Why I am Getting an IUD Today

Hi. My name is Emily. I am a 26 year old adult. I have been on birth control since the end of 2004, when I started my period as a late-bloomer that August. Want to talk about embarrassing first impressions in high school? Try bleeding through my pants in class and running to the bathroom crying and pleading to my dad, who also taught at my high school and had a planning period, to go home and bring me a new pair of pants and underwear. If you think that is gross, you don't have any right to tell me I shouldn't worry about my reproductive rights. I wear them on my blood stained underwear. I was told by my female doctor at the time I asked her to put me on birth control back in 2004 that this was not a free pass to go and start having sex. 

1. I was having irregular cycles, where I had my period one month, then two months later I had my next one and it was two weeks long, heavy flow. That is why I wanted to be on birth control at that time, but please tell me how menstruation isn't considered a "medical condition" like erectile disfunction is...
2. I was a virgin! How dare any doctor judge me for wanting birth control for medical reasons, yet assume I want them so I can be the next town's floozy. Which is why after that appointment and receiving my prescription, I switched doctors.

At the time when I was 14, I was afraid of the pill. I did not trust myself to be able to remember to take it every day around the same time. Out of that fear, I opted for the birth control patch because I only had to worry about changing it once a week and it did not matter at what time of day I changed it, as long as it was on that day.

I stayed on the patch for 10 years. After ten years, I was over it. I still had a heavy flow, cramps that made me sick and doubled over with pain and I was just tired of the marks the patch left on my body. It was effective in regulating my period, but that was about it.

In 2014 at my visit with my primary care physician, I asked to switch to the pill because of all of the reasons I mentioned above and by 2014 I was having to take a daily allergy medicine. I realized adding one more tiny birth control pill would not be a hard thing to add to my daily routine. So I switched to the birth control pill. This made a tremendous difference! My flow lightened, my cramps have practically gone away to the point where I sometimes forget I am on my period and it has continued to keep my cycle in rhythm, regular.

After reading President Trump's policies he planned to put forth if elected president, I knew my right of free access to birth control may be taken away...again.

I remember back in 2004 having to pay over $100 a month for my patches. If we are heading back to that, I don't want to know how much my current pills would cost me per month. 

So, in fear of the cost of this medication shooting through the roof that the United States still deems a "lifestyle choice" rather than a "medical condition", I am going in this morning to my OB/GYN to have an IUD inserted. I chose the IUD method because it is a long-term form of birth control, meaning inserted today, remove five years later (or sooner if I find myself ready to try and conceive). I am making this decision while I still have control over my own body and my reproductive rights. I am also doing this now because there is no guarantee it will work for me. I have a 6-month trial period to see whether my body will accept it, fight it, miscarry/expel it. I am putting a foreign object inside of me to prevent unplanned pregnancy, to regulate or even stop my flow, to reduce the pain of cramping, and because I want to and have the access to do so right now. I am planning to go to graduate school next year and honestly cannot afford to imagine paying $100+ for birth control a month on top of all my other living expenses and that sounds ridiculous...because it is ridiculous! If this method doesn't work for me after six months, at least I will still have other long-term birth control options to try before graduate school that will outlive President Trump's first (and hopefully only) term.