My new shiny health insurance kicks in on April Fool’s Day – which means my OB/GYN will see me on the 2nd. The tubal got rid of the risk of pregnancy, but it didn’t touch my monthly agony. Lybrel, here I come!

I would love to be able to view my period as a natural, wonderful part of my womanhood. I’d love to feel empowered by my ability to bear children (though, since the tubal ligation, it’s an illusory ability). But going blind once a month isn’t worth it, no matter how many “Have a happy period” commercials are shoved down my throat. My period is something I dread.

So I don’t know. I do know that doctors are just as capable of being misinformed as the rest of us. Even though it was proven long ago that only very few antibiotics interfere with birth control pills, I still regularly have doctors tell me that any antibiotic will (thankfully, not my gyno). Maybe there is some research, or maybe that’s part of current speculation. I do hope that there’s nothing seriously wrong and that your ultrasound goes well.

i understand not every woman has this relationship with her cycle. they can do what is best for their bodies. everyone has different needs. but of course, it’s always hard for the drama-stirrers to understand that.

I also find tampon commercials very, very irritating. If there are women out there who prance around in fields wearing white pants during their period, more power to them, but I can’t relate to that at all. I’m more likely to be found lying in bed wearing my oldest pair of sweatpants.

But I don’t feel resentful of people taking birth control pills for PMS or for bad cramps. Who can blame them if they suffer so much? And if they didn’t, its their bodies. Its up to every woman to decide. The only thing I hate is how our society insists periods are a curse and I think our poor diets and chemicals in our environment and our outlook makes periods worse than they ought to be naturally.

kissmypineapple, let’s start a club. : )
My last name comes from the Gaelic word for “noisy”. It suits me.

I still looked pretty adolescent in the figure department until I was 20, when I started taking birth control pills. A few months later I went into my dorm room after taking a shower and as I closed the door my towel started slipping and I instinctively grabbed my boobs to cover up. And suddenly I realized . . . there was more of them than there had been a few months ago. They weren’t really bigger, per se – I still wore a b cup. But they had filled out a bit, and they were rounder. More like grown-up boobs. My boyfriend came over a little later and I said “I know this is going to sound weird, but . . . I think my boobs got bigger.” (He goes “Stop trying to impress me.”) I also got rounder hips. I was much less thrilled about that.

I’m thinking about asking to be switched to a lower dose pill because I’ve also gained some weight that I’m not thrilled with. But even though I’ve been single for years now, I’m not ready to give the pill up all together, and part of that is because of the period control. (Also the acne control.) Since you can choose which day of the week to start the pill, I’ve arranged it so that I never have my period during my Monday night Pilates class. Inverted positions? No problem. Take THAT, mother nature!

Now that I just had an IUD put in, I’m beginning to be annoyed. I have an 11 day period with spotting in between, and there was only like, two and a half weeks between my last period and this one (probably b/c I just stopped taking my birth control for the IUD), and if I could have an actual three weeks without the bleeding, I’d love it. Then again, I know the period wackiness will clear up in about six months, and that as soon as the hormones are totally out of my system and my body rights itself, they’ll be more regular and my sex drive won’t be as erratic, so I’m not terribly concerned about it.

I know my mom would have suppressed. My sister and I can’t take hormones (hence my IUD), so she doesn’t have that option.