Birth control blog carnival

I want to celebrate the decision to recommend that insurance cover birth control--see the blog carnival here--and throw in my own experience.

These days I have the sense that people assume birth control means the pill, but there ares other alternatives. I tend to be sensitive to the side effects of medication, and I didn't like the idea of taking a pill every day when I didn't have sex every day. So I used a diaphragm, from when I became sexually active in the mid 1970s until menopause a few years ago. It is a plenty reliable method if used well--I never had an accidental pregnancy, even though when I decided to get pregnant I conceived the first month of trying.

Now I'm post menopausal but I'm going to get a progesterone-releasing IUD soon to treat endometrial hyperplasia. My insurance company, interestingly, covers birth control for the subscriber and spouse but not for dependents. I suspect that is a moralistic position, as dependents are pretty much by definition unmarried.  But at least the IUD is on their list of things they cover for me, though in an awkward way that took many phone calls to figure out.

It is a pity that people don't consider other options than the pill. Given the tendency of the pill to cause weight gain and my experience of pregnancy, I'm glad I didn't complicate my long term trends with the pill.