Two Big Birthdays; Or, Ask Aunty Nandini

I haven’t posted a lot of baby stuff lately, which is a shame because Angad’s really something these days. I can hardly keep up with this boy: one minute he’s fixing to jump off the arm of the sofa and break his head on the coffee table, the next minute spinning himself dizzy while singing “ninga ninga dozes” (Angad-speak for ringa-ringa-roses), and before I can blink he’s dashing off to the car to “slide-u” (Kannada – and coincidentally also Japanese – for slide) down the windshield. It is a pleasure and the closest I’ve felt to what other people call a ‘blessing’ to watch him grow. Very cool.

Anyway, Angad turned two last month. That’s him up there about to cut his Thomas the Train birthday cake, eyeballs fairly popping. The cake was YUM. The party was not too shabby either.

The day after Angad’s birthday was Mothers’ Day, which coincided with the 50th birthday of the Pill being introduced in America. And here I kind of want to write about how awesome the Pill is (it is) and how much it’s done for women (a helluva lot) and what a brilliant thing contraception is in general (brilliant, brilliant, brilliant). But, meh, I’d kind of like people to move past the Pill to better options by now.

I don’t know about you but the Pill always made me want to throw up while simultaneously making me fat, like having bulimia without the weight loss benefits. I have friends who stopped wanting to have sex at all as a side effect of the Pill, irony of ironies. And let’s face it, it blows having to take a bloody hormone supplement – how does the ad go? – Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, every day…

So what options does a girl have, you ask? (Sadly, our great and very egalitarian pharmaceutical industry thinks that contraceptives for men were perfected back in the 1800s and there’s no need for further innovation…. *sigh* so it’s just us girls having this conversation for now.)

You’re asking the right person, because I’ve tried a lot of this stuff. And most of them are just terrible:

1. Depo Provera, the hormone injection that you take every three months, makes you VERY fat. (I didn’t try this one; in before anybody else says I look like I did.) Plus it’s expensive.

2. The Ortho Evra Patch (stick a band aid type patch somewhere on your body, change it once a week, works by releasing a low dose of hormones) is quite good, but expensive since there are no generic alternatives yet.

3. The Nuvaring (stick a little plastic flexible ring in your vagina, change it once a month, works by releasing a low dose of hormones) is terrible because it falls out or needs to be taken out a lot, plus it’s expensive since there are no generic alternatives yet.

4. Implanon (an honest-to-goodness futuristic IMPLANT, tucked into the skin under your upper arm and stays in for three years, works by releasing a very low dose of hormones) may work for you. I haven’t tried it since it wasn’t available in my zamana, but it freaks me out. Even though generic alternatives are not available yet, its cost does get averaged out over three whole years so it’s not expensive.

5. Centchroman (a non-hormonal pill taken every day that works by making you ovulate at the wrong time, thus preventing implantation) is for some reason only legal in India where it is sold under the brand name Saheli. I was considering this when Angad kind of … happened. Never tried it, information about this is very welcome.

6. You can try the good old rhythm method – natural family planning. Insert strong words of caution here: even if you go the high-tech route and take your basal body temperature first thing in the morning and all that jazz, this method has a typical failure rate of 32%. That means 32 out of every 100 people using this method are preggers within one year. Oops.

7. And finally I get to talk about IUDs. I have three words for you all: IUDs. Are. Awesome. They’re little plastic or copper thingummies inserted into the uterus, that work by releasing either a very low dose of hormones or minuscule amounts of copper. Their failure rate is less than 0.5% (compare to the Pill at 8% typical use failure rate, and condoms at 15%)! The worst thing you can say about the IUD is that it hurts when your doctor puts it in, yeah, but that’s no worse than bad menstrual cramps. The pain is gone in a couple of hours. The best part? You’re set for five to ten years,you guys, depending on whether you get the hormonal IUD or the non-hormonal copper kind. (You’re not locked in to the 5-to-10 year commitment either; they can be taken out anytime you feel like having a kid.)

Now some of you may have idiotic doctors who tell you you can’t get an IUD until you’ve given birth. This is your cue to fire your doctor and get a new one. A small percentage of the population may have uteri too small for an IUD to stay in but that’s no reason to stick with a doctor who refuses IUDs to nulliparous women on principle. That’s just stupid. IUDs are the most popular contraceptive on earth. For some really random reason, it’s not very popular in the US: apparently only 1% of women here use it. *eyeroll* You don’t have to miss out, though.

Rather belatedly in honour of both Mother’s Day and the Pill’s 50th birthday, I exhort those of you who are trying not to become moms to get with the program, and get an IUD. Stop wasting your time with Pills and rings and patches and injections. You can thank me later.