I have been meaning to make this post for months but life has totally gotten away from me. This is a very detailed life update and something very personal. But what’s the point of having a blog if I can’t share my life decisions on here? In March I decided to switch from the pill to an IUD. The decision came after months of research and weaning myself off of the pill. This post is not a medical journal. I am not your doctor. I like to share my opinions and make recommendations on my blog, but I feel very uncomfortable trying to do that with this post. You can take my account as a reference if you’re considering birth control options for yourself, but I will always say that you need to take the professional and medical advice of your doctor over anything I say in this post. Okay… now that we got that out of the way, let’s get into it.
The Pill
I started seeing a gynecologist when I was 17. At the time, the reason I wanted to get on the pill was to regulate my period… but I did also want to be prepared for if I had sex (sorry mom). As a teenager, there weren’t many other options for BC that were recommended for me, so it just seemed natural I would go on the pill. I don’t think I was super aware of what putting those hormones regularly into my body would do to it, but I stuck to it for 8 years. I was on the pill from the time I was 17 to 25. That’s such a long and transformational time!
Confession: I was not perfect when taking the pill. I would miss days every now and again and would never take it at the same time every night. And every time I messed with my cycle, I would become an emotional wreck who would cry at everything. Like literally sobbing on my bedroom floor over NOTHING or being a super moody bitch to my friends and family. My teenage years can be described as angsty and dramatic… but only when I was PMSing. Now that seems like pretty normal behavior for teenagers, but I can’t help but feel like my BC played a major factor in my moods. I was noticing my moods were very dependent on my cycle and I was having really bad and low days very consistently. There is no doubt the pill was altering my hormones (like it was supposed to) but how I was feeling and acting were so dependent on what day of the month it was.
But for all intents and purposes, the pill worked! My period became like clockwork and I don’t currently have a baby so that’s cool. I also did not have ‘horrible periods’. I was never one to cramp or have heavy flows, but being on the pill made them consistently light and easy to deal with. The pill wasn’t perfect but I got used to it.
Taking a Break
I had been thinking about switching birth control for years. In college, a bunch of my friends started getting IUDs and I was curious. They said it was painful when you got it, but after you sucked it up, it was worth it. Since I was never ‘perfect’ at taking my pill on time and every day, I thought another BC option would be better for me. Every time I would go to my gyno, I would ask about switching but she persuaded me to stick with the pill “because I’ve been on it for so long and it has been working for me”. So I kept up with it until September 2020.
By this point, I had been in therapy for my “bad moods” and “bad days” since August 2019. I am not saying I starting going to therapy because of my whacky hormones and BC. But… I was becoming more self-aware of my feelings and moods during that time. I would reflect on what was causing me to feel sad, angry, hopeless, pessimistic… and of course, my absolute worst days were when I was hardcore PMSing.
So during the pandemic, I decided I take a break from the pill, but it started as an accident! Last September I was cat-sitting for one of my best friend’s parents in Frederick and forgot to pack my pills. It was the start of a new month and I just didn’t grab my next pack. When I realized I leave them 45 minutes away, I told myself I could miss a few days and it wouldn’t be a huge deal. Now it’s funny that this happened when it did, because another one of my best friends had also taken a break from her BC pills, but for different reasons. And we got to talking about how we were feeling with the pill and discussing other options and I was sold. I wanted to take a break from the pill. I wanted to see how my body would react without those hormones that I so devoutly took (or at least tried to) for 8 years. And it was a great time to do it since… we were all forced to social distance and quarantine. Nothing was going on in my life anyway that I would need to worry about whether I was covered BC wise or not.
Initially when I got off the pill (the first 2 weeks), I felt lighter. Not like weighing less, but more like feeling like a fog was lifted on my mind and body?? That sounds like mumbo jumbo I’m sure but I did physically feel better. Now this is probably a good time to mention that when you ‘get off the pill’ it’s a long process. I had been taking those hormones for 8 years. It was going to take some time for them to be fully flushed out of my body. So the next 6 months were a bit of a rollercoaster with hormones… but it had nothing to do with my mood.
As I’m currently writing this, I’m trying to find the most eloquent way to describe that when I first got off my BC my hormones went crazy. Like a pizza-faced teenager who just found his first Playboy-crazy. Like a sailor stuck on an island by himself who just saw a mermaid wash up on the shore-crazy. Like a red-eyed cicada immerging from the ground after 17 years, ready to scream at the world until she gets what she wants -crazy. My hormones were going buck wild in a way that I hadn’t experience since I was 17. It was like someone took the lid off a bottle rocket and there was nothing to stop the raging hormones that could finally go wild (the lid being my BC pills that probably calmed those buck wild hormones in some way). But of course, this was not ideal seeing that I was still living at home and the threat of COVID was still very prominent. What’s that TikTok sound that goes “I am crazy… but I am free”. Because… yeah anyway.
My period also became very irregular during this time, exactly like how it was right before I got on the pill when I was 17. I also started to break out on my face and neck… which is weird because I literally went on Accutane for 6 months in college so this wouldn’t happen again. The first 3 months after getting off the pill had my body a little off kilter, but by month 4, I was feeling normal. Better than normal. Like this was how my body was supposed to naturally be. But that didn’t mean I wanted to leave myself unprepared for if my mermaid washed ashore. (Did I lose readers for mentioned that horrible metaphor again?… hope not).
Getting the IUD
Now I don’t want to spend a lot of time explaining what an IUD is/does, so here is a great resource from Planned Parenthood.
In February I went to my gyno for my Well Woman’s Visit. Since I had been off my birth control pills for 6 months, I felt more comfortable talking about other BC options. I told my doctor how much better I felt being off the pill and why I decided to take a break. I told her that my other friends had raved about the IUDs and I wanted to talk about getting one. And together we discussed that Kyleena would probably be best for me. It’s smaller than other IUDs so my body had a smaller chance of rejecting it, and it was less likely to cause any sort of bad cramping that I was already not accustomed to. Kyleena is hormonal (which I was a little wary of) but this still seemed like the best option for me. Even though it will only last 3-4 years (other IUDS can last up to 10), I was reassured by my doctor that this was the right one for my body. This is a friendly reminder as you are reading this that I am not your doctor and you should be having these conversations with your doctor instead of just taking my word for it.
I was excited to get the IUD, but I was also nervous. If you weren’t already aware of this before reading this post, getting an IUD inserted is painful. There is really no way around it. I kept rationalizing it to myself that a minute or two of pain would be worth it for years of being covered. After my initial gyno appointment, I had to wait until my period came to get it inserted. Because my period was so irregular, I had to move my appointment because it came a week earlier than I thought it would. But thankfully, my doctor’s office was flexible. My doctor also gave me a prescription for two small pills that I would insert into my hoo-ha the night before my insertion, to make my cervix walls soften. These pills and getting an IUD inserted while on your period are not always common practice for an IUD, but I’m glad my doctor took some steps to make this process a little more bearable. Oh and fun fact: one of the pills didn’t dissolve fully, so when I was getting my IUD, the doctor was like… what is that??
I took a lot of Advil the morning of the insertion. I also took the day off of work because I wasn’t sure I would be able to drive myself home if the cramping or pain was really bad. I have a tendency to pass out when I have to give blood, so I didn’t have a lot of faith in myself to keep it together. But I did keep telling myself “Kimberly, you have literally gotten your face broken before, you can do anything“. My name was called and I went back into my room. Another doctor (not my usual gyno) came in to do the procedure with an attending nurse in the room. She warned me that there are going to be two quick lightning bolts of pain and then it would be over. When I tell you I could not have, in any way, mentally prepared myself for the pain I felt in those two minutes… I mean it. This doctor was right, it was two quick lightning bolts and I was YELLING to try to ease the pain. I think in my mind, I was braced for the pain you have when you get a Brazilian wax and this was not that at all! (Kimberly, you big dumb idiot.) I started sweating, my heart was racing and I felt dizzy. But it was over quickly. The doctor said I actually did pretty well. I did not actually pass out but I did lay down for 20 minutes until the room stopped spinning and I could breathe normally. Then I drove myself home and took a nap.
Having an IUD:
Now here is the incredible part… I had little to no pain or cramping after the initial insertion. I think I maybe only felt a small cramp… 3 times during the day? That’s nothing! I was prepared to be kneeling over in pain with a heating pad, but I didn’t need it. For all my friends who had gotten an IUD and told me their horror stories about crying from cramps and not being able to move out of bed, I didn’t have anything close to that. No idea why, but I am thankful.
I got my IUD inserted on March 3rd. For the first month after, I had an extremely heavy period (which was honestly okay timing because I also had COVID during that time… so if I was already feeling horrible, why not just twist the knife more?) By the second month, it was more like an irregular, lighter period. Some days it would be there, some days it wouldn’t. And by that point, it was also a darker/browner color. Today as I’m writing this post, over 3 months after I got my IUD, I don’t have a period and will probably not have one again until I get this IUD removed.
I think I had the best case scenario for an IUD out of anyone I know… like literally anyone. A few weeks ago I went back to my gyno to make sure everything was okay since I felt like things had gone a little too well. “What if it fell out? What if it’s not where it’s supposed to be? I can’t feel the string, is that bad? I didn’t cramp at all, did she even put it in?” But my doctor reassured me that everything was fine and just because I couldn’t feel the string, doesn’t mean it isn’t working. I keep telling myself that if my body was rejecting this, it would tell me (and I would be in a lot of pain).
Overall Thoughts:
I mentioned this above but I want to say it again: I am not in a place where I can lend medical advice to anyone. I’m not an expert and I know nothing about your body, medical history or needs. I can tell you my own personal experience and what I think for myself, and that’s about it.
I am very glad I got the IUD. I think there are so many benefits for myself that I wasn’t reaping with the pill. My IUD is effective, low maintenance, does not make me feel like shit. I am relieved I don’t have to worry about remembering my pill and I’m glad I don’t have to worry about a period anymore. The pain I felt during the insertion was well worth it. I am not looking forward to having to do that again in a few years, but I would absolutely do it again.
If you have questions about anything I wrote or just want to talk about the pill or IUDs, reach out to me on Instagram or my email.
Thanks for reading! xx