A Note on Mirena, IUD Extraordinaire

Be warned: look away if ladyparts or nonpenile things going into lady parts make your skin crawl. No crawlidermis detected, these things excite you (it takes all kinds)? Read on.

At the end of October, I got an IUD. I've wanted one for a few years and never been able to cough up $500 to handle it out of pocket, so now that I have insurance, I can be baby free for no monthly dinero! This is yay.

I didn't have any problems with birth control pills, in part because my desperate need for attention and validation from others made me rejoice in my prescription because it meant someone, somewhere, was thinking about me. At least for the first two months. I've been on Ortho or some generic variant for several years (yeesh, upwards of eight though not constantly) and my favorite part about the pill is that it worked and I never got pregnant! Hooray. Props to Planned Parenthood for low-cost birth control. Considerably less expensive than a baby plus I got to graduate college and move to Wisconsin and have sex with my husband I can shower and apply booze or caffeine directly to my throat whenever I feel like it. This has all been great. I want a kid eventually, probably sooner rather than later. But not now and definitely not not 100% not in any of my history leading up to now.

Anyway. I am now insured-- more hooray-- and I can get an IUD. So I did. I didn't think to look up much about other people's experiences getting one placed and didn't give it a lot of thought. My doctor recommended taking some pain reliever before the appointment as a precautionary measure, so I took two ibuprofen and considered myself very worldly for remembering.


If you are getting an IUD, read your doctor's post it carefully. He or she has probably told you to take, like... as much acetaminophen as you can without passing out.

I like my physician a lot. We have a good rapport with one another and I trust her not to fiddle around unnecessarily. She warned me that insertion (somehow I lost this word and kept referring to the procedure as "installation" which is accurate but inadvertently roboticizes the whole thing) could be kind of painful and told me to take the pain reliever beforehand and LOOK AWAY, YE OF FRAGILE EYES that the appointment would need to be set for a day when I was period-ing because the cervix is softer then. Okay. Semi-check and check, just barely. I gotta be me, and me cavegirl, fly by seat of pants.

When you have an install/insert, your uterus will be sounded. First the medical person in charge will manually check to see which way your uterus tilts (I was dying to ask if mine was left/forward/something, anything, but just couldn't do it, which I figure I will regret forever). Then you get sounded, which is not ultra. It's just a wand (because your vagina is a magical place) more or less--but professionally-- shoved inside you to see how deep the insertionist should plan to place the IUD.

Sounding blows. It really, really, fucking goddamn shitcockballsohmygodwhatdidieverdotoyou hurt, and I don't have any pain memories to describe the sensation accurately. It didn't feel sharp or like I was being cut (and I wasn't), but "strong prodding" doesn't do the sensation justice. It really hurt. TAKE THE PAIN PILLS. Now that I'm thinking about it I guess it's on par with terrible cramps that lead women to kill well-meaning people around them that won't shut up. Maybe slightly worse. My doctor is a pro and sounded my uterus and placed the IUD very quickly; I think the whole thing took 5 minutes at the most. It hurt, but the hurt didn't last and I think if I'd, y'know, read the directions and taken the appropriate number of pills beforehand, I would have been in better shape.

I got some shock symptoms during the end, when it hurt the worst. Immediately after finishing I got a juicebox and some polite conversation while my very professional, indeed, medical professional made small talk and made no indication that she thought any less of me for having seen my hoohah very, very up close and personal. Like I said. A pro. I did not get a gold star and what's worse, I didn't ask for one. Another regret. I felt like I deserved one.

Cramped badly afterwards and it was probably psychosomatic but it felt like I could feel the IUD. Not any more painful but a bit weird. I'd brochured myself into hyperawareness that the thing could perforate my uterus and I could end up getting pregnant anyway, so to give myself one last hurrah before this was all for nothing I went directly to Dunkin' Donuts, got a vanilla Coolata (you're welcome for this free advertisement, DD, I'm sure it was just the context you were looking for) and a half dozen sugardoughcircles, and took us all home. I couched myself as soon as I could find and plug in the heating pad, which worked a major midsection miracle and after some dumb tv and a doze, I felt like living again.

I did not feel like having sex, on the other hand, for several days. Which was jarring and a little disappointing because hey, I'd just been through a lot to be able to have sex scot-free! Normalcy resumed after less than a week.

I sing the praises of Mirena for several reasons, but it hasn't been problemless: my periods were blessedly normal before installation, and now I spot throughout the month and get random low level cramps. The first time I couldn't find the strings (they move, some days you won't be able to feel them!) I was convinced I was pregnant, dying of septicemia, and had a perforated uterus. I was duly terrified.

If you're thinking about getting one and have any questions, feel free to post them anonymously as comments and I'll be happy to answer as best I can from my own experience. I can't imagine you found this blog before more helpful search results, but here are a couple if you need more information:

PP Page on IUDs
Mayo Clinic's Page on Mirena

Be responsible, yadda yadda. :)