At first, I thought, “wait to comment so you aren’t the first one, commenting 13 mins after it’s posted,” but fuck it, it’s not high school and I don’t have to be cool.
Repro hormones started really messing me up in my late 30s (looking at you, Mirena), so I’m the other side of the spectrum here but it’s still valid to need them!
Yesterday, I went on metformin for pre-diabetes, and said “hell no” to the idea of “trying to change my lifestyle” first because my eating/exercise lifestyle is already really fine, and medication helps with the genetic cards I was dealt. (To my dr’s credit, he suggested medication first and only apologetically broached “lifestyle” in a way that said he’d had way too much experience with medication-averse patients, and he was awesome when I cried in the exam room, yay for young doctors.)
Anyway, yay for science, and if it works, don’t be miserable and sad! Women are expected to be perfect and low-maintenance (what am I, a car?) and ace every test and never complain, and thanks for popping into my inbox with an essay that made me feel proud of myself rather than like a virgin who can’t drive.
I went off birth control 12 years ago because I hated not having any kind of libido. Sex used to be fun! And I wasn't having any fun! Within one cycle of being off birth control my libido was BACK in an awesome way. But I am indeed on a roller coaster with the hormones. Early in my cycle, just seeing my husband mow the lawn turns me on and I'll even opt for afternoon sex and I LOVE it. But then two weeks later I will hear him chewing from the next room and fume with hatred. Also, that full week of dark misery and possible migraine before my period sucks.
Here's my question: Do you still have a libido with the low-dose pill? Have you noticed impact to PMS? Focus?
Next question: I learned this week that my severe PMDD and pms-migraines may be related to my ADHD, and that no one thought of this or even studied it until 2017. 2017!!! So I'm curious about other witches with ADHD out there and their experiences being on or off birth control.
Thank you for the work you're doing to address biases in women's health and how it's covered!
I was reflecting on all this and wondering why I never felt all that compelled to "get in touch with my natural cycles" and I think it may be the simple fact that in late high school or early college (20 years ago!), a friend said to me, "Women don't *need* to have monthly periods." Thank you to whoever told me that! I think it helped me know that my period and the problems it created for me were entirely ok to control. I also didn't give it much thought when I was younger - I was just entirely focused on not getting pregnant - and went on the pill the second I could get to my college's students health center.
I went off the pill years later, when I was trying to get pregnant for the first time. I read "Taking charge of your fertility" and started tracking symptoms, like cervical mucus, my body temperature, my mood and other aches and pains. That experience was empowering because I was learning so many things I should have learned in high school health class! It helped me better under the way my body changed over the course of a cycle. So I guess I did end up getting in touch with my natural cycles, though that wasn't really my intention - I was just trying to get preggz after so many years of not.
I got a Mirena IUD soon after my daughter was born. And let me tell you, not having periods at all - I fucking love it. I'm now on Mirena #2 and cannot imagine a world where I deal with periods again - until, ugh, my daughters start having to deal with this. 🫠
Love this post. Also, I wish women’s health and hormones were better studied and understood so that it wasn’t the same answer for any problem related to hormones. Teen with weird cycles? Birth control. Perimenopausal adult with night sweats? Birth control. I 100% agree that we don’t have to endure in order to be “natural” but I think there’s a lot of room for medicine to look more closely at the complicated nuance, esp because many folks have tough side effects with iud, birth control pills, etc.
I had tubal ligation 16 years ago and it’s never occurred to me to go on low dose to help with horrible periods and all the other shit that comes with it. I didn’t know “natural” was a thing. I just figured since I couldn’t get pregnant I didn’t need it. Huh, I wish my doc would have suggested a low dose. I hate having a period and have literally asked for a hysterectomy...she laughed at me. Why is women’s health so damn hard????
CLAIRE!!! You have a brilliant future ahead of you! When you reach my age, YOU DON'T HAVE ANY HORMONES just a hell-raising attitude! And it is fabulous!!!
I have to admit I'm confused by the tone of this post and the responses- the scoffing at the concept of "natural". I think the majority of us understand that an un-medicated cycle has many benefits due to the web of mental health, cardiovascular health and immunity (to name a few) that are rooted in the monthly (daily, weekly) cascade of sex hormones. While I agree the obsession with "wellness" has become problematic, there is sound reason in trying to manage your cycle without blocking the natural process of it. I do not understand how we can name the patriarchy as the problem that created a society that minimizes women (their health, their support systems, their cyclical bodies), then turn around and heavily lean into the mechanisms the patriarchy gave us as band-aids. How is that empowering, or even effective in the long run?
"Do you need an epidural or can you do it naturally?" THIS!! WHY do we say this?! Why is the epidural the main intervention we choose to focus on? When I gave birth to my daughter - for reasons that are still pretty unclear to me - I was advised to get induced and promptly hooked up to every everloving monitor available, I somehow had three IVs (I still don't even know what was in all that shit, God forbid I wanted to get up and move during labor at any point) and I still refused an epidural for a solid two days of misery and chaos because I "should do it naturally." I WAS HOOKED UP TO EVERY OTHER DAMN THING IN THAT ROOM. None of it was "natural." It didn't occur to me until much, MUCH later that "natural" had basically just come to mean "the absolute most suffering for me." 🤬
It is due to your posting about low dose BC helping with your perimenopause that I broached the topic with my gyno and went on Lo Estrin myself and holy shit. It's been life changing. I for many years had smugly foregone BC because my husband had a vasectomy and my periods were regular, short and on the light side. But then the big peri changed all that. Here's to witches helping witches!
Thanks so much for this post! I have an extra fraught relationship to my reproductive health (I mean, maybe we all do?!?!). I fought for literally decades for anyone to take me seriously about debilitating pain that turned out to be endometriosis. (Can't tell you how many doctors told me I needed to learn how to "handle my stress" better.) Diagnosis wasn't confirmed until I lost multiple pregnancies and they had to open me up to treat an ectopic. Fertility treatments unsuccessful, and now we have two awesome kids via adoption. But where this has left me is f***ing PISSED at my "natural" body and what it's put me through for decades, all the while not even being able to do the thing that was the alleged reason for all of that discomfort. I guess there is some benefit to knowing that there was a real problem all that time, and to retrospectively flipping off all of those doctors who told me, essentially, to calm down. But honestly, I wish I could opt to have elective surgery to take out the whole works. Whew, okay, obviously some unresolved stuff here! I really just mean to say thank you for pushing back against the idea that our bodies are magically beautiful and right and perfect if only we would let them be "natural." Sometimes they just aren't. Bodies don't come with that kind of guarantee.
“This was when I was humbled to realize that IUDs also can deliver that hormonal relief and aren’t just because your mean husband makes you have sex and refuses to get a vasectomy, as I had sort of assumed.” Lololol.
Yes, please. Anything that improves our understanding of female bodies.
It took me until my late 30s to realize that the pill messes with my mental health. I just thought I had body image problems that came and went randomly. For 20 years.
Internal or external; hormones do all kinds of crap we still don't understand.
My periods were always a nightmare so I spent most of my 20’s suppressing them with Depo Provera (I am the only person in the world who liked DP), and then Seasonale (quarterly periods). Getting to know my cycle when I had my two kids was interesting, and I thought I would stay off of birth control after my second was born. But then my periods got even heavier and my cycle shortened to barely 3 weeks. I was losing so much blood every 21 days that I was anemic. I asked for a uterine ablation, thinking hormonal birth control wasn’t an option because of my age and weight, but my doctor thought that was too invasive so I gave Mirena a try. I am on my 2nd Mirena now and I really like it but I’m still irked that my doctor wouldn’t do the ablation.
At first, I thought, “wait to comment so you aren’t the first one, commenting 13 mins after it’s posted,” but fuck it, it’s not high school and I don’t have to be cool.
Repro hormones started really messing me up in my late 30s (looking at you, Mirena), so I’m the other side of the spectrum here but it’s still valid to need them!
Yesterday, I went on metformin for pre-diabetes, and said “hell no” to the idea of “trying to change my lifestyle” first because my eating/exercise lifestyle is already really fine, and medication helps with the genetic cards I was dealt. (To my dr’s credit, he suggested medication first and only apologetically broached “lifestyle” in a way that said he’d had way too much experience with medication-averse patients, and he was awesome when I cried in the exam room, yay for young doctors.)
Anyway, yay for science, and if it works, don’t be miserable and sad! Women are expected to be perfect and low-maintenance (what am I, a car?) and ace every test and never complain, and thanks for popping into my inbox with an essay that made me feel proud of myself rather than like a virgin who can’t drive.
“ I’d track my period, and that would be useful primarily in telling me why I was probably so fucking mad some days.”
Oh yes
For years I wouldn’t even take ibuprofen during my period bc I thought it was important to “be in touch” with what was happening in my body. 🙄
I went off birth control 12 years ago because I hated not having any kind of libido. Sex used to be fun! And I wasn't having any fun! Within one cycle of being off birth control my libido was BACK in an awesome way. But I am indeed on a roller coaster with the hormones. Early in my cycle, just seeing my husband mow the lawn turns me on and I'll even opt for afternoon sex and I LOVE it. But then two weeks later I will hear him chewing from the next room and fume with hatred. Also, that full week of dark misery and possible migraine before my period sucks.
Here's my question: Do you still have a libido with the low-dose pill? Have you noticed impact to PMS? Focus?
Next question: I learned this week that my severe PMDD and pms-migraines may be related to my ADHD, and that no one thought of this or even studied it until 2017. 2017!!! So I'm curious about other witches with ADHD out there and their experiences being on or off birth control.
Thank you for the work you're doing to address biases in women's health and how it's covered!
I was reflecting on all this and wondering why I never felt all that compelled to "get in touch with my natural cycles" and I think it may be the simple fact that in late high school or early college (20 years ago!), a friend said to me, "Women don't *need* to have monthly periods." Thank you to whoever told me that! I think it helped me know that my period and the problems it created for me were entirely ok to control. I also didn't give it much thought when I was younger - I was just entirely focused on not getting pregnant - and went on the pill the second I could get to my college's students health center.
I went off the pill years later, when I was trying to get pregnant for the first time. I read "Taking charge of your fertility" and started tracking symptoms, like cervical mucus, my body temperature, my mood and other aches and pains. That experience was empowering because I was learning so many things I should have learned in high school health class! It helped me better under the way my body changed over the course of a cycle. So I guess I did end up getting in touch with my natural cycles, though that wasn't really my intention - I was just trying to get preggz after so many years of not.
I got a Mirena IUD soon after my daughter was born. And let me tell you, not having periods at all - I fucking love it. I'm now on Mirena #2 and cannot imagine a world where I deal with periods again - until, ugh, my daughters start having to deal with this. 🫠
Love this post. Also, I wish women’s health and hormones were better studied and understood so that it wasn’t the same answer for any problem related to hormones. Teen with weird cycles? Birth control. Perimenopausal adult with night sweats? Birth control. I 100% agree that we don’t have to endure in order to be “natural” but I think there’s a lot of room for medicine to look more closely at the complicated nuance, esp because many folks have tough side effects with iud, birth control pills, etc.
I had tubal ligation 16 years ago and it’s never occurred to me to go on low dose to help with horrible periods and all the other shit that comes with it. I didn’t know “natural” was a thing. I just figured since I couldn’t get pregnant I didn’t need it. Huh, I wish my doc would have suggested a low dose. I hate having a period and have literally asked for a hysterectomy...she laughed at me. Why is women’s health so damn hard????
CLAIRE!!! You have a brilliant future ahead of you! When you reach my age, YOU DON'T HAVE ANY HORMONES just a hell-raising attitude! And it is fabulous!!!
I have to admit I'm confused by the tone of this post and the responses- the scoffing at the concept of "natural". I think the majority of us understand that an un-medicated cycle has many benefits due to the web of mental health, cardiovascular health and immunity (to name a few) that are rooted in the monthly (daily, weekly) cascade of sex hormones. While I agree the obsession with "wellness" has become problematic, there is sound reason in trying to manage your cycle without blocking the natural process of it. I do not understand how we can name the patriarchy as the problem that created a society that minimizes women (their health, their support systems, their cyclical bodies), then turn around and heavily lean into the mechanisms the patriarchy gave us as band-aids. How is that empowering, or even effective in the long run?
"Do you need an epidural or can you do it naturally?" THIS!! WHY do we say this?! Why is the epidural the main intervention we choose to focus on? When I gave birth to my daughter - for reasons that are still pretty unclear to me - I was advised to get induced and promptly hooked up to every everloving monitor available, I somehow had three IVs (I still don't even know what was in all that shit, God forbid I wanted to get up and move during labor at any point) and I still refused an epidural for a solid two days of misery and chaos because I "should do it naturally." I WAS HOOKED UP TO EVERY OTHER DAMN THING IN THAT ROOM. None of it was "natural." It didn't occur to me until much, MUCH later that "natural" had basically just come to mean "the absolute most suffering for me." 🤬
It is due to your posting about low dose BC helping with your perimenopause that I broached the topic with my gyno and went on Lo Estrin myself and holy shit. It's been life changing. I for many years had smugly foregone BC because my husband had a vasectomy and my periods were regular, short and on the light side. But then the big peri changed all that. Here's to witches helping witches!
Thanks so much for this post! I have an extra fraught relationship to my reproductive health (I mean, maybe we all do?!?!). I fought for literally decades for anyone to take me seriously about debilitating pain that turned out to be endometriosis. (Can't tell you how many doctors told me I needed to learn how to "handle my stress" better.) Diagnosis wasn't confirmed until I lost multiple pregnancies and they had to open me up to treat an ectopic. Fertility treatments unsuccessful, and now we have two awesome kids via adoption. But where this has left me is f***ing PISSED at my "natural" body and what it's put me through for decades, all the while not even being able to do the thing that was the alleged reason for all of that discomfort. I guess there is some benefit to knowing that there was a real problem all that time, and to retrospectively flipping off all of those doctors who told me, essentially, to calm down. But honestly, I wish I could opt to have elective surgery to take out the whole works. Whew, okay, obviously some unresolved stuff here! I really just mean to say thank you for pushing back against the idea that our bodies are magically beautiful and right and perfect if only we would let them be "natural." Sometimes they just aren't. Bodies don't come with that kind of guarantee.
“This was when I was humbled to realize that IUDs also can deliver that hormonal relief and aren’t just because your mean husband makes you have sex and refuses to get a vasectomy, as I had sort of assumed.” Lololol.
I ADORE.
"The fact is that for a lot of us, our beautiful natural long-haired barefoot hormones can turn on us like a bitch and we need help."
Yes, please. Anything that improves our understanding of female bodies.
It took me until my late 30s to realize that the pill messes with my mental health. I just thought I had body image problems that came and went randomly. For 20 years.
Internal or external; hormones do all kinds of crap we still don't understand.
My periods were always a nightmare so I spent most of my 20’s suppressing them with Depo Provera (I am the only person in the world who liked DP), and then Seasonale (quarterly periods). Getting to know my cycle when I had my two kids was interesting, and I thought I would stay off of birth control after my second was born. But then my periods got even heavier and my cycle shortened to barely 3 weeks. I was losing so much blood every 21 days that I was anemic. I asked for a uterine ablation, thinking hormonal birth control wasn’t an option because of my age and weight, but my doctor thought that was too invasive so I gave Mirena a try. I am on my 2nd Mirena now and I really like it but I’m still irked that my doctor wouldn’t do the ablation.