The Pill
Goodbye
by Denise Trowbridge
God bless the birth control pill- for everyone but me. It made making out in the back of cars a fun hobby and sex a no-fear activity for lots of women. That's why I started to take it. I wante dmy fair share of the action. Two months later, I tore open my little blue package of Alesse and ripped at the health information like a crazed hyena. The fine print: Weight gain, irritability, decreased sex drive, acne, blood clots, increased appetite, dry vagina? My god. What have I done?
I had gained 17 pounds, wanted to cry all the time and felt like I was eternally starving, rooting through the fridge every night hoping the hubby had hidden some gummy bears behind the cereal. I never wanted to have sex. I couldn’t button my pants because I was retaining every drop of water within a three-block radius. And I got zits, lots of little ones that made my chin pink and tender. I’d never even had zits as a teenager. I also got tits, big ones, and fast. Okay, that was kind of nice…
My gynecologist called me "porkchop" after I got off the scale and told me I had really packed on the pounds. She said it was normal. Normal? I asked for another method of birth control and she seemed surprised. I could see the disbelief swelling behind her eyes. The Pill is the saviour of modern women! How dare you say you want something else. It’s liberation in a capsule taken every day at 3 pm. But I insisted. I knew there had to be something else. She ran through the list:
IUD They still make those?
Abstinence Yeah, right.
Creams and jellies How am I going to get my man to lick my puss with those oozing out?
The Diaphragm Throw spontaneity out the window.
Condoms A love affair compliments of Dow Chemical
I left with another pack of pills and a deepening fear that I was just stuck with all of the side effects. Every other option seemed even worse. Didn’t those IUDs make lots of women sick in the 1970s?
Then I found the Lady Comp. It isn’t sold in the US, but women in Europe and Canada have been using it for years. It’s a little computer you keep by your bed. Every morning, while half-asleep, you stick a thermometer in your mouth and take your temperature. The Lady-Comp then stores the information and tells you when you are fertile. It’s simple. Green light = Go. Red Light= Don’t do it. It measures the fluctuations in your basal body temperature—your temperature when you are at rest— and uses them to gauge your monthly cycle. It even gives me a flashing "M" the day I’m going to get my period. (To my surprise, it’s usually right on.)
My friends laughed, saying I’d be pregnant in a year. Those kinds of things don’t work, they’d say. It’s the rhythm method! How hokey! Mirroring the words my hysterical Mother-in-law screamed over the phone. How could you be so irresponsible? You shouldn’t take any risks having kids when you aren’t ready. That kind of natural thing doesn’t work.
I decided to give it a whirl, and now I swear by it. At first, I stalled because it cost about $350. But, that’s a year’s worth of pills, and the money was worth it to me. I was tired of being the walking side effect. The warnings of my friends called out from the back of my mind. Would it work? I crossed my fingers and tried it.
It’s very easy to use, and I now trust it completely. The company that manufacturers them is super cool, too. When I lost my instruction booklet and went berserk, they sent me another one, free of charge, within two days. When I checked the clinical trials, the Lady Comp had a success rate equal to that of the birth control pill. It is chemical free and natural, no side effects, no prescriptions and with no weird pieces of plastic mucking up my cervix. I lost the weight and the nagging hunger I had while taking the pill. And, when the time for kids does come, I can use it to plan my pregnancy—those little red lights tell me when I’m ovulating.
As strange as it sounds, it’s liberating. I get the satisfaction of knowing my body. I’m in touch with myself and my cycle for the first time. It’s calming to know that I’m pitching eggs like a frenzied major-leaguer every 28 days so that if the time every comes to have kids, I’ll know that I can. The pill suppressed all of that, giving me only the chemical-induced illusion of a regular cycle.
So mother-in-laws and friends can keep those baby showers on hold. The Lady Comp really works for me. Ladies everywhere do your homework. Chemicals, creams and pills aren’t for everyone. We have more options than we think—even if we have to smuggle them in plain brown wrappers from Europe.
