It is four thirty in the afternoon and I’m really just kind of getting going. Despite the stereotypes about people who work from home sleeping in and spending all day in their pajamas, I don’t usually do this. Actually, I didn’t do it today either. I did get up and take a package to UPS and get some groceries but then I came home and I felt tired so I thought I’d take a quick nap and before I knew it the day had slipped away. Sometimes you have to honor what your body needs.
That’s actually going to be a big focus for me in the next month or so. On the one hand, I’m getting back into an exercise routine and trying to get going with that. But on the other hand I’m making some changes to my medications and I’m not sure how they are going to affect the way that I feel so I need to pay attention to that as well. I had been on Ambien for awhile and am now almost completely off it so that’s one change down. Now I’m on to what may be a bigger change – getting off of birth control pills.
I’ve been on birth control pills for about five years straight through. Prior to that I had been on them for several years in the past with a gap between that and the most recent usage starting. I’ve decided it’s time to come off of them for several reasons. An obvious reason is that I’m not in a relationship anymore and I don’t foresee starting one anytime soon. And even if I do, I would want to use condoms for a long time with any new partner until we both had been monogamous for six months and done STD testing, etc. You know, the whole adult approach to sexuality. So as far as preventing pregnancy, I don’t feel like I need the pill.
I also don’t feel like I want to be on it anymore because I have this underlying sense that my body is changing and I want it to be able to do that without synthetic hormones so I can get a sense of what’s really going on with it. I’ve gained a lot of weight in the past year or so and it’s hard to take it off and I’m not sure why that is. It could have absolutely no relationship to the pill but I feel like it may be some type of aging hormonal thing and there’s a nagging intuition that going off of the pill may help. We’ll see. I’ve done the research and there’s a possibility of either weight loss or weight gain when going off the pill but either way it should even itself out after a month or two. And after that I’ll see where things stand.
I have some nervous feelings about going off of the pill. For one thing, I’ve been on it continuously, cycling through, meaning that I only have periods about four times per year. I’ve always had some bad PMS symptoms when off the pill and I’m not relishing experiencing those once a month again. More importantly, I worry about how this might affect my moods. The PMS symptoms I’m aware of are all physical. Prior to going back on the pill, I hadn’t really realized how affected I was by serious depression. That depression is now under control with medication but there’s no telling what kind of moods or feelings will be incurred during the process of getting the pill out of my system and getting my hormones back in working order. My psychiatrist is aware of this and these days I have the good sense to ask for help if I need it so I’m not scared but am a little nervous to see what happens.
At the same time, I’m also a little curious. This is really the first time in my life that I’ve been truly in touch with what’s going on with my body and my moods and I think it’s going to be a good experience to have the opportunity to learn more about the natural state of my body (mostly natural – I’ll still be on anti-depressants). So we’ll see. Hopefully all goes well.
Tags: birth control, going off birth control, health, stopping birth control
by Emma Donahue. Room is a novel about a child born to a woman who was kidnapped and has been trapped in a room since before the child was born. The thought-provoking, heart-wrenching tale is told from the child’s perspective.
