of bleeding and pregnancy (kind of)

[shyshutterbug.livejournal.com]

(I couldn't think of a title for this entry to save my life. Thus, it is lame. Please forgive this.)

This is kind of a weird question - not really one of "I don't know what to do," but more along the lines of "hey, my solution to this kinda sucks; does anyone have a better one?”

I'm one of the unlucky ones whose ovaries have it in for her. My periods are impossible to predict, even after almost eight continuous years on HBC (I've been on, by my count, at least a dozen different pills). When they get around to showing up, they are heavy, painful, and long. Today was, I believe, the final day of my period - which ends 19 days of continuous bleeding and cramping. This period was seven days early; the one before that was almost three months late. I've been having workups to determine the cause of my innumerable GYN problems since I was in kindergarten, and we've pretty much concluded that, save cancer, everything that can be wrong with my reproductive system is wrong with it.

I am not now nor have I ever been sexually active, and I highly doubt I will become so for at least the next several years. However, I've been thinking more and more lately about how many women rely on getting their periods as their surefire indicator that they aren't pregnant, and how, with my cycle as unreliable as it is, I will not have that indicator.

Now, granted, I have no intention of having unprotected sex until I feel ready and able to handle the potential consequences of doing so, and given my preexisting conditions, it may be difficult for me to conceive even when I try to, let alone while actively trying to prevent it. But I’ve heard way, way too many stories that end in “...but I got pregnant anyway” to not be wary of trusting my chosen methods to work as intended without the reassurance of a bleed.

(I just realized that I probably sound batshit paranoid, especially for someone for whom pregnancy is not an immediate concern. Please forgive that. I work for an abortion provider, so I think about unintended pregnancies and how to prevent them...er, slightly more than the average person, lol.)

The only real solution to this that I can come up with is to take a pregnancy test every month and ensure it comes out negative. I’m not necessarily opposed to doing so; as I said, I work in gynecology and probably will very long-term, so my access to pregnancy tests is reasonably unrestricted. However, I’d prefer to avoid the panic of doing so once a month until menopause – and if, for whatever reason, I stopped working in gynecology, that’s something that could get really expensive really fast.

So, my question would be: for those of you with hopelessly wacked-out periods like me who can’t rely on a bleed for anything, how do you reassure yourself that you’re not pregnant?

(Good Lord, did this post make any sense? So sorry if it didn’t; it strikes me as a little discombobulated. Feel free to ask me for clarification of just what in the world I’m talking about, lol.)

Comments

[shyshutterbug.livejournal.com]

A valid point. Thank you :)

[loonylupinlover.livejournal.com]

I think it's human nature to assume that people are privy to the same amounts of knowledge that we possess, but sometimes it really is shocking to see the disparity in people's knowledge levels. Good methods of birth control just spontaneously failing is extremely rare; user error, known or not, is far more common. And sadly, sometimes people really are just not fully informed on things, even things as big as pregnancy and birth control. Hopefully this thought, while a bit depressing in some ways, will be a comfort to you in other ways -- that you are better informed and thus would be able to identify user error on your part right away, and take appropriate measures.

[shyshutterbug.livejournal.com]

I wholeheartedly agree - human error is something that just does not get half as much credit as is due to it, and the degree of ignorance and misinformation out there is staggering.