Deciding on birth-control methods can be like sitting between a rock and hard place. The daily pill is one of the cheaper options but remembering to take a pill every day, at the same time, can be a challenge. It feels risky, especially when certain things, like antibiotics, can lessen the effectiveness of the pill. Even the most organized type A personality can make a mistake.
Not to mention the grim side effects caused by the pill: headaches, nausea, bloating, mood swings, and depression. Inviting, right?
After years of being on oral contraceptive and begrudgingly dealing with the daily side effects, I started asking around about other methods. A lot of my friends and family members have IUDs. (For those of you who don’t know, an IUD is a small T-shaped device that is implanted in the uterus and has a failure rate of less than 1 percent.)
Wanting to weigh the pros and cons I asked my friends if they would recommend it and most of them had a similar IUD endorsement speech (you would have thought they were all sponsored by Mirena), saying things like, “It’s the best decision i’ve ever made,” “It’s life-changing,” and, dramatically, “I would rather die than go back to the pill.”
I was sold. However, every endorsement speech ended with a warning: the pain. Most women I spoke to reported that the insertion of the IUD was one of the worst pains they had ever experienced. A few of my friends and family members reported fainting just after insertion.
My follow-up question was to ask if they were given any pain relief before, during, or after the procedure—they were not. Instead, they were all instructed to take 600 to 800 mg of ibuprofen (Advil) a few hours before, and, at most, one of my friends was given a Lorazepam (commonly known as Ativan), which helped with her anxiety beforehand.
I was surprised that no adequate pain relief was offered to my friends and family members. I decided to investigate further. My next step was to look into the insertion process step by step. How invasive could it really be? Without getting overly graphic, it’s pretty invasive. Essentially, you’re having a device shoved through your cervix then secured in the uterus. Anyone with a uterus knows that even during an annual pap test, having your cervix swabbed is very uncomfortable, so I couldn’t imagine how it would feel to have something shoved through it.
The pain that was reported to me was a lot more intense and lasted longer than described on the Island Sexual Health website: “expect some strong cramping that should settle within minutes in most cases.”
As I kept reading I felt certain that we should be given appropriate pain relief rather than medicating ourselves with Advil at home: “occasionally, some people feel nauseous or light headed for a few minutes right after the procedure. This passes quickly, but we would advise you to stay laying down until feeling better, and we will offer you juice &/or snacks to help as well… If possible, bring a companion that can drive you home.”
If we are being recommended to find a designated driver, we need to be properly treated for a painful procedure. It’s in our nature to endure pain: we endure pain monthly, we give birth, we suffer through painful birth-control-induced side effects. Women have become adept at suffering, because we’ve had no choice.