BY NICOLE ROYAL

Plan A One-Step: My Birth Control Saga

Pt. 1

To save face, I feel the need to provide the following disclaimer: I am NOT a doctor, nor do I have any professional medical experience. Aside from my love affair with WebMD’s symptom tracker, which I use to self-diagnose illnesses that I don’t have, I have no proof to back up what I am about to say. This is my personal experience with birth control, and – TMI warning – it’s not pretty.

You’ve had the talk, and you understand the importance of birth control, but if you’re like me (and 99% of women that have used some form of contraception), you’re familiar with all of the options available and you’re probably still overwhelmed. Unfortunately, there isn’t some magic pill (pun intended!) that works for everyone. So if you’re feeling lost, don’t worry, you’re not alone.

I started looking into birth control my senior year of high school, and after hearing horror stories from friends, I knew that I didn’t want the shot, IUD, or implant. That left me with the pill, and because of my chronic, hormonally-triggered migraines, I was limited to using estrogen-free contraception. Ummm hello?! 98% of birth control is estrogen-based.

I was forced to take the progesterone-only pill (POP for short), and was a little resentful that I wouldn’t be receiving any of the perks that came along with using traditional birth-control; namely clearer skin and bigger boobs. Still, I was happy to be on something. But that happiness quickly faded when I started developing yeast-like symptoms (shout-out to WebMD!) the week before my first period, post-pill. And while the symptoms cleared relatively quickly, I would continue to experience this yeast-like infection, along with awful cramps, before EVERY period while taking POP.

Fast forward to my sophomore year of college, when I ran out of my prescription and didn’t take my pill for four days. To compensate, I doubled up for a day once I’d rec’d my refill. The result? I didn’t have a period for the next NINE MONTHS. (Luckily, I was single and didn’t have to stress about the possibility of pregnancy) When my period finally came back it was with a vengeance: constant, crippling UTIs and yeast infections. My gynecologist claimed these were just the side-effects of a robust sex-life – only I wasn’t having sex! My new boyfriend at the time lived across the country, and, lately, the closest I’d come to sex was watching 50 Shades Of Grey with my good friends Ben & Jerry. Still, I was waking up every day with a UTI (I kept AZO in business in 2016), and the weekend my boyfriend moved back home, I finally hit my limit – curled up in a ball on our apartment floor, crying in pain.

Desperately seeking answers, I searched the web and found an online forum where women with similar symptoms had found relief by cutting out hormonal birth control. So! Despite my doctor’s orders, I went off the pill. And you know what?

It worked.

The yeast infections stopped instantly, and I haven’t had a UTI since.

Looking back, I don’t know why it took me three years to come to the realization that the progesterone-only pill wasn’t for me. Now, in lieu of the hormone-based birth control my body clearly hates, I’ve started looking into Paragard, the copper IUD.

Will keep you posted on my findings.