Copper IUD. I loved the no acne from the pill, but I hated the migraines. It made me leery of hormones at all.
I’ve read online about the IUD. None of the websites mentioned anything about if younger women should use it. They seem mostly geared towards mothers who don’t want another child but don’t want their tubes tied. I’m about to be 19 and recently became sexually active. I definitely don’t want a child but I know I’d forget a pill. So is the IUD good for women of all ages?
I also read something about a copper IUD with no hormones. Does anyone know if it’s better or worse?
Thanks.
Darkness
Age isn’t really that much of a factor for an IUD, but STD risk certainly is. STDs and IUDs are a nasty, nasty combination. I don’t recall the specifics (Dr.J explained it to me, but it was years ago), but it has something to do with increasing the risk of complications from STD infection. Something about the germs travelling up the string and infecting the uterus instead of just the vagina, or something.
At any rate, IUDs are only suitable for women in mutually monogamous long-term relationships who do not have any STDs. By long-term, they mean outlasting the IUD, and generally they’re talking marriage or equivalent shacking up. Everybody who gets one has to get tested beforehand, no matter what. If you have any risk whatsoever of having or getting crotch nasties, you don’t get an IUD. End of story. If you currently have something, you can get one put in after you’ve completed treatment and tested negative.
A lot of doctors don’t like to put them into women who’ve never been pregnant, either, because of overblown, outdated concerns that it might impair future fertility. Another factor is that it’s often much harder to get the damn thing in there if you’ve never been pregnant. The unstretched cervix is a moody creature and opens up rather grudgingly. (Between that and my seriously tilted uterus, my insertion turned into something of a three-ring circus. Search for my thread from last July on the “Fantastic Plastic” if you’re interested in the details.)
So to sum up, Darkness, it doesn’t sound like you’re a candidate for an IUD of either type. If you ever become a good candidate, there are advantages and drawbacks to both types. The copper-T lasts twice as long as the Mirena. Some women don’t deal with the hormones in the Mirena well at all–they can have mood swings, weight gain, lots of interperiod bleeding, headaches, etc. For other, women, however, the hormones cause no problems at all and actually stop periods altogether. The copper-T can also cause heavier periods with increased cramping.
I am downright religious about taking my pills on time. Hopefully I will be able to stay on the ones I am on now, it’s been two weeks and I’ve had no problems but we’ll see if I get the headaches from hell when the fourth week arrives. And then there’s condoms for backup as well – there’s nothing else to worry about with my sweetie, but we’re both rather paranoid about the issue!
SEASONALE BABY! I just had a light three day period and won’t have another for three months .
On a related not, does anybody have opinions on diaphrams or cervical caps?
I’m on the pill, but the boyfriend and I would like an extra barrier method. We’ve tried condoms, but I’m allergic to latex, and polyeurethane (sp?) are very expensive and have come off during sex a number of times. Sheepskin are even more expensive, so they’re not really an option. I know that I’ll need an exam and fitting for a diaphram, but insurance will cover that to a point, so in the end it will be cheaper to get a diaphram that will last however long they last, than it would be to spend a tons of money on condoms and always having to make sure one of us has them.
So, any thoughts on non-hormone methods like that?
I much prefer the patch to pills. And I’ve been on both for significant lengths of time. I definitely had the “no set schedule, hard to remember to take the damn pill on time” syndrome.
As far as the fuzz factor, I’ve found that after four or five days you can rub a little almond oil (or similar) around the patch and it will take the fuzz right off. Gotta be careful you don’t get the whole thing oily though, or it won’t stick anymore. Just real light on the skin around the edges. Another trick I use for that ~1/8th inch fuzzy edge that develops and looks funny is just to peel the thing off, trim the fuzzy edges and stick it back on. Much better!
I wish they’d just go ahead and make the things in colors like light pink or powder blue or something!!! That fake-skin band-aid color is the WORST part about the patch. Otherwise, I recommend it to any woman who doesn’t have to take the low-level hormone pills.
You’d be about as well off going the withdrawal method. No, really, they’ve got about the same failure rate, and withdrawal is certainly less expensive and always available. Besides, I think diaphrams are often made of latex. Given your allergy, I’d definitely check on that point before I got very set on the idea.
I hope it’s not violating some sort of patient confidentiality issue to say that my job pertains to helping women start and continue using birth control… of all the women I’ve talked to who try the patch, it seems as though a lot of women think it’ll be a great idea, and go in with high hopes. About 2% of them love it after a few months and want to continue. The rest quickly ditch it. Usually we give people three cycles of whatever they want to try to start out with. It’s gotten to the point where we give patch starters one cycle, and have them come back to pick up the rest if they decide they like it, since we were wasting so many on people who tried it for one month, decided they hated it, threw away the rest, and came in to change to something different.
However, if I got correctly that you’re sixteen, you are in the age bracket that my completely unscientific observations have shown seem to stick with it the most often. Like I said, some people really love it, so give it a shot. Wouldn’t hurt to try it for a couple months, and if you dislike it you can always switch methods.
Question:
If a woman is on, say, birth control pills (with a 97-99.9% effectiveness), and the man she’s with uses a condom as well (with about 85% effectiveness, I believe?) and both methods are used as correctly as an average person can be expected to, what would the total %-effectiveness be?
I’m on the pill. I’m a big fan - I was on Depo two months ago, and I must say I’m SOOO happy not to be on it anymore. It made me gain weight, screwed with my emotions (in other words - I could get irritated at virtually anything, but if something really wonderful happened, I felt kind of numb rather than happy), made sex just another chore, and made me feel really disconnected with basically everything. On the pill I feel like I’m actually here, I have normal emotions (or normal for me), and sex is so very much more fun. Plus, I’ve started to lose weight, which is wonderful. I have a friend who takes a combination of the pill and the patch - three weeks on the pill, then one week on the patch. It works really well for her. She had been on just the patch, but her bleeding is so severe, and her cramps so debilitating that she just can’t have a period more than every three months or so. It all depends on the individual.
I had the same side effects mentioned by a lot of women (and Hal Briston :D) here. Depo gave me panic attacks and awful cramps. I couldn’t remember to take the pill, but when I did, I gained a bunch of weight and my skin broke out. I didn’t like the patch for aesthetic reasons. With the ring I don’t have periods, cramps or weight gain. I do get really moody in the last week of my cycle (this week… watch out!) but I do that without birth control.
My problem is a combo of the no set schedule problem and a weird gag reflex thing that I get in the morning. I can barely brush my teeth without vomiting copiously, and pill taking gets me every time. After an hour or so, I’m good… but by then I’m doing other things and bc is not on my priority list.
As for the OP, I guess it’s a matter of which works best for you. Try one, see if you like it. If not, switch. There isn’t much else you can do. Talk to your doc about low dose hormone pills. The ring has a lower dose and I do much better on that.
Dang good question. I’d like to see an answer as well, since that’s what I do. I figure better safe than sorry, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen any numbers.
kitterblue–IANAD, but when I got my pack of pills, I was told my the nurse practitioner that you could fudge your pill-taking time by about 12 hours and not venture into the “missed pill” territory. And given that you can usually miss at least one pill (sometimes two in a row) with no significantly greater risk of pregnancy, I think it’s okay. However, don’t try this at home, kids! It is better to be safe than sorry.
Darkness–if you’re worried about forgetting a pill, you might want to look into Depo-Provera. As far as a diaphragm, my human sexuality text* says:
With the diaphragm, you can insert it up to 6 hours beforehand, but you must leave it in for at least 6 hours afterwards. A similar device is a cervical cap, which fits more snugly over the cervix. For that, the failure rate is closely tied to whether you’ve had children or not–for women who haven’t had children, it’s 18%; for women who have it’s 36%.
Both the diaphragm and cervical cap provide slight protection against STDs because the cervix is covered.
We took an anonymous survey in my sexuality course, and our instructor was surprised that more couples didn’t use a diaphragm.
*Understanding Human Sexuality, 8th edition, by JS Hyde and JD DeLamater, 2003.
What other non-hormone options are there?