I was on the birth control pill for nearly a decade when I decided that I wanted to stop altering my body’s natural hormones. It was around the same time that I was doing my doula training so I was reading a lot about the female body and the menstrual cycle.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I think that the pill has done a lot of good and it’s let women reclaim their bodies and sexuality in a way that was never possible at any other time in history. But it also has a lot of negative side-effects that are often glossed over, including its impact on mental health. I think women’s healthcare, in general, still has a long way to go.
I’m not wanting to have a baby any time soon, and I don’t want to be dosing my body with hormones so what’s a girl to do?
It turns out that there aren’t that many options. The copper coil (IUD) is the only non-hormonal long-lasting birth control option. I spoke to my GP about it, and once she decided that I was a good candidate for it, we booked an insertion date.
The date was nearly a month and a half after my first conversation with the doctor, so needless to say, I had ample time to read horror story after horror story online. I read that the insertion was nightmarishly painful and that for about 6 months afterward your periods would be extremely heavy and crampy, with a lot of in-between spotting.
So a year later here’s my experience:
The insertion was no fun. However, the doctor doing the insertion was an absolute legend. She did everything she could to keep me relaxed, informed, and comfortable. She had another doctor with her as an assistant, and the second doctor was such a sweetheart that she even offered to hold my hand throughout.
I’d describe the whole experience as consisting of 3 intense stabbing, cramping pains. The first when the doctor is measuring your uterus, the second when the doctor is opening the cervix up for insertion, and the third during the insertion itself. It definitely hurt, but it never felt unbearable. It was certainly helped by how calm and lovely both of the doctors were. The insertion itself took about 5 minutes, but including the time of going through everything beforehand with the doctor and discussing aftercare, I was in the room for about 20 minutes all in all. The doctor used a topical anesthetic with me, which was hugely appreciated, but I’m sure that must vary surgery to surgery. I’d definitely recommend requesting it if that’s an option for you.
My biggest tips for making the insertion less painful are: make sure to eat a meal beforehand so you don’t get lightheaded, take some paracetamol or ibuprofen about 30 minutes before your appointment, and practice deep yoga breathing throughout. Even when the insertion was at its most painful, I kept deep breathing and thinking to myself “just breathe and count to 30. You can bear anything for 30 seconds”. And before you know it, you’re finished.
I made sure that I didn’t have anything else planned for the rest of the day and I’m so glad that I did. The pain wasn’t constant, it came in period-cramp like waves. But imagine the worst period cramps of your life. But with a regular dose of paracetamol and a good night’s sleep, the next day I felt almost completely back to normal. I had some light bleeding on the day of insertion and some light spotting on the second and then I was basically back to normal.
My first period was very crampy and heavy. In full disclosure, I have fairly light periods to begin with, so I know that my starting bar is different from everyone else’s. It took about 7 months for everything to settle back to normal and I’m so glad that this is the decision that I made.
I hope this post helps someone else. Other than terrible experiences, I couldn’t find a lot of non-medical literature written by women on how the procedure went for them.
Are you interested in hormone-free birth control?
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