2008-02-04

Current Mood: curious

Obtaining birth control without insurance

Hello, I have a few questions about trying to get birth control pills without health insurance.

( Here's a little background information: )

Dribbling

A little background here:

I'm 28, on the big side of normal weight, haven't had any kids/pregancies. I used depo provera for 10 years, and now have a mirena IUD (7 months).

Foe the past year or so I have been (ugh) dribbling after I pee. It seems I got it all out, I wipe, stand up and fix my pants, and then a little trickle of pee will come out. Not a ton, and it's not a problem any other time, but enough sometimes to make my panties a little damp.

Oy, this is embarrassing...

Has anyone else had this problem? Any ideas as to what could be causing it or what I can do to control/stop it?

Thanks so much ladies!

PS If anyone remembers my period freak out last fall sorry about that. It's 3 days long, light as can be, and I was childish to be so afraid of it

Choices for Obtaining Birth Control?

Hey ladies. :)

So, I'm almost nineteen, not sexually active, never been to a gyno before, and looking to go on birth control for cramps. I've got basically two options, and I'm not sure which route to take.

There's a women's health center affiliated with my school that has a $45 cover charge (before the medication is given out) and would include bloodwork and a pap smear.

My other option is going to Planned Parenthood, which has an $80 total for the coverage and the medication, and it wouldn't include a pap smear.

I have no idea how expensive this sort of thing usually is, so I don't know if either of these cases would be particularly effective or rational, or whether or not they would need to do a pap smear. All I really know is that I'd like to try BC for my cramps. Any advice I could get would be really great. (my insurance is an HMO and I don't know if anything would cover it. I use Kaiser Permanente which is near my house, 3 hours from my college).

EDIT: I'd go to Kaiser, but it's too far from here and I don't have a car. I won't be home again until May, so this isn't really a very good-looking option. How likely are the chances that PP or my campus doctors would take HMO insurance?

Leg hair + hot water effects on vulva

This isn't quite vagina related, so feel free to delete if too off topic :)

Does anyone have any tips on how to keep your legs smooth longer? You see, I have a freakishly low body temperature (I get run through a menagerie of tests every time I have to see a new doctor cuz they don't believe I could be healthy at my usual temp. I always am, but it does baffle), and as such am almost constantly cold. Cold usually leads to goose bumps, which always leads to leg hair growth. It's so bad that by the time I get out of the shower (when I JUST shaved), it feels prickly again. And even on those rare days when I somehow DON'T get goose bumps, I'm usually hairy by the end of the day.

I've tried everything, including shaving while there are goose bumps up thinking that that will help me get the hairs that are protruding. The only thing I haven't tried is professional waxing or laser hair removal, both of which are a wee bit too expensive for my bank right now (I did try home waxing, but was terrible at it and ended up giving myself a giant wax hickey while the hairs stayed defiantly in place).

If it would just last long enough for me to be smooth by the time I get to the bedroom with my boy, I could be content. I just want to be sexy smooooth! ;_;

So any tips? Or do you think I'm doomed?

Edit: Also? I have eczema, which might make things trickier :) I'll try anything, though, but if anyone knows of something that is a definite noooo on that account, please do speak up :) <3

Edit 2: I thought of another question, which is related to this AND puts it more on topic for this comm! :D

So because of the whole low body temp thing, I pretty much can't tell when things are too hot. For instance, the shower. I use absolutely no cold water when I shower, so it's just straight hot (which is likely a big no-no for the aforementioned eczema, but so waaarm), because that's the only time I ever feel warm and not like an icicle.

But! It just occurred to me...could that be bad for my vulva? I mean, I do take off the shower head and aim it at that area in order to clean it. As far as I can tell it hasn't had any adverse effects, but I dunno...having now thought of it, I have to wonder. Could I be damaging my poor vulva with hot water of doom?

PP and non-US citizens

Can non-US citizens go to PP?
I'm going out there for three months in the summer and, of course I will be taking my own BC supplies with me. It's just I want to be sure that I could have access to a PP *if* something untoward should happen (my pills get lost, my suitcase goes missing, I get drunk and end up needing EC or something else), not that I'm actively looking to use PP!

Kegels and toys that help?

I've recently (thanks to this forum) started doing Kegel's daily. I feel like a weakling, unable to hold it for 10 seconds, so I guess I really need it. Anyway, I have a couple questions:

I've seen some toys that supposedly help with strengthing the muscle too. Has anyone tried something like that? Did you notice a difference? I know Kegels takes months to see any results, even if you are doing them 3 times a day.

I'd like to hear from anyone who's went through the Kegel process and got their muscle nice and strong and what differences (if any) they experienced sexually. My orgasms are clitoral only, but simultaneous penetration does make a difference, so maybe I have shot as reaping some of those sexual benefits that supposedly come with Kegels. I'm trying not to expect miracles, but I'm hating the three-times-a-day routine already, so I need something to look forward too :P

Epilator removing pubic hair.

Howdy. I have an epilator I love. It removes my hair perfectly. Except in my pubic area. Now I have trimmed the hair with the trimmer attachment and the upper parts and parts along my leg are easily removed but I can not seem to get the skin taut enough to get the part closer to the outer lips, or to even begin in the inner lips.
I had an original epilady that died about a year ago and I used to use it for this, but I didn't need to pull the skin as taut as I do with this one, which is the Braun Silk-epil. I have posted about issues with it before, right after I got it and that is where figuring out the trimmer attachment came into play.
The only place I seem to have issues with the taut-ness (is that a word) of the skin is around the pubic area. I have to really pull at the skin in the upper parts to get the hair to come out.
I have extremely fine hair all over and my pubic hair isn't terribly thick or coarse. Not sure if that comes into play or not. I do have to pull my skin a lot to get my airpit hair out, but that hair is so fine and sparse from years of waxing and epilating that nothing pretty much is able to grab it.

Suggestions? Is being hair free from the roots a pipe dream for me?

Thanks a bunch

Missing pills and fertility

I just started taking the Pill (I've been on the Ring before) and I'm a little curious as to what the exact specifications of it are. I know that if you start it on any day but the first day of your period, you need 7 days of protection; I would assume that if you miss a pill or are late on any specific day, 7 days of other protection will suffice to keep you from getting pregnant. Is this true? So if you have sex on say, Sunday, after taking the pill for a week and miss a few days of pills, will you still be protected? Your ovaries are already asleep (for lack of a better word), so it'll take a while to start them up again, and by the time you produce an egg it seems the sperm would have died already. Is that correct?

Adolescent Sexuality

I thought some people here might be interested in this article; mods, please let me know if you want me to remove it.

I found a study, via this post at Feministing, about the different attitudes that surround adolescent sexuality between the USA and the Netherlands. Basically it says that in the Netherlands the idea is that adolescent sexuality is normalized, so it's not seen as a big issue, while in the US it's seen as something that needs to be controlled more.

Thoughts?

nipple tenderness?

quick (and probably common) question.

my nipples are EXTREMELY tender. as in, just brushing up against them causes irritating pain. is it possible that this is being caused by my BC (currently on YAZ, switching to Loestrin 24 Fe) or is it something i should get checked out?

sorry about this, it's just i've never heard of specific nipple tenderness. it's always just been grouped together as the whole "breast tenderness/swelling"

thanks gals!
xoxo

Current Mood: curious

Nuva Ring & high temperatures...

Hi. New Here

With the Nuva Ring I have been storing it in the fridge, but last week when I was transporting it from my boyfriends place to mine ( it's where I happened to be when I got the script) on the way it was in 40C heat (102F ..though not directly) for about 15 minutes.. when I got it home it still felt kind of cool, but that was after it had been in the air con in the car..

Just wondering whether it'd still work??

(no subject)

Okay so for about 2 months now my vagina is really itchy and i had discharge that does NOT smell good. Its sort of yellow but not really. Around the time when i get my period my vagina gets REALLY itchy. I think I have a yeast infection. But should it last this long? I've tried at home treatments and it wont go away. What else could it be?

(no subject)

I just got off the phone with my friend. She had to take the morning after pill today, she said she took it at 2:42pm and she knows she has to wait 12 hours to take the other one, but she asked me if its possible to take it earlier than that because she has an early class tomorrow. I told her I wasn't sure. So is it possible for her to take it now so she can go to bed and not have to worry about waking up in a few hours?

Thank you from me and her.

Questions about possible YI

So I used to think I had a vag-o-steel because I've never had a YI, and I've never done anything in particular with an aim to avoiding one. However, last week I started a new job which requires business casual dress, which means for the first time in a long while I spent the whole week trotting around in polyester not-very-breathable pants. By the time the weekend hit I was definitely having some itching/burning and a little more discharge than usual. But not all of my symptoms seem to point to YI...

( Details below the cut )

Current Mood: curious

Estimating time of ovulation with long cycles

So, I went off the pill this summer for the first time since I was 15. Which means I'm only just now learning what my natural adult cycle is like. It appears to be very long – usually over 35 days, and my current cycle has lasted 42 days so far. I'm pleased with this because I hate periods :)

My question is this: when a woman's cycles are this long, at what point does she usually ovulate? Do I ovulate at day 14, and have a very long luteal phase after that, or do I ovulate at midcycle, i.e. around day 20? I had what seemed like hormonal symptoms leading up to day 14 (ravenously hungry, migraine, mood swings), but I had thought that ovulation happened at midcycle regardless of cycle length. Anyone know the answer to this?

(And on a somewhat related note – I tried to find my cervix to check its position and see if I could find out anything that way, but I couldn't reach it. Is that very unusual?)