Mirena Crash

The home page of the Mirena website says the following:  

Your healthcare provider can remove Mirena at any time, 
so you can try to become pregnant right away

Turns out that's true for many, but not all. Some women don't snap straight back to fertility-- some women have the "Mirena Crash."

For 2.5 months after I had Mirena, I was miserable. Bloating, incredibly sore breasts (I couldn't sleep anywhere past about 90 degrees on my side because they'd HURT), abdominal cramps. Mood swings-- I'd go from being a normal person to incredibly emotional and teary at the drop of a hat. 

I also had no period. I had what I thought was a period two days after Mirena was removed, but no period. 

So, when I finally called my gynecologist's nurse practitioner in early February, she said "Oh, I THINK YOU'RE PREGNANT!"  

Ok, let's take a step back here. Nurse practitioner/midwife:
You have my education and job history. You've met me and hopefully realized I'm not a blithering idiot. I'd think the first step of most women in first world countries with these symptoms (especially a missed period) would be to TAKE A HOME PREGNANCY TEST. And then, when the period did not start, take another a week later. And then, when still no period, take another. And another. And another. I'm CALLING YOU WITH A PROBLEM AND IN PAIN and your first thing you jump to is not "did you take a test" or listen to me tell you I'm miserable and ask "why"? Instead, you make my heart flop to the floor and insist I'm pregnant? 

Back to the story... I told her "no, I'm not pregnant. I've taken tests. I'm not pregnant." Nurse practitioner: "Oh, we'll see. I think you are!"  I really wanted to smack her over the phone. Instead, in my post-Mirena-induced haze, I started to cry. "No, I'm not." I explained everything.

I think she thought I was crazy. "Mirena Crash"? Maybe I did sound crazy. I had only learned to search for Mirena Crash after a friend of mine informed me of the term because her friend had the same repercussions after stopping Mirena and had discovered the phrase. I hadn't discovered it in all my internet searches, but when I started searching for "Mirena Crash" I finally found cases just like mine. Just searching for "Mirena problems" had yielded an annoying array of people who had, actually, no problems and almost immediately got pregnant post-Mirena. "No problems here- Mirena is the best! 4 months pregnant and conceived after only being off Mirena for 3 days!" NOT what I wanted to hear (and another reason I'm starting this public blog).

The nurse practitioner finally told me that I could make an appointment for early April. Hopefully I'd have had a cycle by then.

I did have a cycle (FINALLY) in late February, which felt like the dam bursting. All my symptoms post-Mirena went away, and I felt free. However, I kept the appointment in late April because if my cycle hadn't regularized, I wanted to discuss that with the nurse practitioner.