This post is about my lady parts, detailed tidbits, so consider yourself warned.  

I shouted an expletive at the doctor's office today.  It slipped out with a couple of ouches and noises of pain.  Because today I got an IUD.  There's a devilish part of me that wants to put a medical drawing here of an IUD in a uterus, but I'll restrain myself.  The copper paragard T is in my womb.

And let me just say that it was painful.  And my body was confused afterwards (still is).  So here's the run down.  If you don't want details, stop reading.

Basically it was 4 stages of painfulness.  I'm on the table, speculum'd up.  I get cleaned out with iodine.  She warns me that my cervix is closed tight.  So, in order to dilate it, she pokes it.  That's right.  She poked it.  Didn't feel all that great, but it didn't necessarily hurt.  That's level 1 pain there.  Then she clamps something on to it (I believe her explanation was "I'm going to clamp something now".)  I don't know why.  Maybe she needed to keep it open.  I forgot to clarify at that point.  The clamping burned a little, so pain level 2.  Not the worst, though my doc, at this point, was astounded that I didn't even flinch.  Then she needed to measure my uterus to get the IUD sized correctly.  And this my friends, is what I'll call pain level 4.  I guess I wasn't expecting the pain, but I did say (in a very low shout voice) "oh shit ow ow ow ow" as it was happening.  It felt like the end of the world in my womb.  Like she was stabbing it with a knife.  Incidentally, my uterus is size 7cm.  Pain level 3 happened with the actual insertion of the IUD, which she claims should have hurt the worst.  Maybe I was ready for it at that point, but while it hurt a lot, I grimaced and breathed evenly and didn't feel the need to shout.

The immediate aftermath was intense.  I think my body went into a mild version of shock (maybe the surprising level of pain did it) so I started shaking, I got insanely hot and I felt like I might puke all over.  I also felt a little off-kilter.  Some of those things lasted only 10 minutes.  Some came with me on the train home.

Right now I'm having waves of weirdness.  I just feel like there's something off in the lady parts.  For chunks of time it's hard to get comfortable.  Sometimes I feel completely fine and just feel a bit full in that area, like a normal menstrual thing.  I'm having some cramping off and on too, though it's not nearly as bad as some of my worst period cramps.

I went with an IUD, and specifically with the copper one, because I just got really tired of the hormonal side effects of the pill.  I tried switching pills to see if maybe that would help, but then it's just a new handful of side effects.  I'm super hopeful that this is going to be easy, crazy effective birth control.  Something I never have to think about.  From everything I've read, it sounds like the first six months can be interesting.  So I plan on sharing here.  Part of the reason I started researching IUD's is because of Lena Chen's experience, so I feel like I should behave in kind and write about mine.  Only with more gory details.

This doesn't fit here at all, but the deck is going up and it's going to be awesome.  Getting rid of the janky enclosed porch was definitely the right decision.