Classically Abby - June 10, 2020


My Birth Control Story ｜｜ Why I'll never take the pill again...


Episode Stats

Length

17 minutes

Words per Minute

201.19872

Word Count

3,480

Sentence Count

3


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.080 hello beautiful ladies and welcome to today's video where we're going to be talking about
00:00:04.400 my birth control story
00:00:08.800 so i have a lot of feelings about birth control i don't think it's the naturally healthiest thing
00:00:13.600 for a lot of women i do think that there are some women who need hormonal regulation and the birth
00:00:18.480 control pill can work wonders for them but for me it's not something that worked at all it was
00:00:24.560 actually very bad for me and i tried five different times so i know that birth control hormones can be
00:00:31.600 problematic for a lot of different women and i was one of them for those of you who do need to take
00:00:36.800 birth control pills and it's good for your system because you have hormonal imbalances fantastic but
00:00:42.960 i am not one of those women and i think a lot of women aren't and so i want to talk about why i think
00:00:47.680 birth control is bad for your body if you're not in a situation where you need hormonal regulation
00:00:52.720 and why if you're not able to take the birth control pill it doesn't actually make you
00:00:57.040 less of a woman not at all so i really want to talk about this i think it's really an important topic
00:01:02.160 that has been more on people's minds lately so i thought i would share my story of course i'm not
00:01:08.560 a doctor so i'm just saying what happened to me why i feel this way so the first time i tried to take
00:01:14.000 birth control i was 22 years old and actually my mom was the one who encouraged me to go on it
00:01:20.720 for my skin so i waited to have sex until i was married so birth control really wasn't about that
00:01:26.080 for me it was about theoretically hormone regulation because my skin had gotten so bad i used to have
00:01:32.960 really bad skin i'm gonna see if i can find some pictures maybe i can put them up here but i might
00:01:36.720 not be able to find them when i was 16 years old my skin started getting really bad and it only got
00:01:41.120 worse it was like all of my forehead my whole chin it was even on my cheeks in a lot of big areas
00:01:46.880 it was very hard for me to even cover up and so i started birth control pill before that i had tried
00:01:54.560 to work with a dermatologist for my skin but if the product that he gave me didn't work after two or
00:02:00.320 three weeks and i didn't start to see results i would just dump out and stop using it which don't
00:02:05.280 do that it takes a certain amount of time for those things to work usually six weeks or more and that was
00:02:11.840 what i learned a bit later but at 22 i thought that these products these topical creams didn't
00:02:17.600 work i had to try birth control it did not turn out well for me he put me on what i think is a regular
00:02:23.840 dosage for a lot of women i believe it was 30 milligrams and i started taking it and i was living
00:02:29.840 in the dorms at manhattan school of music at the time i woke up in the middle of the night and could
00:02:35.440 not move i was so nauseous i couldn't figure out why i thought maybe i had the flu but i was lying
00:02:40.720 in bed for over an hour unable to fall asleep and unable to move because i was so sick and
00:02:46.800 eventually i said to myself i have to run to the bathroom i have to just figure out what's going on
00:02:51.360 i spent two and a half hours in the public restroom of the dorms throwing up and i didn't know why
00:02:58.720 i didn't even connect that it was related to the birth control pill until i was in the car with my
00:03:05.200 sister driving somewhere a little bit later a week or two later vomited in the car and that never
00:03:12.160 happened to me like as a child i never had motion sickness so when i started getting motion sickness
00:03:17.840 and vomited in my sister's car i was like what is this this isn't this can't be normal and then just
00:03:24.240 a couple of weeks later i had a horrible panic attack horrible anxiety so i have had situational
00:03:31.920 anxiety throughout my life there are bad situations i get anxiety and then it goes away as soon as the
00:03:36.480 situation is resolved this was kind of a mixture of situational anxiety but like times a million
00:03:42.720 because my hormones were so messed up and i finally figured out that the birth control was what was
00:03:48.000 causing all of this that my body thought i was pregnant because that's what birth control does it
00:03:52.800 tricks your body into thinking that it's pregnant so that it can't get pregnant again my skin wasn't
00:03:57.760 a clearing and i was vomiting in the middle of the night and i was vomiting just normally and i was
00:04:03.520 getting anxiety and i said to myself none of this is worth it so i got off the pill as quickly as i
00:04:09.440 possibly could and i just had to kind of deal with the after effects of that for a couple of months i
00:04:15.520 mean your body has to readjust to the hormones that you're putting into it it was awful and it was
00:04:22.400 something i couldn't even imagine would have happened i had no idea because none of my friends had talked
00:04:28.880 about what birth control can do and how it can be negative so i went off of birth control for a while
00:04:34.880 but then in the fall i decided to go back on i thought to myself maybe if i go on a super low dose
00:04:41.200 it won't be so bad and maybe i'll clear up my skin so i tried to take low low estrogen fe which is i think
00:04:46.800 the lowest dose you can get on the market and it didn't have like crazy adverse reactions i wasn't
00:04:53.200 vomiting or getting anxious but i was just bleeding throughout the month like i just had to wear a pad
00:04:59.200 the entire month or at least like a liner because i was spotting and that's so annoying it's not worth
00:05:04.800 it and my skin wasn't clearing up again so i decided to go off it because it wasn't really doing anything
00:05:09.360 for me and when i went off it i actually started working with a dermatologist again and this time i
00:05:14.320 decided i was just going to stick with the regimen i don't know what possessed me to think that but i
00:05:18.880 started thinking i'll just stick with the regimen and i bought a silicone face scrubber one of those
00:05:24.720 electric ones and it really made a huge difference but let me tell you and i've said this before in my
00:05:29.600 skincare routine story it took me six weeks to even start to see results and that was a huge thing for
00:05:37.360 me a huge lesson because i thought oh it has to clear up by six weeks no no no it starts to clear
00:05:43.600 by six weeks but the birth control didn't help with it and it had messed up my cycle so i was off
00:05:49.760 birth control again because i didn't need to be on it because i wasn't sleeping with anyone it was
00:05:54.080 mostly about my skin so after about a year of not being on the pill i decided to start to go back on
00:06:00.960 the pill because my husband and i were talking about getting engaged at the time and i wanted to get
00:06:07.920 my body ready before we did get married i wanted to have all of these symptoms resolved before we
00:06:15.040 got married because they say it takes about three months for you to figure out if the pill is going
00:06:19.360 to work for you so i went on just a progestin only pill the reason i did a progestin only pill is i
00:06:25.920 went to my doctor and i talked about all of the adverse reactions i'd had on the last pills and i said i
00:06:32.800 didn't want to be on estrogen i was afraid that the estrogen was actually what was messing with my
00:06:36.720 emotions and so i thought maybe if i went on just progestin i wouldn't have the same problems that
00:06:43.520 was not the case i actually was on this pill for a week when i had the worst panic attack of my life
00:06:49.920 i had tunnel vision i then stopped the pill after that week but i had subsequent panic attacks for
00:06:57.360 three months and it was in my opinion because of the hormonal changes that had been happening in my
00:07:04.480 body because of this progestin only pill of course there were some situational things but because
00:07:09.680 i've had anxiety before i can compare i can see what being anxious is like without the pill and what
00:07:16.960 it's like being on the pill and it was horrible i had a horrible panic attack and i said i'm not
00:07:23.920 going to go on this pill again i'm going off it i'm done but that wasn't the last time i went on the
00:07:28.400 pill because i really wanted to be able to be on the pill every woman will make you feel like it gives you
00:07:34.160 options doctors look at you when you say you don't know how to do birth control because your body
00:07:38.640 doesn't react well to it if you give them other options that are not 100 effective they look at you
00:07:43.520 like you're crazy they they say things like aren't you going to take control of your life don't you
00:07:48.160 want to know what's going to happen aren't you sure and i do want to take control of my life i also
00:07:54.240 don't want to be an anxious mess or vomiting or bleeding all month and so it was just so frustrating
00:08:02.000 so i did decide to go on the pill again because i wanted to figure this out and i felt like i'd
00:08:08.160 been peer pressured into it by my doctors by my friends by people saying that you have to have
00:08:13.680 a birth control method that's incredibly effective or else you're not taking control of your life
00:08:18.320 so i tried lolo estrin fay again because it had been a while and i thought okay maybe it was a one-off
00:08:24.320 maybe i won't bleed all month we'll see no it did the exact same thing my body didn't like it and
00:08:29.200 i was bleeding all month and that's not great when you're married i'll tell you that because i
00:08:33.120 tried this one after we were married and i wanted to see if it would work and it really didn't so i
00:08:39.600 stopped that pill but i needed to try one more and at this point the doctors were really pushing me
00:08:45.840 to get an iud now i have some issues with iuds from a moral standpoint and also just from a me
00:08:51.440 standpoint both iuds most of the time are just preventing you from actually having the sperm
00:08:57.520 fertilize the egg but at some times they can prevent a fertilized egg from implanting and to
00:09:03.920 me that's abortive and i don't ever want to abort a child i am very pro-life so those don't work for
00:09:10.080 me from that perspective people will say that the hormonal iud doesn't do that but from what i've read
00:09:16.080 it can happen in small percentage of cases and i don't want to risk that the other thing for me
00:09:22.720 was that there are risks with iuds of perforation in the uterus and i know myself and i know that if
00:09:31.120 anything were to feel weird or off i would assume that that was what it was because i wouldn't want
00:09:36.960 anything to happen to my uterus i want to be a mother so that would really freak me out and i also
00:09:42.000 of course don't ever want to risk anything happening to my uterus so that i can bear children
00:09:46.080 and have them be healthy and grow healthily and it all be okay so that was just never going to be on
00:09:52.000 the table but doctors were pushing the iud on me so much so hard and i could not believe how hard they
00:10:00.560 were pushing and anytime i would offer any other alternatives they thought i was crazy but i just hated
00:10:07.280 it i hated that they were pushing this on me when i knew i was uncomfortable with it so i kept telling
00:10:11.200 them i'm not comfortable with an iud i'm willing to try the pill again even though hormones don't
00:10:17.760 work for me the other part of the iud is that there is a small percentage five percentage of women
00:10:24.720 will report being depressed even though your doctor will tell you that it's only localized hormones but
00:10:30.720 five percent of women reported that they didn't find that it was localized that the hormones were
00:10:35.680 getting into their blood and they were feeling depressed so i didn't want to risk that because
00:10:40.560 emotionally it was awful so i decided to try birth control one last time and this time i was
00:10:46.960 depressed i wasn't anxious i didn't bleed but i was incredibly depressed i had some weight gain i was
00:10:53.280 on this one for three months because depression is a little bit harder to notice than anxiety because
00:10:58.320 anxiety is so much more uncomfortable and i just was really down i didn't really interact well with
00:11:05.840 my husband which was insane because we were so happy and i felt like i didn't know how to deal with
00:11:11.920 him and it was just awful it was not good for my marriage it wasn't good for my body and i knew i
00:11:18.000 didn't want to be on this pill anymore it had made me gain weight and i just hated it so i decided to stop
00:11:24.720 and i said i'm not doing it anymore but i felt so bad i felt really guilty about this whole entire thing
00:11:31.120 because i had been told growing up that you're empowered if you're on birth control so i talked
00:11:37.600 to a girlfriend of mine and i said i was going through this struggle and she said to me i went
00:11:42.720 through the exact same thing she'd been married about a year longer than my husband and i and she
00:11:47.600 said i went through the exact same thing i tried birth control it was a strain on my marriage and i
00:11:52.000 don't do that anymore my husband and i don't do it and i was so relieved because i felt like such a
00:11:59.840 failure i felt like i had failed that i wasn't a good enough woman for some reason that i couldn't
00:12:06.720 be on birth control it made me feel so much better to talk to a girlfriend of mine who'd been through
00:12:11.680 the exact same experience and so that's why i want to talk about this because i don't think enough
00:12:15.920 women share their experiences on how birth control and hormonal birth control can really hurt you
00:12:21.600 and it was awful for me so my husband and i decided that we weren't going to use hormonal birth control
00:12:27.680 anymore and we weren't going to risk that and i am so happy i haven't been on birth control now for
00:12:37.920 a year and a half and i have never been happier and when my doctors ask me if i'm on birth control
00:12:44.240 and then they ask me if i want to try it i say i'd rather be happy than be unhappy and have a hundred
00:12:50.800 percent efficacy with my birth control i don't i don't need that i'm married my husband and i
00:12:56.240 are happy and if we were to get pregnant then it's okay because we are set up for that we're
00:13:02.720 prepared i'm having sex with one man with my husband and if there was to be a surprise it
00:13:08.960 wouldn't be the worst thing in the world it would actually be a miracle and i think that's part of
00:13:12.720 it is that if you are having sex in a committed marriage then you don't have to worry in the same
00:13:18.480 way that something horrible will happen so thank god i've gotten off birth control but there's a
00:13:26.160 lot of issues with birth control outside of my story so i did want to mention a few of those one
00:13:31.120 of the things is that a lot of young women are put on birth control for their hormonal regulation and
00:13:36.000 for their skin and they don't know how they are reacting to it and if you're put on birth control
00:13:42.480 during puberty when your body is changing you may not know that you're having anxiety attacks or
00:13:49.200 depression because of your birth control you may assume that's just kind of who you are and what
00:13:53.760 you do naturally and that's why i think it's so important if you're going to try birth control
00:13:59.120 to do it after you know how you react just to life normally if you have low levels of anxiety and
00:14:05.360 you're put on birth control and all of a sudden your anxiety spikes you'll recognize it but if you've
00:14:09.200 never had anxiety before and you're going through puberty and you're young all of a sudden you
00:14:14.240 think that's your normal and it may not be so i was really lucky because when i went on birth control
00:14:18.800 i knew that wasn't my normal and so i could be like okay i shouldn't be on this but if you're young you
00:14:24.160 don't know and that's really scary and you may end up suffering with depression and anxiety for years
00:14:30.000 without even realizing that that is why so that's why i'm not a proponent of it for young women the other
00:14:36.320 thing is that birth control can actually change who you're attracted to so what birth control does
00:14:40.880 is it makes your body think you're pregnant so you look for men who are caretakers not men who can
00:14:46.880 make the baby and so what will happen for a lot of women is they'll actually marry a guy who's more of
00:14:53.120 a caretaker because they were on birth control when they met him which isn't a bad thing but then when
00:14:57.040 they go off birth control because they want to start a family they find that they're less attracted
00:15:01.120 to their husbands and then they want to get back on birth control so that they are and it's just really
00:15:06.160 funny so what i always say is that if you meet a man while you're on birth control you don't
00:15:10.640 actually know if you're attracted to him in a sexual way sort of not actually sexually but there's
00:15:16.480 that caretaker part that you're more attracted to than the masculine part and so birth control messes
00:15:22.160 with you mentally emotionally intellectually physically it's it can be a really big problem
00:15:29.040 i wanted to share my birth control story with you guys i'm sorry if it was a little bit all over
00:15:32.960 the place but i wanted to share it with you guys because i think you need to know that if birth
00:15:37.200 control doesn't work for you you are not alone a lot of us can't take birth control it's not natural
00:15:43.280 to your body so it's an introduced hormone and if you are the kind of person who needs it who needs
00:15:50.240 hormonal balances i'm not talking to you i'm saying of course you should be on whatever your doctor says
00:15:55.920 but if you have a natural cycle you're very healthy and you're on birth control to prevent pregnancy
00:16:02.000 keep an eye out because it can have some really adverse effects that you won't be happy about
00:16:07.120 and if you're already having adverse effects and you feel like you failed you haven't you're just like
00:16:11.760 me and you're completely healthy and hormonal birth control is not for everyone let me know in the
00:16:17.680 comments your guys's birth control stories what your experience has been like if you're on birth control
00:16:23.200 if you're not let me know thank you guys so much for watching today's video please subscribe to my channel
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00:16:42.960 be part of our community and i'll see you guys in my next video bye
00:16:54.720 all
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