctor always asks me "what contraception are you using" and I say "celibacy" and she says "nope, that's not an option on my list and I have to check something." That this is somehow inconceivable as an option for a healthy woman of child-bearing age.)

A: that abstinence may be birth control, but isn't technically contraceptive because no sex was involved

I dont think anyone says abstinence is the only contraceptive. Its more like abstinence is the only way to be 100% sure you wont get pregnant.

Its an option but i wouldnt call it a contraceptive method.

I was under the impression that US right wing bible bangers had been shoving it down kids throats along with Intelligent Design. I guess I gotta stop reading those liberal newspapers and stuff. Ha ha!

They have and they do, but it's more like Rock Hardy says. And they don't give out info on the other types.

That's just plain dumb and counterproductive. Argh.

I don't remember what I said, but I'm sure it was OTM.

My own answer is vasectomy. That shit hurt! (But not as bad as having a baby, I'm sure.)

tell me about this nuvaring thing! side effects? have just gone off the pill again because i kept forgetting to take it, plus i hate the is-this-making-me-mental-or-not feeling when i'm on it (i.e. is it just shit going on in my life or is this fake hormone making everything feel 10x worse than it should).

i looked at the website (this thing is not even available in NZ) and it sounds great, but i'm always dubious about anything containing hormones.

Side effects are next to nil (I had none when I used it) because the hormone dose is HELLA low. It doesn't have to have much, cause it doesn't need to travel dar in your body, basically.

I have had side effects (mainly just zombie or robot "feelings") while on every other hormonal method.

the problem with pill side effects for me is that they're not blatantly obvious and come on slowly, so i don't realise the change till i go off it (eg. i'm managing my anxiety/stress/etc about living in a new country much better since i went off it). i hadn't been on the pill for about 2 yrs and went back on right before i came to the US... pretty fucking stupid plan, really, but i procrastinated. so then i didn't know if it was this new pill fucking me up or the fuck that i was uprooting my whole life.

Tough to tell in most situations with that stuff, yeah. Just ride it out.

lol 'the fuckfact that i was uprooting my whole life'

haha i read it that way anyways

haha..me too

i know a couple girls who went on the nuvaring and couldnt stop crying for days and days so... ymmv

IUD and cervical cap are not the same thing. Isn't a cervical cap similar to a diaphragm?

xpost, I don't think that's an expected side effect of...anything.

AAAAGGHH, IUD and Cervical Cap were supposed to be on different lines!!!!

And yeah, a cervical cap is similar to a diaphragm, but thicker, rubber and fits directly, snugly over your cervix.

i havent been on the pill since 04 but even then it was only for 2 months. before that i think it was early 90s. i become a complete whiney bitch when im on the pill.

well im always kind of a whiney bitch so lets super whiney super bitch

plus i dont give a shit about shorter periods. who cares.

i've been pretty emotional on it, but there's been some mega shit going down so it's hard to tell wtf is up anyway

i doubt it's pill-related, though. it's low-dose (mircette). I was on a very high dose BC method (depo) long ago, and it just made me cold and emotionless.

xpost otm, mine's like 3 days tops anyways

one of life's biggest lols is that BCs often lower your sex drive

I was really lucky in that my insurance covered both device and insertion right off the bat.

I actually hadn't planned on getting on the day I wound up getting mine so I didn't have any misoprostol, valium, or painkillers. The NP did give me 800mg of ibuprofen and we waited about 20 mins after that to start. IIRC she also gave a cervical anesthetic which prob helped a bit but it all went smoothly and was over really quickly. The sounding hurt more than the actual insertion for me but it was all bearable. NP later told me that I was "a bleeder" and I was thankful she didn't mention that at the time.

seriously, so much blood.

I wound up working with that NP at her family clinic a couple months later and observed a bunch of insertions that she did there. I probably wouldn't have been so gung ho about getting mine sans sedatives/painkillers had I seen those before. I never would have thought people bled that much. That actually how she wound up telling me - after one insertion I asked if it was normal to bleed that much and she was like, "Oh that? That was nothing! You bled a ton more." O_O

"family clinic" = "family planning clinic"

Ha I have been having a lot of dreams lately that are just about having cartoonishly heavy menstruation. Maybe my subconscious is prepping me.

sorry for....dream tmi?

I probably assisted in several hundred insertions before mine but it is a whole different story when it's you in the stirrups.

Don't get scared off, Abbs, it's awesome.

Seconded. Totally worth it and if you follow Kate's advice and prep beforehand it'll just be that much easier. :)

Naw I am not worried! Thanks for the encouragement tho.

I have been without birth control for a couple months now due to...boring stuff...and it will be v nice not to live in fear of OH SHIT A BABY.

I loooooove mine even though I don't need it anymore; I'm keeping that prize-catch right where it is since it's good for 10 years!

Insertion was a total, total bitch for me, but then I pretty much have never had cramps (I have, but rly mildly and briefly so compared to normal people, I basically haven't) so it's possible I just wasn't prepared for anything to hurt so much in that place.

Get the mistoprostol/whatever-the-generic-brand-is right away if you haven't had kids yet, you all probs remember I had to try three times and I was miserable. Pressures/failure of rel'ship also partly to blame, though.

Once it's in there, life becomes SO MUCH EASIER!!! Periods still kinda wacky but I'm getting the hang of it.

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"