03 Thursday Jan 2013
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Some of you may remember my odyssey to get a diaphragm a year or two ago. As you know, I failed utterly and was talked into an IUD instead.
NO
YES
Well, today I finally took a deep breath and called Dr Gooch’s office to ask them to remove the thing.
06 Friday May 2011
Posted in My Blag is on the Interwebs
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I got my IUD yesterday. A good friend picked me up, took me in, and held Babby in the waiting room while I laid on my back with no bottoms on under a paper sheet and suffered flashbacks of eight months ago.
It’s funny, you’d think giving birth and such would make me be all like “Pah, nothing down there can ever bother me again” BUT NO. I feel like the birth happened to someone else, and I’m still me, still uncomfortable with people sticking things up my hoo-ha.
The actual insertion was fine. Uncomfortable, very, and a surprising amount of blood was spilled in the process, but uneventful. Dr. Gooch told me to come back in two months, and suggested I use an alternate form of birth control “just in case” for the first month. Why?? I thought I would be rewarded for suffering through this by never thinking about such things ever again!
I had cramping the rest of yesterday and into this morning, and I was uncomfortable but it still wasn’t as bad as, say, labour. So I ate the chocolate PH brought me and curled up on the couch and suffered through it.
Anyway, the other thing I wanted to say was:
As much as I love blogging for NO MONEY, and as committed as I am to not becoming a corporate schill (I guarantee you that I will never take money to put up ads on this site, and that if I ever review something, it’s because I wanted to, not just because I was offered free stuff or money. I will also make it very, very clear if I ever am given compensations for any kind of marketing, not that I think I am likely to do that.) I have no money. I would really, really like to change this.
I have dreams of someday someone paying me tons to sit at home and write, and not having to put Babby in care. Right now, I’m thrilled to get paid any amount of money for anything I write. The BlogHer syndication post was a dream come true for that reason.
But this Good Blogs site pays bloggers whose posts get voted onto their front page!
I made a post. If y’all wanted to visit it, and click the “it’s good!” button, that would be cool, y’all. It basically revisits and then updates on the whole IUD situation.
Please click through and vote. Babby needs new socks.
FEET. I has dem.
No, seriously, he does. Think of those poor sockless baby feet and visit my off-blog post!
Thank you. I Love you. If any of you join, I’ll vote on your posts too, promise.
12 Tuesday Apr 2011
Posted in How is Babby Formed?
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So, apparently diaphragms are très passé in gynecological circles. The doctor was all like “ugh, no one uses those any more. All the cool kids get IUDs these days.”
NO
YES
When I pushed a bit she kept saying things like “you do know you have to put it in before intercourse each time? And take it out again the next day? And you have to put spermicide in them? And they fail 30% of the time?” and I was all like “but it’s safe and non-hormonal and after all, we want more kids anyway.”
She eventually said they might have a demo kit in the back somewhere and if I insisted they could try it, but that she has never actually given a diaphragm to anyone in her whole history as a gynecologist and she really didn’t recommend it, if only because I am still losing weight after pregnancy and you need to refit and get a new one every time you lose five or ten pounds.
So I gave in and took the prescription for a flipping IUD. She reassured me that they are very safe, and that even if I do hit the 1/1000 chance of it burrowing through my damn uterus, it wouldn’t affect my ability to procreate. Since she is actually a specialist instead of a clueless nOOb like my GP, I’ve decided to trust her. She was nice enough and seemed to know what she was talking about, at least.
She told me to come back with the IUD when Aunt Flo comes to town, and basically warned me not to get knocked up in the mean time.
Thanks for the handy tip, Dr. Gooch.
At least I didn’t have to take my pants off and get prodded by a plastic duck’s bill.
That’s next time.
18 Friday Feb 2011
My doctor sent me to the pharmacy with a prescription for a three month’s supply of “Diaphragm – whatever brand is available”.
…
…
PH insisted on coming to the pharmacy with me so he could have a good laugh at pharmacist’s dumbfounded expression.
Let me backtrack.
I went in to see my doctor, saying I wanted to “discuss my birth control options” because somehow “I want her to measure my vagina” wasn’t my first choice of words when speaking to the receptionist.
My doctor told me that the mini-pill would be best since I’m breastfeeding. I found that odd because my OB-GYN said I should take no hormonal stuff at all. So I said I’d rather avoid hormonal routes altogether. She said that leaves me with the IUD.
Now, I’ve thought for years about getting an IUD after my first child. Sounds easy. However, so many people have gone “Nooooo, don’t doooo it” whenever I have brought it up that I’ve been put off the whole idea.
PH and my mother alike are terrified that it’ll scar my uterus and leave me infertile, and we want at least one other kid. A friend of mine told me horror stories about what happened to HER friends who got IUDs and ended up with horrible hospitalizations for vague reasons. Only one friend (who has used an IUD for 10 years and is done having kids) has endorsed the idea.
So that pretty much left me with the option of diaphragm, and now my doctor wasn’t even presenting it as an option.
“What about a diaphragm?” I asked the doctor.
“Oh… I have a couple patients who use those…” said my doctor. “You realize that it isn’t as effective as an IUD or homonal contraception? They’re only about 80% effective.”
“That’s ok. We want more kids, just not right now. If I do get pregnant, it isn’t the end of the world.”
“Do you need a prescription for one?”
“I have no idea.”
“How much do they cost, do you know?” my doctor asked.
“I… don’t know,” I said, feeling like the conversation was a little backwards.
“Well… why don’t I write you a prescription. I’ll just say whatever brand is available because I don’t know what brands are out there.,” said my doctor, scribbling on a pad. “Why don’t I get you a six month’s supply to start.”
I felt a little at sea in this conversation. “Um… I thought they were reusable.”
“Right. Yes. Well, why don’t I write a prescription for three months, and you can tell me if it is working for you. Call me if you have any problems, ok?”
I took the prescription because I was riddled with self-doubt. Part of me was saying “but I thought she had to fit me for one of these!” and the rest of me was saying “Shut up, if that isn’t right you’re going to look like an weirdo who wants doctors to prod her vagina unnecessarily, and if she is wrong, then clearly she doesn’t know what to do anyway, so what’s the point?”
And that is how I came to be standing at the pharmacy with a prescription that made no sense. The pharmacist gave me a really weird look when I handed it to her apologetically.
“My doctor is useless, I’m sorry,” I said. “Is there anything you can do with this?”
She wrinkled her brow, wrote down the available sizes of diaphragm, handed the prescription back to me and then commented on the fact that my son’s prescription was also wrong.
“I see your doctor has taken your son down from 15 mg twice a day to 10 mg twice day.”
“Oh Gawd.” I said, looking at the other piece of paper. “My doctor’s an idiot. She meant to leave it the same. She thinks Ranitidine comes in 10mg/ml concentrations, even though I keep telling her it’s 15 mg/ml. So I told her he was still getting 1 ml twice a day, and she thought that meant 10 mg instead of 15mg.”
The pharmacist looked dubious.
“It’s for GERD?”
“Yes.”
“How much does he weigh? 6.6 kg?” She pulled out her calculator and tapped away. “Well, 10 mg BID is well below the recommended dosage for GERD, and even 15mg is quite low. The old dosage should be fine and you could even go as high as 20 mg twice a day, so I’ll give it the old label.”
“Thank you,” I said meekly, and I slunk out with a chuckling PH trailing behind me.
Now my first period in over a year has arrived and I still don’t have a diaphragm because I don’t want to go back to my doctor and force her to measure my gooch against her will.
Mostly because I assume she doesn’t know how.
Maybe I should just get a damn IUD.
If By Yes 