It's a good time for me to begin a self-experiment. I just moved to Washington, I don't have a job yet, I start college again in the Fall, and there are all these new opportunities and adventures that await me.
First of all, I will share with you the background for my decision to begin using herbal contraception:
I have taken birth control pills: Ortho-Tri-Cyclin Lo, and the ring: Nuva-ring that you keep for a whole year. The pills I took for 6 months, and the ring for about 7 months. The pills initially gave me nausea, but went away after 2-3 months, and the ring though did not come with any noticeable physical ailments included side effects such as: increased awareness of my ovaries (that eventually mean occassional pangs of pain), over-emotionality and frequent cases of paranoia or over-reactiong to situations more than I would normally, and also, some temporary form of depression. I believe I am a person prone to circumstancial depression, though I am generally a very sprite and joyful person. However, it was quite apparent with the Nuva-ring, that after a week or so of having it in me, I began crying uncontrollably, usually in the morning, and "not knowing why", among other symptoms or temporary depression: feeling empty, out-of-control, desperate, needy, apathetic, etc. The worst for me was yelling and screaming at my husband, and eventually becoming aware that the hormones were making exascerbating my already long-running problem of not managaing my emotions to well. In terms of being response-able as opposed to reactive (Prof. Sullivan's Homepage of past classes taught at Elon University), I felt like merely a sensory organ with other sensory organs reacting to stimuli of over-flowing dishes, dirty carpets, 5 cats, and a loving husband whom together with me, regardless of our most holy intentions, found ourselves at our wits end with each other. Both of us attribute this partially to noticeable chnages in my psychological behavior.
In addition, the number one physical effect of the birth control was being able to feel my ovaries very well. It felt like pain, and sometimes just the awareness of them, especially during ovulation. While I was happy to have an increased awareness of a very all-important organ system of my body, I later felt that the awareness came as a result of some sort of pain I was putting my body through. Birth control is quite literally made to "trick" your body into thinking it is pregnant all the time, so that your eggs cannot become inseminated. That is why unless you stop for that week or whatever to have your period, you will not have your period while taking birth control. From a purely medical and chemical perspective, with what we know about the long-term effects on the reproductive system and interaction with other organ systems of the body, it can become very easy to believe that this is okay. But maybe it isn't? But maybe there're good reasons why your body begins to function reproductively different? Some people can just feel when something is wrong, but that personal experience of someone you may or may not know might just as easily brush over your sholders, when in the prescence of doctors and published propaganda, not to mention the pill-worshipping feminist activists that hail The Pill as being one of the greatest progressive events for women in the 20th century. And I'm sure it has been, but just as with any other great invention, panty-hose, the pill, or the tampon, At what price do we sell our personal liberty? Do we trade one injury for another, Do we unlock the door of our self-iniative only to imprison our bodies in this day-in, day-out torture of feeling pregnant, all the time? Sure, you may be glowing and I'm so glad your skin has cleared up, but oh well about disconnecting yourself from your body's wails of When Will It End? How would you feel, if you felt pregnant all the time?
So I have not taken any birth control since about last July 20th -ish 2008. I have not participated in other non-oral, non-ingested, non-chemical methods of birth control. But the constant problem of not wanting to get pregnant, and yet wanting to have constant sex (with my husband of a year and 2 months) could not be left alone to figure itself out any longer as 1) my husband and I were never really comfortable with the pull-out method with occasional use of a condom and 2) we really enjoy the unionizing feeling of being able for him to come inside of me. So I thought there must be another way.
After investigating IUDs, with little hormones, I was scared away by an older doctor. Feeling very confused, and like there were no options, I tried searching online for other methods. I had heard about a shamanic potion that lasted years, and wondered, how could I find that? Where could I find someone to adminsister it for me.? However I found this site: Sister Zeus's collected information on herbal contraception, among other very useful women's education. (I am not as unbiased as she.)
And I have decided to try some of the methods listed. From this point on these articles will be about my trials with using different forms of herbal contraception.
I am:
1. A generally lazy person
2. Scatter-brained
3. Very-sensitive, especially digestively
..so I thought I'd make a good candidate for the every-woman, the young girl still trying to come to terms with her body and self being one, or the slighty unintentionally rebellious sort. You will find my behavior is not particularly reckless nor careful. I try to take care of myself, I try to excercise more, eat healthy, drive cars less, ride my bike more, use public transportation, recycle, drink loose tea, let go, get drunk not as often, smoke less, do yoga, watch more movies, read more books, write more stories, meet new people, etcetera etcetera... I am a regular 22 year old girl, I happen to be marrried. That single fact gives me increased opportunity to use myself for this pseudo-research. My husband and I have been tested, so there is a small chance of us giving STDs to each other, we are in a monogomous relationship, and although we both don't want for me to get pregnant, if it happened we would handle it together.
And now the methods we are trying...
This is the point where I strart using the word WE. We, are trying different methods, because we are trying not to get pregnant, we have sex together and both us are affected by the environment of either a functioning or dysfunctioning repoductive system. Most of all, using herbal methods of contraception give us opportunities to include male contraception as well.
So what are we doing?
So what are we doing?
- Neem - oral intake daily for Him
- Yarrow - tea
