From Birth Control to Fertility Awareness (Episode 327)

Full Transcript: Episode 327

Lisa: This is the Fertility Friday podcast, episode number 327.

Welcome to the Fertility Friday podcast, your source for information about the fertility awareness method and all things fertility. I’m your host, Lisa Hendrickson-Jack. I’m the author of The Fifth Vital Sign and the Fertility Awareness Mastery Charting Journal. I’m a certified fertility awareness educator and holistic reproductive health practitioner with nearly 20 years of experience teaching women to connect to their fifth vital sign through menstrual cycle charting, balancing hormonal health, and optimizing the menstrual cycle without hormones.

I’m outspoken about hormonal birth control and its impact on fertility and overall health, because you have the right to know how your body works and how artificial hormones disrupt that natural process. I host live coaching programs to help you achieve optimal fertility and health, because it’s important to have healthy menstrual cycles regardless of whether or not you want to have babies.

I’m also a wife and mother of two beautiful boys — I know, I know, I’m a busy girl, but I managed to fit it all in. This podcast is designed to empower you to take full control of your cycles, your fertility, and your overall health, and I’m so excited that you’re here with us today.

Today I’m sharing a new episode in my Pill Reality series, and I have a feeling that you’re going to really appreciate my conversation with Shannon. We really get into it from her experience of sex education, and it’s a doozy. I’ve heard a lot of stories about sex ed class, and this one takes the cake.

We talk about birth control and some of the experiences that she had, some of the side effects that she experienced, but also the profound shift that she made when she realized that the menstrual cycle was more than just about having babies, and that there was a connection to health, and her own personal transition to fertility awareness charting. So really, really great episode, lots of exciting takeaways. Without further ado, let’s jump into my conversation with Shannon.

Lisa: I’m really excited to be here today with Shannon. Shannon is a member of the Fertility Friday community, and we connected because I posted, as I usually do, about the pill and different side effects and other types of hormonal birth control, and Shannon, your story really kind of spoke to me. I thought it would be a really good opportunity for us to share it on the podcast. Without further ado, welcome to the show.

Shannon: Thank you so much, I appreciate the opportunity. It’s awesome talking to you today, and hopefully I won’t ramble on too much.

Lisa: Well, rambling is welcome. And it’s not rambling, really, when you’re telling your story, right?

Shannon: Thank you.

Lisa: I’d love just to start — just to give the audience a little bit of background, the way that I often do — could you let us know when you started menstruating, what that was like, and if you’ve used hormonal birth control, and kind of lead us into where we’re at today?

Shannon: For sure, for sure. I started menstruating pretty early — my very first period was actually in fourth grade, and then I didn’t have one again for another year at least, but I was definitely among my peer group; I was early, I developed early.

In my early teens I got pretty painful periods, really bad cramps, around 15, 16. I was having such painful periods and such painful cramping that I would vomit — one time I passed out sitting on the toilet with my mom for a moment. Really awful, painful periods.

That continued into the beginning of college, so I did take the birth control pill for a while, from around 16 to 19, kind of on and off. And then when I was in college I started learning a bit more about the negative effects that can come with it.

I grew up in the Texas panhandle, where sex education was abstinence-only, so we didn’t have a lot of information to go off of. I remember the classes in high school — the only conversations about contraception were failure rates. The one thing I remember is playing a game in class where you roll the dice, and for each different type — for condoms, for the pill, for the different types of birth control — you rolled the dice, and it was, “oh, you’re pregnant,” “oh, you got an STD.” All we talked about was the failure rates, and honestly a lot of my peers walked out of that class thinking, “what’s the point, it doesn’t work anyway, so why bother.” Teen pregnancy is very high in that area as well.

I had a bachelor’s degree and was into my 20s before I learned and understood that women aren’t fertile every single day, and actually, Lisa, it was year 101 that really got me to make that click for the first time.

Lisa: Wow, I just feel like we need to pause there for a second, because I mean, as you know, I’ve heard a lot of stories about education, or lack thereof, in school.

Shannon: Yeah.

Lisa: And I went to a Catholic school, K-2 — what was it, K to 9? Kindergarten to grade 9. I had the sense that my education was super repressed. When I was growing up it was like, “if you have sex you’ll get AIDS and die,” and I’m not exaggerating. I grew up in the 80s and 90s, and AIDS was the thing of the 80s and 90s — the only thing anyone’s talking about. So that was my education. But wow, I just never heard of this dice thing — that must have been… it’s hard to get over, because what’s the feeling from that?

I mean, I was already afraid because I was told there’s no safe days in the AIDS-and-die thing, so condoms were the only way. But then to add that additional factor — this randomness, the idea that it’s just random and there’s nothing you can do — what’s the point?

Shannon: I mean, exactly.

Lisa: Wow, exactly.

Shannon: It was all of the horror stories that you hear about — like telling girls that if you have sex before you’re married it’s like a chewed up piece of gum, like would you want a piece of gum that somebody else chewed, you have to save yourself for your husband. Yeah, contraception doesn’t work.

We were separated by gender — it started in fifth grade. Fifth, sixth, seventh grade you’re separated boys and girls, and then the big culmination of this program is in eighth grade, they bring the boys and girls together and ultimately show a slideshow of images of worst-case scenario STIs — just fear tactics all around.

And the randomness of getting pregnant — literally it was rolling the dice and making people go from one side of the room to the other, to show the impact and the difference of, “do you really have no idea? All of these people got pregnant, you can’t control it, so you’d better wait until you’re married and trying to have a baby.”

Lisa: Well, and I’m sure there was a detailed discussion of sex for pleasure, and why we shouldn’t be ashamed of our sexuality, and clear descriptions of our genitalia, specific to the vulva and the clitoris.

Shannon: I’m sure it was described, indeed.

Lisa: I think that this is really important — some of the women who are listening may have had a very similar, or even the same, experience. I’d imagine that many people listening didn’t have the same experience, so it’d be easy to look at that and say, “well, mine was great.” But likely again, ask yourself: did your experience of sexual education contain accurate images of actual human genitalia, with full descriptions and labeling? Did it emphasize sex positivity, and even talk about pleasure and orgasm in any way, and talk about how it should be about love and pleasure and expression? It’s just interesting to think about why those things aren’t there.

Shannon: Yeah, yeah. Let alone the fear-mongering — and you saying it now, I never even thought about it, but when it comes to discussing anatomy and terms, there was a very quick, very basic, the same kind of drawing that we’ve all seen with the labels, but the only real images we saw were those worst-case-scenario infections and diseases.

With condoms, we didn’t talk about how to use them properly. We were never shown — there weren’t, like you’ve seen in movies, a banana and practicing putting it on — that was not okay. We didn’t even have physical examples in the classroom; we just talked about how they break, and one bit of advice was that you shouldn’t leave one in your car or your wallet because it’s more likely to break and more likely to end up getting pregnant.

And I hadn’t even thought about it until you said it, but there was absolutely no talk about pleasure. There was explicit talk about how it’s almost the opposite of that — it’s not for pleasure, it’s for making babies, only with your husband. There were even animal anatomical discussions about how homosexual intercourse is not okay, and that’s not what it was designed for — an “exit only,” those kinds of terms were used.

It was a really bad sex education program, and it was all we had. Your parents had to sign off that you could even attend it, and in my community there were plenty of people whose parents said no, that is not to be discussed in school, that is for parents to handle. I’m 29, so this was 15 years ago, and I don’t believe it has changed since then.

Lisa: Wow. Well, I feel like the one thing too — I’ve probably said it on the podcast a couple different times — but I’ve experienced recently a bit of shock that a lot of grown-up adults don’t know how to use condoms correctly.

Shannon: Yeah.

Lisa: Specifically, a lot of grown-up adults don’t know that you can’t use oil with condoms. If you haven’t seen this, go to YouTube and type in “condoms and oil” — there are plenty of demonstrations where you put the condom over your hand, rub oil on it for a while, and eventually the condom disintegrates and breaks.

It’s just interesting — the subtext of fear isn’t teaching about sex at all, because if they were, they would tell us what sex is and why people do it. If there was any objectivity here, you would learn about the risks, but you’d also learn about the benefits and ways to mitigate those risks, and the message that it’s possible to engage in sex safely.

I’ll resist the urge to go on a tangent, but there’s a lot of sexual violence that happens in our culture, and if we cared about people having a safe and enjoyable experience with sex, we would also talk about that aspect of it. I won’t go down that rabbit hole, but I think it was important for everyone to hear that — the differences in how sex education is done. That would be one of the more extreme examples I’ve ever heard.

Shannon: Yeah, absolutely, and it’s crazy for me too, because I had parents who were very open with me and taught me early on — I could ask my mom questions. My mom actually, when she was 19 and in the army, had an unplanned pregnancy and gave birth to a son that she gave up for adoption. It turned into a beautiful story, but that was a tough experience for her, and she tried to educate me early on, beyond what was provided in schools.

I was lucky to have that, but still, because of knowing her experience and how it impacted her, combined with the education I received, it was just completely fear-based. For the kids who grew up without the parents I had, who could provide that context, I can’t imagine.

I spent all of my youth, until very recently finding people like you and reading books like yours, with no real education — just fear and guilt associated with sex for pleasure being a naughty, bad, awful, sinful thing to do. A lot of fear that getting pregnant would ruin my life and take away everything I’d wanted and worked for, so that absolutely could not happen — but I had to be careful without really knowing what being careful meant.

There were lots of girls in my high school who had babies, and I don’t understand how people haven’t figured out that the education we’re trying to provide clearly isn’t working.

Lisa: Well, the drive to have sex is a natural drive that you can’t stamp out. If you don’t provide practical information to guide someone in mitigating some of those risks and engaging responsibly — if we were to compare it objectively to driving, or drinking alcohol, or the other things you start to experiment with as an adolescent — we provide information about the risks and benefits and talk about why people do these things, so a person is able to make their own decisions and choices. If you provide information about how to mitigate the inherent risks, human beings are smart enough to figure this out.

Even in spite of that lack of education, I’m sure there were individuals in school with you who managed to find their own information, and especially now with the interconnectedness of the world, it’s easier to find information — but again, what quality of information is it?

So then, share with us — it sounds like a semi-traumatic experience, or a complete lack of sex education, really — how that experience filtered into your choices around preventing pregnancy and birth control.

Shannon: Right, preventing pregnancy was always the number one thing in my mind. I had the hormonal birth control pill that I took as a teenager when I first became sexually active. I did okay with that for a while — I knew you had to take it on time every day, regularly — but I think, without understanding how it actually worked, if I had understood what it was actually doing, I know I would have chosen not to take it. I honestly can’t remember how I got to the point of deciding not to.

I think, if I’m not mistaken, it was an issue of getting the prescription refilled when I was in college, and it was just something I didn’t want to pursue. I wasn’t in a relationship at the time, so I didn’t really worry about it. But any relationship I was in, until the last few years, has been tainted by this ever-present fear — every sexual encounter came with this fear in the back of my mind that it could result in an unplanned pregnancy that would ruin my life.

“Ruin” sounds like an insensitive word, but that’s how it was programmed into my mind — that if I want a career, if I want goals, if I want an intentional family someday after I get married, then every time I connect with a boyfriend that way, I’m putting all of that at risk. So it resulted in not getting into a lot of intimate relationships, which isn’t the worst thing.

But coming out on the other side of that, and learning how my body actually worked, and learning fertility awareness, I was able to intimately connect and truly fall deeper in love than I had ever been able to before. I don’t know if I actually answered your question, or just went on a tangent.

Lisa: Well, that’s really a powerful reflection, because when you have a drug that is suppressing ovulatory function — in a purely biophysical sense, how we usually talk about it on the podcast — we all want the science, the facts, the research, the hard, left-brain information. We want to know how it affects our hormones, how it affects our nutrient stores, and what the physical evidence is.

The science has shown how it can affect the tissues — shrinking and thinning the vulvar tissues or the clitoris, and how that could affect sensation — and how it can affect our feelings and emotions, so anxiety, depression, libido. But in terms of our ability to connect with a human being, that’s pretty controversial territory. I get a lot of flack for talking about the side effects in general, and about the research showing how it could potentially change how we choose a mate — because it causes fear; people think, “if I’m not at the wheel, who is?” It’s a terrifying thought.

So for you to have that reflection — the fear in and of itself is a layer between you and your partner. If you’re always afraid, it’s hard to just be in the moment and enjoy that sexual encounter. That in itself could have been a barrier between really connecting with your partner. It’s a really powerful reflection that you had that experience — when you were taking it, you weren’t really able to sink in and enjoy and fall fully in love, versus when you were off of it.

Shannon: Yeah, no, I absolutely believe all of that to be true. In my past relationship, with a man I had started dating in high school — we went separate ways and came back together as adults, and I thought for sure he would be the one I would marry — we were very much in love at the time. I was not on hormonal birth control when we got together; we just used condoms, which is another tangent I could go on about, the physical separation those create. But that was what we used to stay safe. And I was with him when I first got the IUD.

There was a disconnect that happened after I got that — it had to be, because my hormones were changing. There’s no question in my mind that that played a factor in the division between us. On a practical level we didn’t work out together for other reasons, but the IUD I got when we were together was definitely a turning point in the connection there, I believe.

Lisa: Well, how old were you when you had the IUD, and did you have any side effects that you were aware of at the time, or that you’ve kind of picked up on after?

Shannon: It’s a bit of a complicated story with that one. I was 25; I had just gotten diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. That boyfriend and I had just moved in together — it was a stressful time in life anyway, between changing jobs, moving, this serious relationship we had just taken to the next level. All these things were happening at once, and then I got sick, and it led to the multiple sclerosis diagnosis.

In that process, we were just using condoms at the time; I wasn’t on any hormonal contraceptive. But with the diagnosis, as I was being presented with treatment options — a lot of the drugs are the more intense treatment options — one of the drugs I was considering, I would have had to have a pregnancy test every month before receiving the infusion, because a pregnancy on some of these drugs is just dangerous and scary.

So preventing pregnancy became a priority. At this point in my life I had started to learn more about fertility, getting into the ideas of fertility awareness — I’d found some resources online and was first presented with the idea that ovulation only happens once in a cycle and you aren’t fertile every day — but I still didn’t really understand it, let alone put it into practice.

With this diagnosis and choosing a treatment, preventing pregnancy became an even higher priority, because at that time I was envisioning marrying and having kids with this man eventually. While considering these treatment options it was, “no, I absolutely have to prevent this,” and with everything else going on, I made an appointment with my OB-GYN, who I had only seen once before, specifically to discuss birth control.

She pretty much immediately said, “the IUD is the best option — it’s the least effort, it’s long-lasting, one and done, we can do this, and then you can worry about all the other things.” If only it had been that simple, because that was definitely not my experience.

I ended up only having the IUD for about eight months, six of which I was pretty much consistently bleeding — basically like brown spotting all the time. The hardest part was the mood swings I experienced with the IUD.

I had just been diagnosed with a neurological condition where cognitive changes are something to look out for, and with my MS, when I got diagnosed, I had a vision issue and some numbness in my face, and a bunch of things happened all at once to make the diagnosis very clear. I was extremely lucky in that regard, because the diagnosis was clear, but based on my MRIs I was told this had probably been going on for about five years prior, because there were already so many lesions in my brain.

Something that’s kind of scary about a diagnosis like that is that you could be experiencing symptoms that aren’t as obvious as a sudden change in vision or numbness in your face. So when I started having these intense mood swings — one horrible, dark, awful day to the next day being ecstatic and giggly, swinging back and forth wildly — I didn’t have an understanding at the time that it could be anything but the MS. It was still so new, I didn’t have any context for it.

I called my neurologist and tried to report it, and it was basically, “we’ll keep an eye on it for a while.” Looking back on it now, it’s so clear that the mood swings started happening after I got the IUD inserted, and stopped when I got it removed. So it’s pretty obvious.

Lisa: Well, and is that ultimately why you had the IUD removed — were you kind of aware, in your case? I always say, given all these conversations I’ve had over the years with clients and on air, that women fall into different categories — some go on a hormonal contraceptive and have an immediate, swift, different emotional experience, whereas others don’t, and some gradually start seeing an increase in emotional reactions way later, which makes it a lot harder to make that connection.

Shannon: Yeah, yeah, I ultimately got it removed — mostly because of the bleeding and spotting I was experiencing all the time; that physical indication was more obvious to me, and more encouraging to just take it out. Also, the relationship I was in had ended, so I didn’t need it anymore, which made it easier to do as well.

In the time I’d had it, I’d started dipping my toes into fertility awareness before I got it, and then after I got it and was having the negative experiences, I started learning a lot more. So, not being in a relationship, not needing it for birth control, plus the physical symptoms — those two things alone were enough for me to say, “just take it out, I’m done.”

After having it removed, I started actually practicing fertility awareness and learning in a more formal method, besides just the bits I’d heard and read and YouTube videos I’d watched. It’s definitely more of a hindsight thing — it was a small factor, but it’s more clear now that the mood swings were related to that. At the time I wasn’t sure, so having it removed was kind of like removing a variable, but it was more the physical that encouraged me to have it taken out.

Lisa: Yeah, no, that’s interesting. One of the biggest challenges for the makers of progestin-only contraception — the hormonal IUDs, the implants, and even the progesterone-only pill — is that with progesterone-only methods there is an increased amount of random bleeding. That’s a very common experience for women using these methods. In some cases it’s most at the very beginning and gradually tapers off, but you’re not alone in that — a lot of women use this method, and after three or four months of continuous bleeding, a lot of us just get a little irritated.

So in your experience, it wasn’t the mood swings, even though you’d been having them — it was after you removed it for other reasons that you identified, “wow, I feel different now,” and made that connection.

I know one of the things you wanted to shed some light on — thank you for sharing your experience with MS. I know you wanted to share how those things intersected for you, because we always talk about side effects here in the reality series, but in your case you also had this concurrent health issue you were facing, right?

Shannon: Yeah, the MS forced me to look at my health and evaluate my body and my symptoms, and just pay attention, more than anything else in my life. I’ve been overweight my entire life, but I’d never before MS had any other health complications — I’d always been generally healthy, minus the weight thing.

So my mindset was always — and honestly, a lot of my experience with doctors — “your problem is your weight, if you lose weight all of your problems will go away.” MS forced me to pay attention to my body and myself in a way that I never had before.

Having that paired with fertility awareness at the same time was incredibly powerful, because in terms of weight — especially learning that after ovulation, in the luteal phase before the period, your appetite increases because of the hormone changes in your body — that was the most freeing thing I ever learned.

I’ve struggled with binge eating; weight and food have always been a struggle in my life. Understanding, for the first time, that my hormones are changing at this time, and noticing it cycle after cycle — “yeah, I’m super hungry right now, more than usual, this is a change, and it’s consistently happening at this time” — empowered me to not just hate myself for that, or feel guilty and bad for experiencing it.

I was able to understand that this is an effect of something going on in my body, and by recognizing that and removing the guilt and shame from it, all of a sudden it wasn’t as big of a problem — “it’s okay that I feel this way because of what’s happening in my body right now, you’re not broken, you’re not a failure, this is just the way that it is.”

Learning the different phases and what to expect at different times helped everything make so much more sense. When I’m getting a little irritable or frustrated close to my period — the PMS that we all hear about — there’s something real behind that. It’s not a failure, it’s not something broken, it’s just the way that we work. Understanding that, and removing the guilt from it, makes it a lot easier to manage.

Lisa: That’s so powerful. It’s not a surprise to anyone who’s a regular listener that I frame a lot of things based on the menstrual cycle, in life in general, because a lot of women come to fertility awareness for a very practical reason — “I need birth control,” “I need to get pregnant,” “I need to understand what’s going on here.” Other times it’s, “I had negative experiences with hormones and I need something that isn’t hormonal.”

So there’s a lot of practical aspects to it, and the practical draws us in, but then you start to chart, and you start to see this connection between your emotions, your health, and your cycles. I just really appreciate the example of — when you start to recognize the patterns, it is freeing. There’s so much benefit in understanding the different things that could be connected to why you feel the way that you do. It doesn’t make the feelings go away, but when you know it’s related to the cycle — the more you deepen into that, the more you can realize that if you know it happens every time, it allows you to strategize a bit.

Shannon: Exactly, it allows you to look at it in a more objective way. I’ll use myself as an example — I’ll often crave chocolate; if I’m going to crave something, it’s always chocolate. Knowing that has allowed me to strategize, to make it work for me, maybe look for different alternatives — the ability to come from a greater place of agency, and above all, just connecting to your own intuition.

Lisa: And when you brought up PMS I would bring that to one additional level — it’s easy to say, “it always happens before my period, I’m just irritable, it doesn’t matter,” and dismiss it. But there’s another layer, where typically, if you’re PMSing, it’s not like all of a sudden you’re just offended by the color blue and mad at the sky —

Shannon: Yes!

Lisa: — it’s generally things that are already annoying you and upsetting you in whatever way that are exacerbated by that time.

Shannon: Yes, I think there’s a line we can all play with and dance with — the more you chart, the more you deepen into fertility awareness, and yes, acknowledge there’s a cyclical nature to it, but also don’t dismiss it — look at the thing that’s upsetting you and maybe journal about it, so that when you’re outside of that phase you can look at it again. If it keeps coming up cycle after cycle, it’s something you’re supposed to look at.

I look at it like you’ve got this inner secretary — all the things you’re pissed off at, when you’re in that phase of your cycle, just throw it on your desk and deal with it, and it walks out. No, absolutely — I firmly believe anything that irritates me at that time irritates me the rest of the cycle as well, just not at that specific time. I’m more likely to say something about it; it would annoy me any other day, but because it’s happening today, I’m not putting up with it.

Lisa: Well, and maybe there’s some value to that.

Shannon: Absolutely.

Lisa: If we didn’t have that cyclical nature — something really compelling us to address these things — and I’m not trying to normalize really severe symptoms, like severe depression or severe anxiety, because I also look at the menstrual cycle as a vital sign, so if you have severe symptoms it also coincides with different hormonal imbalances, typically a sharp drop in progesterone or an abnormal progesterone arc in that phase. So if it’s totally out of hand, we absolutely have to look at all of the different factors we can address to balance that out.

But with that said, I often wonder about the role this cyclical process — this force, or whatever you want to call it, that causes us to examine what’s bothering us — plays in propelling us through our lives. I really question the notion of looking at it negatively, and I’m thrilled to hear that in your case it helped you deepen into yourself, recognize your patterns and your cycles, and deepen your understanding of the whole process we’re all going through.

Shannon: Very much so. I am a data analyst by trade and a journaler in my free time, and I am a data hoarder — I want to track every little thing; I want every piece of information to start with, and then we’ll get rid of what we don’t need later — and then I don’t get rid of anything, actually.

It has been so powerful, just in the pattern recognition. It’s not unpredictable, it’s not a scary monster hanging over my head all the time. Charting and tracking and just paying attention, doing it for a long time — I believe I’m on cycle 18 now of really charting, taking my temperature, fully doing it — and having that to look back on, it is a pattern.

I’m getting to the point where I’m able to notice changes, and with the help of The Fifth Vital Sign book, I am starting to understand that maybe my thyroid isn’t functioning as well as it could be, and I’ve been able to have those conversations with my doctor about that, in relation to weight.

I finally have a really good primary care physician now — the first one I’ve ever had that wasn’t just, “you’re fat, lose weight and all your problems will go away.” She’s actually been interested in my blood work, and supplementing and addressing a vitamin D deficiency that made such an impact.

My body isn’t a mystery anymore, and it isn’t something unpredictable to be afraid of — it’s something I can observe and understand, and the freedom that comes with that is incredible. It’s given me context to understand the disease I’m dealing with — it’s not wild, unpredictable mood swings like before, because I have those patterns, and if something changes in the pattern, maybe I need to have that conversation or consider that.

It’s so powerful, and I am just so grateful that I found it, and you, and the resources that are out there right now, to be able to educate myself where previous education had failed me. It’s an incredible thing — and now, in the time of a global pandemic, it’s even more powerful, because I don’t need anybody or anything to manage it.

Lisa: Well — we’re obviously recording in the midst of this global chaos, in 2020 — for the long-time listeners, or I’d have to look back, but I think one of the very first episodes I recorded was with Rosie Kuhn. I’ll see if I can locate the episode and put it in the show notes page, but I remember her saying something like, “well, in the event of the zombie apocalypse, you still chart” — I’m obviously not quoting her exact words, but she’s basically saying it doesn’t require any tech beyond a thermometer, so if everything goes to crap, you can still chart. So interesting that you bring that up in the midst of this.

Shannon: Yeah, definitely unrelated to what we’re talking about, and sorry to date the podcast in that regard, but it’s real.

Lisa: It is, and it really —

Shannon: A menstrual cup and a thermometer, I’m good to go, whatever happens outside in the world.

Lisa: Yeah, that’s okay.

Shannon: I’m fine right here, I don’t need anything else.

Lisa: Well, as we bring our conversation to close, I just want to say thank you for sharing your experience. I feel like this conversation is so important and so powerful, to uncover some of the stuff going on in the education system — I’ve never lived in Texas, I am no longer a teenager, so who knows what’s going on in classrooms now, but we would always hope that it’s better.

Also, thank you for sharing your experience with contraceptives, with the IUD, and shedding some light on some of those side effects. What I always say in these episodes is that the goal for me is to continue this conversation, because in the research, and in the conversations that women are having in their doctors’ offices, there’s a tendency to collectively dismiss the experiences of women and minimize the side effects.

My intention here is to have us talk about the side effects — for women who experience side effects on birth control to have a place to talk about those experiences. Whenever you’re talking about hormonal birth control there’s always some backlash, like, “well, she’s only picking the negative stories,” but at the end of the day, the majority of my clients have used birth control, and there are plenty of women I’ve spoken to who have pretty neutral or pretty positive experiences on birth control.

But these conversations are really important, especially for someone who’s thinking about getting an IUD, just to know that it’s possible it could change your moods, it’s possible you could have some bleeding, so that if it happens to you, you’re not bewildered, you’re not powerless, and you don’t have to do a desperate Google search at three in the morning to find the answer. If you just know going into it that some of these side effects are a possibility, then it gives you the ability to empower yourself.

So, what — if anything — would you like to leave the listeners today with?

Shannon: That you and your body are all that you need. I love that there are contraceptive options for people; I know that not everybody in the world is going to be able or willing to practice fertility awareness in the obsessive data-hoarding way that I like to, but taking the time to understand —

The IUD was sold to me as a “one and done, it’ll pinch for a second, it might hurt for a day, and then you don’t have to think about birth control again for three years.” If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. I’m grateful that I had it at that point in time, because it was, I thought, one less thing that I had to worry about, and in the end it ended up pushing me toward fertility awareness and body literacy in its place, and it served its purpose for me, and that’s okay.

Any advice I could give to anybody that’s not sure, or anybody just starting to think about it, is to trust your instinct and be open to learning about how your body works — I bet you’ll feel a little less crazy about all of it, because there are explanations for the way that things happen and the way that we work, and when you understand that, it’s incredibly freeing.

Lisa: I love that — what a wonderful, beautiful place to land on. Thank you so much for being here and for sharing your story; I know this episode is going to be so powerful, so thank you so much for being here.

Shannon: Thank you, I appreciate it. I feel like I was a bit scattered, and I could talk to you for three more hours, but I appreciate everything that you’ve done, and all of the resources and education that you’ve provided — in the absence, for people like me, it wasn’t easily given to them. The work that you’re doing is incredible and important, and I am grateful for it.

Lisa: Well, thank you so much, thank you.

Thank you for listening — if you enjoyed today’s show, please share it with a friend. You’ll find the show notes page for today’s episode over at fertilityfriday.com/327.

I hope that you enjoyed today’s episode with Shannon — it was such a treat to have her on the show. Shannon, thank you for coming on the show and sharing your experience so openly and candidly, and for shedding so much light on a variety of issues that are so common for women who are on birth control.

A lot of Shannon’s reflections on her experiences on birth control went a lot deeper than just looking at the basic side effects — looking at how it could impact a relationship, how it could change how you relate to another person, as well as the different health effects it could have.

How often women are coming off of birth control for the physical effects, especially in the case of IUDs, if it’s disrupting normal bleeding patterns or causing irregular bleeding — but what we don’t always recognize are those emotional impacts, which I’ve heard so many women say: they didn’t necessarily come off of the pill for those emotional effects, or they didn’t realize how the pill was affecting them, and once they came off of it, they noticed a difference in themselves, something they didn’t expect.

That’s the reason why I continue to share episodes in the Pill Reality series, and also the Fertility Awareness Reality series episodes, the on-air client sessions that I do — it’s really to give a voice to real women like you and me who have experienced issues on contraception, so that there’s a place for us to share our experiences, and so that women who are listening who’ve had those experiences don’t feel like they’re alone.

For so many women I’ve spoken to, perhaps this isn’t something you talk about regularly with your friends, or perhaps you don’t even know anybody who had any negative effects, because everyone around you had the greatest experience on birth control.

So if you found yourself questioning your own side effects, or having a difficult time being taken seriously, or even a difficult time finding a method that works — if you ended up switching from one method to another, to another brand, to another, whatever it is, and that happened multiple times over several years — you’re not alone. In fact, the majority of women who go on birth control end up switching to different brands at least once because of unfavorable side effects.

So hopefully you enjoyed today’s episode — we covered a lot of ground, and of course I really appreciate Shannon for sharing her experience, especially her experience related to multiple sclerosis, and how being on the pill affected that, and how this whole process changed how she looked at her health in general.

So thank you, Shannon, and thank you to everybody for spending some time with me today and for being a part of the Fertility Friday community. Thank you for sharing the show, sharing with your friends, tagging me on social media — it really makes a difference, because this is how the word gets out about Fertility Friday, about fertility awareness, and more and more women are given the opportunity to connect with their cycles in a lot of different ways.

So thank you once again. I hope you have a wonderful week, weekend, a wonderful day, whenever you’re listening to the episode. And of course, as always — until next time, be well and happy charting.