14 October 2020
On the subject of birth control...
Idk how you feel about birth control, but in the event that you’re strongly for it here are some things that might help…
First, if you’re nervous to bring up wanting birth control to me, just know that I will make this as painless as possible on you. It’s your body, you have full autonomy to do with it what you will. All I can do is offer you my thoughts and experiences.
So I started BC when I was 17. I tried a low dose estrogen pill (Loestrin 24 it was called), which worked great for me in high school and college in that I didn’t really experience any mood swings and I never got any acne.
Half way through college I stopped the pill because I was starting to be very casual about using condoms (do not recommend) so I chose to go off the pill so that I’d be more strict about making my partners use condoms. Fear generally motivates me pretty well lol.
When your father and I got serious, I ended up trying the pill again and OH MY GOD it was miserable in terms of mood swings, so I only lasted a year on it.
After you were born, I got a 3-5 year IUD, Mirena, (a lot of women accidentally get pregnant while nursing and I really just wanted to focus on you for a while). And I freaking love it! You don’t even know it’s there and it’s localized hormones so no mood swings and no affect on breast milk.
One thing they don’t mention AND SHOULD is that with an IUD, you may spot for the first few months. I did and it’s really fucking annoying. But if you can get over that, the rest of the 3 years is WONDERFUL. You don’t get any periods.
Fun side-effect for later, you don’t experience any menopause symptoms if you have an IUD in.
When we were in school there was a lot of chatter about taking the morning after pill a number of times decreases your fertility. Idk about that, I took it 3 times and I didn’t have any problems getting pregnant with you so…
It does bring on some really miserable contractions for two days so I wouldn’t - like - have it be your go-to or anything.
I’m totally here to chat with you about it. If you prefer, it can also be a closed conversation between you and your OB. You don’t even have to let me know, I kinda just blindly pay the bills anyway so I wouldn’t even notice.
❤ your mother