Birth Control: What I was on

I had been on a total of three different types of birth control. In 2007, I was put on Yaz (like the pill, but with less hormones, supposedly). Luckily, I have not had any of the blot clot issues or anything that Yaz is right now dealing with in lawsuits. However, in 2008 I decided to switch to the Nuva ring, since that was less hassle, easy, and consistently dosed me up rather than give me ebbs and flows in hormones like a pill did.

Still, even with the Nuva ring, I had hormonal swings (not pleasant for my husband-- I'd get depressed and moody for a few days a cycle). It was immensely nice though, to have a predictive period. My entire life ever since I started getting my period, it was never very predictable. One cycle would be a month, the next would be two. The longest I went in between cycles was three months.

Knowing what I do now, I probably would have had a blood workup done in my early 20s when I was off birth control but had funky cycle lengths.  I remember my mom saying that she had varying length cycles too, but so I didn't think anything of my funky cycle periods. Then I went on birth control which controlled cycle lengths so I didn't think of it. I didn't think this problem would rear its head again when I went off birth control....

In April of 2012, I switched from the Nuva ring to Mirena for two reasons. 1) I was vain and thought it'd be nice to not have a cycle for a while, particularly when we would be traveling internationally, 2) with Mirena, you have the ability to go off of it and not have a recuperation period-- you can get pregnant instantly and not have to wait 4-6 months like you do with many other birth controls, including Nuva ring. This way, we figured, when we did want to start trying, there wouldn't be the 4-6 month period where my body was normalizing.

So, come November when we made the decision, I was on Mirena. I had it removed the first week of December.