Unintended consequences of birth control

Absolutely! This thread is such a breath of fresh air.

I had an implant fitted and bled heavily for 9 months straight. Despite the severe anaemia, fainting, and fatigue, and 3 appointments to request removal, the GP refused. I removed it myself, and am never having any form of LARC again. Compared to the anaemia, migraines, mental health side effects, condoms are massively underated. We can cope with the minor impact to his sensations during PIV.

It's a general problem Typeractive, although they did start to get the message a bit with smoking, when they started saying people should cut down if they couldn't quit. Before that it was all about quitting on the assumption that people wouldn't or couldn't cut down, but what they found was that because the message was quit or nothing, people were choosing nothing - ie they would continue on 30 a day rather than trying to cut to 15 a day. Now, the actual health benefit from cutting from 30 to 15 is much smaller than cutting from 30 to 0 but it's not nothing, and actually many people who cut their consumption will go on later to quit, because of the sense of achievement (and relative wealth!) involved in cutting down. It took a long time for that message to filter through to the PH people though. With matters of sexual and reproductive health, ridiculous moralistic attitudes add another layer of complexity.

Jozxyqk

It was a chance conversation that led me to discover my pill was incompatible with my visual aura migraines - at least 4 gps hadnt asked me.

Nodding so much reading this my head may fall off...

Nobody told me the pill might be responsible for losing 5 years to depression. The push for contraceptives post birth pissed me off so much - I ended up telling the smug GP that I didnt was the pill because I feel amazing when i ovulate he told me that lots of women have ovulation pain & are grateful

I also have a major thing about what taking hormonal contraception does to our pheromones therefore to our choice of partners & ultimately our offspring. Pheromones are nature's way of pairing complementary genes (especially immune system iirc).

Do you think that's a general problem, Spaghetti? My feeling is that it tends to be particularly the case with issues to do with women's health, but maybe that's simply because those are the ones that have affected my life...?

Public health messages tend to be deliberately 'dumbed down' on the assumption that the general public can't absorb a more complex message. The only thing it results in, however, is otherwise intelligent people having to deal with unreliable and inconsistent information resulting in anxiety and poor choices. I don't know how the government hasn't figured this out at this stage.

Cross post with Jozyxqk. That's so terrible. I'm sorry.

I don't know what sex education is like nowadays, but when I was a teenager (about 20 years ago), it was kind of assumed that we'd be shagging and so the focus was on making sure we had 'safe sex'.

I can't remember any allusion to dangerous or unpleasant side effects of contraception, or indeed failure rates.

I got pregnant at 18 when the antibiotics I was taking for my acne interfered with my pill. I knew another couple of girls in my year at school who got pregnant in similar circumstances. After that I realised that 'safe sex' is a fantasy.

I remember feeling a bit resentful at the sex education I'd received as it had presented contraception as a solve-all and unalloyed good.

Now I feel that the health messaging I received on contraception is like that I received on smoking/drinking in pregnancy, breastfeeding etc: That is to say patronising, simplistic and propaganda-like.

I am disabled because of the pill.
My doctor put me on the combined pill a) for contraception, and b) because I had fairly bad acne. I was 22. I developed hemiplegic migraines. I came off it within a month. I'm now 37 & still get them. I can't currently work or drive, some days I can't get to the bathroom on my own. They are gradually getting worse. I am on preventative medication which has really unpleasant side effects, including birth defects were I to get pregnant, kidney/gallstones, alopecia, & memory loss.
Migraine, and stroke, is a known risk of the combined pill. Both run in my family but I wasn't asked. If I have a stroke it will be impossible to tell as my migraines look like I'm having a stroke; I can have up to 9 in a bad month.
I might get better when I hit menopause.

I think it's madness not to use condoms with new partners anyway kittens - HIV is still incurable, chlamydia can make you infertile and syphillis is at best very nasty and at worst fatal.

One issue with male hormonal contraception, which I agree should not have been abandoned because of side effects that women are just expected to deal with, is that it would only really be a viable option in established relationships. Would you trust a man you didn't know all that well and had just recently started dating, much less a one night stand, to be telling the truth if he said he was on the hypothetical male pill? I wouldn't. And even in long term relationships, men sabotaging women's contraception is a thing that happens in abusive relationships. Not sure how you'd get around that.

(My suggestion would be to use condoms, which also protect against STDs.)

Thanks to those who have responded to my questions about contraception/perceived sexual availability. I'm finding this thread really interesting.

I'm in my late 30s and I've never taken any sort of hormonal contraception - DH and I used condoms and then a couple of years ago he got a vasectomy. There is no way I would ever take daily hormonal medication unless it was absolutely vital. I told DH that when I met him and he never made any fuss about it. He never had any issue with condoms.

I don't understand the comments about birth control making men expect women to be sexually available? Men have always expected women to be sexually available, in fact, up to 1991 once a man married a woman he had free rein under the law to use her body any time he wanted - as long as they were married it wouldn't be rape. In previous generations women were very strictly controlled (never allowed out without a chaperone etc) because it was generally understood that if a man and woman were alone together he would 'take advantage' or at the very least her reputation would be sullied as it would be assumed he had sex with her (whether she wanted it or not). That didn't come about as a function of BC - that's been the case since the beginning of time.

Men don't bother much about contraception because in patriarchal society men don't have children, women do. Even men in committed relationships aren't seen as actually having children (take a look at the endless articles about women 'delaying motherhood' as though men have no hand in it at all) - they're seen as allowing women to indulge their frivolous reproduction habit - a habit that Real People (ie men) doing Real Things (ie paid work) have to reluctantly accommodate, with as little good grace as possible. If a woman does 'get herself pregnant' a man can just walk away, no consequences.

Birth control was a great thing simply because it gave the woman herself control over when she had babies and when you give women that control, they invariably have fewer babies (contrary to the views of endless male economists who seem to see women as baby making factories who will pop out as many children as possible given half a chance).

However, at this stage it is ridiculous that women are still being medicated 365 days a year (as someone else said upthread). It is ridiculously unhealthy to have permanently elevated hormone levels.

There really should be better access to sterilisation and more work done on long acting but reversible options.

Right now women bear all of the consequences and few of the benefits.

Every pill I tried had significant side effects, and it was different ones in each case. After running through several I decided that "it's fine, we'll just try you on a different pill until we find the one that suits you" was bollocks and that there was no need to do that to myself when I could just insist on condoms.

I got constant bleeding on one of the pills I tried Angry. Possibly Cerazette? Microgynon and Rigevidon both fucked with my MH. The implant gave me unpredictable bleeding, and again messed with my MH. I have a coil in now, and my periods are horrendous for the first 2 days (think having to empty my menstrual cup every 1-2 hours, even on Ibuprofen or DH's Naproxen) and then random little bleeds on and off for over a week.

I'm 28, with 2 DC. I'm done having babies, but I'll have to do this for what, another 20 years unless I get sterilised?

RE: pressure on women to be sexually available. I think that's a definite consequence of birth control, as is asking if you're on the pill so the guy can effectively excuse himself from having to take responsibility himself.

Women have always beeb the ones to shoulder the burdens of sex and its consequences. It is a result of our biology. It us unfair that we continue to live in a world where a man can have sex and just walk away leaving the woman to cope with the consequences of birth control and unwanted pregnancy. The reason why this isn't a major feminist issue is that it is by and large a silent burden. How many women actually refuse to take birth control? How many of them speak publicly about how birth control means a risk free shah for their partners but depression for them? How many women want to say these things but immediately get shut down by so called fenenists because the pill is a miracle drug and having sex with everyone and anyone is their definition of sexual liberation. Women aren't sexually liberated. The burden of sex is just less visible. When our burden once was palpable in the form of children and ostracisation of women who took lovers outside of marriage today our sexual burden comes in the form of an expectation that we will engage in sex to prove that we are serious about perusing a relationship, responsibility for contraception and contraceptive failures, debilitating side effects of birth control like migraines, depression, painful periods, weight gain, loss of sex drive etc, occasionally infertility as a result of improperly fitted contraceptive devices and sometimes death as a result of cobraceptives causing blood clots or infections (thankfully the latter is a rarity these days). We are in the same prison, we just have different cell mates.

Typeractive

I am sure some of the disinterest is the consequence is 'all' on the girl isn't it. I know that's a bit of an extreme take on it but looking at all the totally absent fathers compared to mothers its got a truth to it.

I cant answer if men were always so reckless but there seemed to be quite a few places where 'unmarried mothers' went off to have their babies in shame. they didn't make those babies by themselves!

sonic oh yes the copper coil definitely has side effects - it can cause really heavy bleeding and there’s all the attendant risks of perforation, expulsion etc. I just meant it’s really the only long term non hormonal ‘place and forget’ option.

A GP should NEVER refuse to remove a coil if the woman doesn’t want it. You shouldnt even have to give a reason, just ‘I’m making an appt to get this out.’

that is so awful
I have just read you post to DP, he says he had a GA, and there was no reason to expect it to be complicated. This was about 22yrs ago.

Did anyone else get the constant bleeding? That was pill #2, iirc.

I refuse to use any sort of hormonal contraception. If the doctor tried to push it on me, they'd get short shrift. I have heard of too many women suffering depression and other side effects.