This guest post was written by my friend Sarah Manuel, who currently resides in a state that recently passed a bill to make abortion effectively impossible to access without crossing state borders. It has become essential for every woman to take extra precautions to avoid unwanted pregnancies. Today, she talks about her chosen birth control, an IUD, and how it has helped her live her professional and personal life to the fullest.
My decision to get an IUD was a purely practical one. I wanted to have sex and not have a baby, and an IUD seemed like the best birth control for me and my lifestyle.
Finding a birth control option that worked for years completely changed the game for me.
I had used the pill off and on, but it just didn’t seem right for me at the time. I traveled for work and didn’t have a consistent schedule, so I didn’t want to pop a pill in the middle of a client meeting or wake up early/stay up late just to take a pill when all I wanted to do was sleep.
I’d had a roommate who used NuvaRing, but I saw her put it in the fridge at some point. In my mind, that made it seem much more complicated than it probably actually was, so I didn’t even investigate that route. Maintaining my birth control on a specific day of the month seemed even more risky for me than something I did daily. I imagined forgetting to take care of it on the day I needed to, or going out of town for work at a bad time, or any other scenario in which I made a small mistake with huge ramifications.
Don’t get me wrong: reproductive health is important and deserves careful thought and attention. But in the moment, I can get caught up with all the other things in my life that also deserve careful thought and attention and forget about this one. Adulthood comes with responsibilities in all areas of my life, but one moment of neglect to my reproductive health could result in me getting sick or pregnant.
I’d also like to add that we don’t require people with penises to worry this much about their reproductive health.
Ever since I started taking birth control, I’ve had this little voice in my head (read: internalized societal expectations) that said, “If you’re not responsible enough to take your birth control consistently, you’re not responsible enough to have sex.”
Over time I’ve learned to recognize this as patriarchal bullshit. We don’t require people with penises to alter their body chemistry so that they don’t get someone pregnant. They aren’t required to live with the physical, emotional, psychological, and financial ramifications of becoming pregnant. So what I’m getting at here is that if people with penises don’t have to take a pill every day to be “responsible” enough to have sex, then I shouldn’t have to either. IUDs allow me to have sex responsibly without expecting me to stay obsessively vigilant over taking a pill or using a condom.
Still, I was a little hesitant to get an IUD at all.
Of course, convenience wasn’t the only factor in my decision. My last experience with birth control, The Pill, altered my hormones to the point that I felt like a different person – my emotions weren’t as intense, and I felt like I was less in tune with how I truly felt about things that were important to me. I didn’t want to go through that again.
In the end, I decided to take the risk on what the IUD would do to my hormones in favor of birth control that, and I cannot stress this enough: I wouldn’t have to do anything with for five years.
The IUD has had an incredibly positive impact on my life.
In case you haven’t heard, periods are terrible. The IUD I got made my periods lighter than they were before, and they were already pretty light. With the IUD, I sometimes go months without having a period, and when I do have one, they last less than 24 hours and have a very light flow.
From a waste perspective, my IUD has also virtually eliminated period waste.
This means I now need an average of 1 tampon a month, if that. I also recently got Thinx, a reusable period panty, so my period waste will be eliminated altogether. I don’t know of another birth control that would allow for that.
Another kind of waste the IUD reduces (for me) is condoms.
A lot of people still use condoms even with an IUD since IUDs aren’t 100% effective. However, my partner and I have decided to reduce how often we use them. This waste reduction wasn’t my original intention with getting the IUD, but it’s a pretty awesome side effect. Picturing 5 years’ worth of eliminated pill packaging, extra tampons, and condoms next to my tiny IUD makes me feel even better about my switch.
You need good health insurance to get an IUD.
Sadly, this option isn’t available to everyone in the USA due to complications with health insurance. I’m extremely fortunate to be in a place where the cost wouldn’t be an issue, and I had great health insurance in case anything went wrong at the time I got my IUD. I also got an enthusiastic recommendation from my older sister, which definitely helped. I trust my older sister’s opinion on most things, and I know she has my best interests at heart – she wouldn’t have recommended an IUD to me if she didn’t truly believe it would work out well for me.
That said, IUDs aren’t the right choice for everyone.
The effect that my IUD had on me was my own individual situation, and experiences vary WIDELY. I’ve had two friends get IUDs in the last few years, and both of their experiences were terrible. Reproductive health decisions are important and personal, and no one should judge you for making the decisions that are best for you, your body, and your lifestyle.
If the waste you’ll produce is an important factor in your birth control decisions, you might want to factor in an IUD. Regardless, talking to your doctor is the best way to start looking for the right birth control for you.