My mum has always had a sort of hippie, au naturale approach to health and medicine so I never really had a particular doctor or even clicnic that I would visit regularly growing up. She’d stress the importance of listening to your own body and understanding what it was trying to say by way of green mucus, ulcers, and loose stool. She’d prescribe a warm cup of honey and lemon for a sore throat, a plate of chicken liver after a visit from Aunt Flo, a pot of ginger tea for a tummy upset, and always sleep, sleep, sleep, no matter your ailment.
So, being someone who doesn’t take Panadol or even vitamin capsules, contraceptive pills just wasn’t something I’d ever considered. Hell, there was even once I tried to twerk and then downward dog my way out of taking the morning-after pill until my cousin screamed at me, “are you fucking insane – how does dancing and yoga help in any way? ”
I’d been bleeding for longer than what was healthy, so my gynae prescribed me some contraceptive pills in a bid to curb my bleeding and chill my hormones out. Even though she definitely used more professional medical terms when explaining this to me, I still had some qualms about her decision. And also a lot of faith that my uterus would calm down and cooperate soon.
My options were to either bleed to death or risk nausea, weight gain, and some wicked hot pulsing acne on my chin. So I bled for another week and then had to be given a talking-to by my mum (oh, the irony!) before I eventually took my first pill.
Today I am happy to report that I’m 5 pills away from the end of my first course of Meliane. Apart from the migraines, which feel very much like someone driving an electric drill right through my skull, and my erratic mood swinging like a pendulum defying all laws of Physics, the last couple of weeks have gone by much better than I had anticipated.
I never really took the responsibility of birth control into my own hands because I’m too afraid to stick an IUD up there, the sympto-thermal method seems hella confusing, and as mentioned my impression of the pill up until recently had been ugh. It’s such a silly decision to let the onus fall on the dude, while I just lingered in this kind of in-between place that put me – a perfectly educated kale-eating urban dweller – in a very vulnerable position. As it turns out, pulling out happens to be not that much riskier than using a condom in terms of pregnancy. And is often the preferred method of many other perfectly educated kale-eating urban dwellers. But as it also turns out, guys can be total asshats.
So, really, have your own game plan, girls.
There are plenty of options out there and not every one of them will be equally well-suited to you and your body, so put in the time and effort to figure out what is best. Whichever you choose, it is going to come with some side effects, but the point is to choose something. Have a plan that is NOT Plan B. Prevention is better than cure! Or rather, prevention is better than abortion! Please take my word for it.
Birth control is essential to the liberation and empowerment of women because it allows sex to be almost entirely isolated from child-bearing and reproduction. But only almost. And any woman who is making sex with a man needs to be aware that she is implicitly embracing this risk. It’s really not rocket science and I’m not sure why I never thought of it this way before – probably because it lowers my libido – but even if you take the necessary precautions, there will always be a tiny, tiny, chance that partaking in this act now may mean making a choice between terminating and not terminating a pregnancy further down the road.
Scary, isn’t it?
