Humor: How I Decided on Birth Control.

In part due to my scientific training, I've done all of the research regarding what type of birth control is good for me. A simple search on Helium will show you there is an extensive list of choices. For me they all boiled down to the Pill (estrogen or progesterone), condoms, abstinence, or IUDs. I used to be on the regular Pill-the estrogen one. I liked it a lot. It got me through ten years of not only wanting to avoid pregnancy, but being absolutely frightened by it. My only side effect was three day periods during which I only used those tiny little pads most people use for between-period spotting. I have the wonderful ability to generate worry, so I worried that I wouldn't get pregnant after using the pill for so long because my uterus wouldn't be cushy enough for the baby.

It turns out this wasn't the case. After a year of trying to get pregnant we got a puppy. The puppy was the trick, so I spent that 1st nauseating trimester cleaning up puppy poop. Long story short, I went on the progesterone pill while I nursed son #1 (FYI, you can't take the estrogen one while nursing). It's more important to take the progesterone pill at the same time every day, apparently. The concept of having to take something at the same time every day was a little overwhelming, so son #2 was conceived while I had the progestin pill sitting in a drawer. (And I was drunk on a beach in the Turks and Caicosthat certainly helped.)
Despite little scientific basis for this, another reason I've turned against the Pill stems from reading too many articles about how bad it is to add things to our bodies that shouldn't be there: extra hormones, extra chemicals, extra calories I am trying to embrace my inner organic soul.

I did have the chance to get my tubes tied. Son #2 was born via an unplanned, very last minute, c-section. En route to the operating room, the doctor said, "So, while we're in there, do you want us to do anything else?" I'm not kidding. That's exactly what he said. I requested lipo, since my appendix is already out. No go. He had to explain to me he meant tube tying. I decided that in my somewhat frantic state, it was probably a bad idea to make such a decision.

So here I am, using my distaste for condoms as an excuse to not have sex with my husband and advocating the abstinence option for birth control. (I'm sure you readers are largely women, so you understand that's it's not actually not wanting to have sex, it's just wanting to do other things more, like sleep, eat, and organize baby photos.) I know it can't go on for any longer, and I have to make the big birth control decision today at my post-partum visit.

So I'm getting an IUD. This flies in the face of my new attempt to not put things in my body that shouldn't be there. And to boot, I'm getting the one that has the hormone release, to ease the period symptoms. My husband suggested that I should get the "old-fashioned" one, which is arguably more organic (made with copper), but it has a tendency to increase period symptoms. Is it a bad sign that I considered it just to spite him, since he has to put up with me?

Learn more about this author, Kathryn Ford.
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