My birth control story
and what I wish I knew sooner.
Before you read: I am not a medical doctor and this is not medical advice. Please consult your healthcare provider if you have any questions about what is right for you. I believe hormonal birth control can have many benefits for women in the 21st century and I don’t judge anyone for choosing that option! In my experience, I wish I had been better informed as to the mechanism and risks of hormonal birth control, as it was an overall disappointing experience. Take what you need and leave what you don’t! Here’s my story:
Similar to the jealousy I felt in 4th & 5th grade when my classmates were growing breasts and I was still on the toilet-paper-squares-in-bra trajectory, my understanding of birth control in my late high school years was that I (a) didn’t have it (yet) and that (b) everything would be better when I did.
I remember an especially cool girl saying it (“it” being the pill, as other forms of HBC didn’t gain popularity until my college years) was magic and would solve all of my problems — that this silver bullet made all the annoying “girl problems” disappear, including:
Periods? No problem - the pill would make them either really light or disappear altogether.
Cramps? None.
Hormonal acne you may have been cursed with? The pill would solve that, too.
Breasts? They would grow (perfect).
Waistline? It might even shrink!
Worries about getting pregnant? Zero chance.
Having to consider your cycle or womanhood? Nada. Zilch. None of it!
Fast forward a few years and I got on the pill as soon as I went to college. My college years coincided with a wave of sexually liberated feminism that made me feel so proud to be on the pill without fear of becoming pregnant or “burdened” by my cycle. I was able to be a curious, confident, and sexually literate young 20-something female without having to deal with a large part of the (assumed) inherently shitty parts of being a woman (as for risk of being a sexual assault victim on a college campus - that would still be a shocking reality of womanhood on an alcohol-obsessed college campus that a pill couldn’t fix).
While the pill served me in that it gave me space to explore my identity during such a transformative and exciting 4-year period, I wish so badly that I made the connection between the pill and my stubborn health symptoms sooner. Through high school and college, I consistently struggled with low energy, mood swings, and chronic headaches. The headaches being particularly frustrating and painful, I sought out a prescription for the really bad ones and chalked it all up to bad luck and part of “my hormones just being messed up”. While these symptoms started in high school before I started taking birth control, they became much more common during college and were combined with weight gain (also thanks to living on IPAs), extreme irritability in the second half of college, and confusing sensitivities to certain foods and drinks.
Before my senior year of college, I decided to make an appointment with a Functional Medicine Clinic in my hometown. I had heard of the power of functional medicine through loved ones and my slow-growing interest in “wellness”, so I figured they could help me really fix my headaches and fatigue without prescription medication. Unfortunately, this functional medicine provider turned out to be the worst experience I’ve ever had with a care provider, though I wouldn’t put 2 and 2 together until after a full year of being their patient. More on that to come…
After I received a literal binder from the functional medicine clinic and filling out hours’ worth of forms and in-depth questionnaires, I was convinced that my first consultation with this “holistic” clinic would be life changing (they must care about me so much to take the time to ask me all these questions!). At my consultation after my labs were complete, the doctor walked in the room saying, “Well no wonder you’ve been having headaches almost every day - your hormone levels are that of a post-menopausal woman!!”
I was shocked. How could this be possible? I was almost excited to receive this news because, in my brain, it meant ANSWERS to why my body was apparently betraying me. During the consultation, the doctor went on to say that I needed to switch my birth control pill to a high-dose estrogen formula and start using bio-identical hormone replacement Progesterone therapy during the second half of my cycle to ensure that I could “normalize” my hormone levels and get rid of my stubborn symptoms. In addition to these two medications, the doc added a whopping $300+ worth of random supplements to my protocol list for me to re-order as necessary, without an explanation of why my body would benefit from them, how long I should take them, or how I could tell if they were effective (something that is now a critical step in my nutrition work with clients!!)
It would take a full year for me to realize that unfortunately, my functional medicine doctor had the same reaction-based, band-aid approach as most conventional allopathic providers, but with an added flair of medical-grade supplements and a lotus leaf wall print in the waiting room.
But me? I still knew absolutely nothing about my body and was simply fed another narrative of my body being broken and needing external, medical solutions to find any relief.
After a full year of hormone therapy and a false sense that it was saving me, I was more swollen, irritable, sensitive, reactive, achy, and brain-foggy than ever. Red wine made my mood tank within seconds of the first sip (hello, liver!), I would burst into tears for no reason, I had headaches every week, and I had a thick fog of sleepiness many days of the month. Yikes!
Remember, I’m saying this all in retrospect, so I didn’t really see my symptoms for what they were — symptoms of something not being right.
After graduating college, I decided it was time for me to switch up my birth control plan. IUDs were increasingly popular among my peers and I figured that would give me the real freedom and flexibility I needed as I lived in South America for 6 months with my boyfriend. The promise of the IUD was similar to the promise of the pill, but better. I may not have to bleed at all, and better yet, I wouldn’t have to take a pill everyday! It was effective birth control that I wouldn’t have to think about for five years. Magic!
I made an appointment with a well-respected OB-GYN in my hometown to discuss my options for switching to an IUD as soon as possible. In my initial appointment with the gynecologist, I let her know that I was interested in what options would by best for my body, as I had “very low hormone levels” and would need to find an IUD that “kept my hormone levels up after being on hormone therapy”. Without looking at me, she scoffed. She then raised her head, looked me in the eye, and said “No, you don’t”.
As much as her lack of bedside manner pained me… she was right. As she curtly explained, my functional medicine doctor didn’t know what she was talking about. Why? It was as simple as this: I was on the pill when I went to the functional medicine doctor…. I was on a hormonal birth control pill that completely shut down my menstrual cycle and prevented ovulation…. and no, you cannot accurately read a patient’s hormone levels when they’re actively taking a hormonal birth control that ceases the normal sex hormone fluctuations of a menstrual cycle.
I was shocked and embarrassed. I didn’t know who I felt most upset with — the gynecologist for scoffing in my face for going to a functional medicine clinic, or the functional medicine doctor for prescribing me hormone replacement therapy for no actual medical reason because of a bloodwork interpretation oversight.
After calling the functional medicine clinic and reading aloud a prepared script detailing my upsetting experience, I decided to move on and made another appointment with my gynecologist to get the Mirena IUD inserted.
Over the 2-year period of having the IUD, it was clear that my symptoms eased up without the hormone therapy. The IUD did give me a lot of freedom during my first couple of years out of college, but it didn’t come without the chronic headaches and increasingly lacking libido.
By the 2-year mark of having the IUD, I was much further along in my wellness journey and had already established a few foundational shifts that dissolved the majority of my chronic symptoms. Through working with an acupuncturist, taking Chinese herbal medicine formulas to address my deficiencies, addressing blood sugar regulation issues, and improving my lifestyle, my headaches were almost completely gone. I had no idea that the shitty sense of normal that I had gotten used to in the past five years didn’t have to be my normal forever. I was so much happier in my body and no longer felt like I was walking around in an achy fog with a bloated stomach.
Within a few short months of this inspiring transformation, I realized it was time for me to breakup with hormonal birth control. Now that I actually understood my body and what a normal cycle could look like, I knew my body needed to experience an actual menstrual cycle for the first time in 6 years (!!!).
After getting a midwife friend of mine to come to my house and pull out my IUD (I kid you not), I was free. It was the first time in six year that my body was 100% mine without the guise hormonal birth control dictating my daily experiences.
Since that day in 2018, I have been using the Fertility Awareness Based Method (FABM) to successfully prevent an unwanted pregnancy and to track the health of my cycle. I dove into books and resources such as Toni Weschler’s Taking Charge of Your Fertility, Alisa Vitti’s Woman Code, and Lisa Henderson-Jack’s The Fifth Vital Sign to learn more about just how depleted and inflamed my body was after 6 years of hormonal birth control and fearing my natural cycle. This experience inspired me so much that I became a Functional Nutritional Therapy Practitioner and a Certified Birth Doula so that I can now support women along this same journey from birth control through preconception, pregnancy, and birth (omg - I just realized it’s “from birth control to giving birth”. Anyone?).
As for FABM, I used Natural Cycles for the first few years, and made the switch to TempDrop* in early 2022 and love it even more. While both are great options, I decided to switch to TempDrop so that I didn’t have to manually take my temperature and log it upon waking every morning. It has honestly been so empowering and FUN for me to watch my body go through each phase of my cycle over the past few years. With this approach, I am finally able to understand why I feel aroused and energetic in the middle of my cycle (ovulation!), sleepy and studious in the days before my period starts, “wet” with cervical mucus in the few days leading up to ovulating, and extra crampy on my period during a time of particularly high stress.
Side note: If you’re eager to hear more about my journey using FABM, stay tuned for future newsletters!! There’s more where that came from and I love working with clients in the transition off of hormonal birth control. There is so much support and nourishment to be had during this critical time!
As it turns out, my body was smarter than I could’ve imagined during those years using hormonal birth control. My body was never working against me… it was doing the best it could with the tools (i.e. nutrients, stress-levels, habits, etc.) it was given. What I thought was “my crazy hormones” or simple bad luck was actually just my body trying to show me that it felt hella depleted, stressed out, and inflamed… and that maybe, birth control wasn’t empowering me or saving me from discomfort like I thought it would.
Did this experience resonate with you? Upset you? Validate your confusion and overwhelm when it comes to your menstrual cycle? I’m all ears. I’d love to hear any thoughts you have in the comments below!
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