Men, this one isn’t for you. So just walk away now…really, you’ll be sorry if you keep reading. Fair warning!
Alright, so if you’re reading this I assume you’re female. Or you don’t heed warnings very well. Whatever the case, can we talk birth control? I firmly believe in it. Especially considering the fact that I absolutely do not ever want to be pregnant again. If I change my mind about having another child, adoption sounds wonderful. I have no desire to spend nine months feeling queasy, fat, and in pain. Really…the last pregnancy just about did me in and I have no desire to repeat that. However, permanent birth control didn’t appeal. I considered having my tubes tied during my c-section, but wasn’t comfortable with the risks of long-term health issues. (There are people who claim to have something called post tubal ligation syndrome. There are doubts as to the validity of their claims, but I wasn’t thrilled about the possibility since I have other hormonal/female issues.) Plus I just didn’t feel like I should close that door the minute she was pulled from my body. I was hormonal and coming off of nine very unpleasant months and didn’t want to make that decision under those circumstances. I’ve since made my peace with my family size and my hatred of gestating, though. I’d gladly drive my husband to the urologist’s office for a little snip and make a big deal over him for a couple of days while he sat on a bag of frozen peas, but he’s not into it. Which throws the ball back into my court. Since I am the one who is adamant about not having any more kids, this has to be my responsibility. (For now, anyway…I think he’ll come around eventually. And lest you think my husband is less than awesome, I assure you he’s not. If I’d exhausted all other options, he would go for it.)
Luckily, breastfeeding does tend to render me infertile for quite a while. This is not true for everyone, though! I suspect it is partially due to PCOS, but can’t be certain. However, I am obviously quite fertile once my cycles return post-baby…this is how I ended up with baby #3. Never take prior infertility for granted! Even if you took every drug and had every procedure under the sun to get pregnant, this is no guarantee that you don’t need to worry about birth control for the rest of your life. With that lesson learned, I had to make a decision. So, like any woman does, I turned to friends. Asked what they were using, what worked, what didn’t. I came away with a lot of information and had to weigh them all with my personal situation.
I don’t like barrier methods (condom, diaphragm, cap, etc.) because they don’t allow for spontaneity, a requirement when you have three kids. The failure rates for these are also quite high. Not ideal in my current situation. The hormonal methods (pill, shot, patch, ring) require too much maintenance. I am absolutely awful at taking a pill every day or remembering to change a patch on get to the doctor on a regular basis to get a shot. Even as much as I want to avoid pregnancy, I’d inevitably forget or not have the cash to get it when it was due and end up pregnant. We actually used natural family planning (this is NOT the rhythm method, by the way!) for a while after baby #1 and were quite successful with it. However, I was also infertile and couldn’t get pregnant with baby #2 until I shot myself up with fertility drugs and had many unpleasant procedures so I’m not sure how successful I can actually claim to be. Besides, there’s always the possibility of serious miscalculation with this method and I’m not into taking that risk right now. Permanent methods were out, as mentioned above. This left me with one good (because abstinence is not realistic for a married couple) method…the Mirena IUD.
I asked my mom her opinion. She last worried about birth control sometime in the late 1970s, so she wasn’t a lot of help. Mostly ominous warnings about the old fashioned IUDs that weren’t useful based on the current options. So I googled. And googled some more. And came up with lots of horror stories about the Mirena. Uterine perforations, bleeding, pain, mood swings, weight gain, acne…they ran the gamut from merely irritating to life threatening. I was scared of all of these possibilities, but I also had a lot of people (who I knew personally) who swore that it was the best.birth.control.EVER.
So I went for it. I had it placed at 6 weeks postpartum, which means I’ve had it for over a year now. Insertion was…unpleasant. But I’d taken some pain medicine beforehand and knew what to expect. I bled for several days afterwards, then had some additional random bleeding/spotting over the next several weeks. But other than that, my side effects have been nil. No acne. No weight gain (that I can blame on the Mirena, anyway). No mood swings. If anything, I feel like my hormones are in better control than they were sans Mirena. And the absolute best part? No periods. Once that initial spotting tapered off post insertion, I haven’t had any more. I hear that they might come back. And if they do, I’m prepared. But I can’t convey the luxury this is for a woman with PCOS without getting (even more) graphic and truly scaring away any men who chose to read through this. Let’s just say that I’m sold for this reason alone. I also love that I can’t get a wild hair and decide to forgo birth control to “just see what happens” without going through the hoops of making an appointment with the doctor and having it removed. (Last time I decided to “just see what happens” we ended up with baby #3!) Yes, I will eventually have to replace it…in 2014. By then I expect I will either have convinced my husband to take one for the team or will have decided to have a hysterectomy for other reasons. And if that isn’t the case, it’s easy enough to simply have a new one put in.
So why am I sharing this? Because I had a hard time finding positive stories about the Mirena. For every one that I found, there were hundreds more that were negative. And though most of my friends who’d tried it were happy, those weren’t the stories I saw when I consulted Dr. Google. Obviously this is a decision between you and your doctor, but if you’ve landed on this page because you wanted to see a real-life experience, this is mine. I love Mirena and would recommend considering it if you’re looking for a reliable birth control method. There are people who are happy with it and I’m one of them.
it! I’ve gone a little nuts with the apps, but there’s something out there to help with literally anything you need to do. Since my word of the year is health, I’m using it to help me get healthy.
