Planned Childfree Adulthood

Recently, I made the decision to post a question about different birth control options available to me to my lady friends of facebook. I got plenty of opinions alright. Some of
them were not the opinions that I had any interest in hearing. It did make one thing perfectly clear to me though. My body is MY body and I get to make the decisions about what happens to it. Feeling bold with that concept fresh in my mind, I made an appointment with my gynecologist.
Of course, I had to wait a few weeks before that appointment came to be. After all, I am not the cash cow that is the pregnant woman, and therefore not a priority to be seen right away. So I waited, and did more reading on the internet (which is always highly terrifying). I then made a plan to do something I hate doing. I was going to have to allow my body to surf the crimson wave.
It was not my intention to make my gyno deal with the horrors of my period, but I knew from reading that if I wanted any new methods of birth control I was considering that they would tell me to come back once I had started my cycle. That would mean another month of waiting and another $35 spent on my current form of birth control. I have been working a ton of overtime lately and I really didn't want to worry about rescheduling or taking a coveted vacation day for a doctor's appointment.
Now when I was on orthotricyclen, my period came like absolute clockwork. With Nuvaring, it comes eventually, but it was hard to approximate. In rare circumstances, it would show up a week late, sending me into a complete panic, especially since I gave myself the luxury of skipping 2-3 cycles at a time. I completely forgot that this sometimes happened of course. My appointment was on Monday, and I tried to get the ball rolling on Sunday.
Needless to say, by Monday, I had not yet been blessed with my "gift" from mother nature. We want over the same options I had asked about a year ago. I don't know what made my gyno take me more seriously this time. Maybe she was in a better mood that day. Maybe it was my assertion that I definitely didn't want kids in the next 5 years or possibly ever. Or maybe it was when I said "I am by no means an oven, but I would like to set it and forget it." Whatever it was, we had a serious discussion about IUDs and the Nexplanon rod. These were the only options I had any interest in besides my current option.
Interestingly, she said she refused to put the Paraguard in any of her patients based on a high rate of infection. This was contradictory to what I had heard from my friend Shara who had gotten one from planned parenthood and raved about it. And her doctor had refused to put in the Mirena. So it seemed as though these IUDs had doctors all Team Aniston/Team Jolie about them. My recommendation is that if your heart is set on one versus the other, be prepared to find a doctor that is willing to put that one in. The major difference is hormones: Paraguard is hormone free, Mirena is not.
I was not sold on one over the other. Hormones can do horrific things to some people, and had caused my sister's hairloss. BUT hormones had been my savior for many years. I started my period on Easter when I was 11 (and a half!) and by the time I was 12 I needed help. I missed a ton of school, had the worst flow ever, for often 10 days at a time. I remember my friend Emily saying after hearing my endless complaints "Jeeze Amanda, the way you talk about it, it sounds like you have it all the time!" I also had debilitating cramps that at one point were thought to be a sign of endimetriosis. Even after putting me on the pill, my doctors had to prescribe me narcotics for the pain. With hormones, I was able to control when or if I had period. On top of that, I rarely had any acne, my cramps were less painful, and if there was a moustache I was supposed to sprout, it never came. I was a little nervous about what going off hormones would do to me.
I wasn't completely for hormones either. I knew what they had done to my sister. But my sister and I are wildly different in this territory, so I couldn't base my entire decision on her experience. I really like to analyse everything to death (ok perhaps obsess is more the reality of what I do), so in my quest to find new options I went back over my current option. I found something interesting, weight gain and hairloss were associated with Nuvaring. These two things had been slowly occuring with me since I had started Nuvaring. I just hadn't paid attention to the timeline. They could easily be attributed to things like getting older, being "fat and happy" in a stable relationship, and my penchant for changing my hair color at the drop of a hat. I'm not saying that the Nuvaring was responsible for these issues, but it did give me more motive to try something new.
My doctor told me more about the Mirena. I had told her all the scary things I had read. She didn't try to pretend that those things would never happen to me, she told me the things she had seen. And she did warn me it was going to hurt because I hadn't had kids. I do completely understand why my cousin was told by her doctor that she wouldn't recommend it to her. They can cause a higher rate of cysts, so if you suffer from these stay far far away.
We talked about Nexplanon. Ultimately, I preferred the idea of the Mirena. There was potential for scarring which I didn't like the idea of and I knew that like the depo shot there was a chance of gaining more weight. I'm quite fat enough, thanks. The winning scare though was when she said I could bleed for 3 months straight on Nexplanon. No thanks, I'm out! She said it was my call and I ultimately made the decision to try Mirena. I still didn't have my period though, so we would have to reschedule. As luck would have it she happened to be on for a few hours on my next day off that Wednesday. I took it as fate and made the appointment.
Now because this is me we're talking about, things didn't exactly go smoothly. I was supposed to be given a pamphlet on Mirena. I wasn't, but the information is on their website so I was ok with that. I was given a medication to take the night before to open my cervix. I was told I would need Ibuprofen for after the procedure.
It was Tuesday night and "Aunt Flo" was nowhere to be found. That bitch! Always ruining my life! I was freaking out and attempted to get things moving by running up and down my stairs like a crazy person (the dogs helped by chasing me) and taking the hotest bath my guest bathroom would allow (hot for 10 mins then ice water).Still nothing. I wasn't allowed to get it on the night before and I didn't have a white dress to wear out in public, so I couldn't think of anything else to kickstart the process. I took my pill and went to bed hoping it would show. That morning in the eleventh hour it did.
Now remember when I said I needed Ibuprofen AFTER the procedure? Umm no I was supposed to take it BEFORE. Which I was informed 5 minutes before. So I swallowed 2,
ignoring my gut reaction to take 4. Ladies: trust your gut.
I was informed I had a tiny uterus like it was some kind of bad thing. Isn't the goal tiny? I have never been surprised by being referred to as tiny, this whole fat thing is new. In a few minutes I understood why this was BAD. I saw the device and it too was tiny, like it could fit easily in my tiny balled up fist. But it has wings (umm what is the obsession with female reproduction and flight, it doesn't make me feel like flying) and these wings make the device do it's job, but apparently make it less tiny. My tiny little uterus was then assaulted by these evil wings. Think Katherine Heigl in knocked up after she waits too long to get the epidural and screams "I FEEL EVERYTHING!"
It took about 10 minutes from start to finish. I didn't feel the dizziness I was supposed to feel, I did ocassionally feel lightheaded until I got home. I did feel naseus for a hot second. Mostly, I wanted to get home without an encountering a man, for I was sure I would murder any who crossed my path without a second thought.
I drove home knowing advil would not be enough knowing my history and proud that I had taken up the Polish tradition of keeping probably expired medicine leftovers "just in case" despite Jeremiah's insistence that this was a bad idea. As soon as I got to my house, I took a leftover pill from a gum surgery and added it to the now four advil (I took 2 more in the car) I had taken earlier. After it kicked in I occasionally felt sore depending on my position. When the hard stuff wore off I took just advil, it wasn't too bad at that point and I'm not a drug addict.
The next two days I occasionally had cramps, but the advil helped. My flow is very very light, so light I thought it was gone, but it was still around sunday. That's 5 days for those keeping track. I have no more cramps but occasionally feel sore. I have been having headaches which could be unrelated.
It could be an interesting few months until my body gets totally used to this. This should be the worst of it, but we'll see. I'm hopeful that this few day light period thing becomes the norm or even takes it away completely like it did for my friend Gina. that would be awesome. I'm definitely not hoping for migration which sounds bad.
An interesting thing happened though. The sheer pain of putting in this device made me want to want children by the time it comes out. I guess that just really means I don't want another one of these with a tiny uterus. I would also prefer not to let my boyfriend who wants a kid down. Of course, if I don't by then I could go the tubal litigation and abalation route, but now I'm like how much will that hurt? I'm betting all hurt less than childbirth.
I will try to update this in a few months as to how it goes. If it keeps up this way I won't have to think about it for 5 years unless I want to. That's pretty awesome.

UPDATE:
If it seems too good to be true it probably is. Mirena was not a dream come true, it was more like a nightmare come to life. Turns out having a tiny uterus is a good reason not to have an IUD.