Pregnancy
Figuring Out The Birth Control Situation After You’re Done Having Kids Sucks
There are many things that are awful about trying for years to have a baby. I’ve written extensively about the stress a period of infertility can bring into your life. But today, I’d like to address the one awesome thing about trying to conceive besides all the sex; not having to worry about birth control. Not having to worry about birth control is fantastic.
Transitioning from the mindset of trying to get sperm all up in your vagina as swiftly and completely as humanly possible, to avoiding the stuff at all costs is strange. It’s taking some getting used to. I have an aversion to birth control pills and I don’t have insurance at the moment anyway – so I am trying to figure out what the hell to do to keep my old womb from hosting a baby again.
I’d heard about diaphragms – mostly in movies from the 70’s and 80’s. When my midwife suggested I get fitted for one I thought, “ooh. Retro. Why not?” There are several reasons why I should have avoided this fitting, but sometimes I lack introspection and just dive into things. This is one of those situations where it would have been good to “know thyself.”
Let me just preface this diaphragm story by confessing something pretty ridiculous. I’m always afraid that I’m going to be the person who gets something stuck up there, can’t find it – and has to go to the ER where I will be met with what I imagine to be a doctor in a coal miner’s hat. Although realistically I know that my vagina isn’t a bottomless cave with no end – I was told some stories in my twenties that scarred me into believing that the vagina was a place where things could disappear – possibly never to be found again.
Story number one: I had a friend who was experiencing some cramping and discomfort. She went to her gynecologist and found out that she had left a tampon up there. A tampon. For months, this thing was lodged in her vagina. She was having sex, shopping, going to the gym and going about her normal life with an old tampon lodged in her vagina that she had no idea was there.
Stories number two – infinity: Almost every friend I had in college had a story of their boyfriend having to find a willy-nilly condom that had slipped off during sex. The combination of all of these anecdotes and my own tendency toward paranoia and hypochondria has left me less than comfortable with lodging things in my lady parts. Spoiler alert – diaphragms need to be lodged way up in your lady parts.
