FEMpowerment Fridays, episode 4

Happy FF!!!! I am currently typing this from Stratton, VT with one of my best Female Friends at Wanderlust. I’ll keep this intro short and jump right into the inspiring and empowering stories of Fellow Females. I also want to take a moment to share my experience with my Paragard (the copper IUD – non-hormonal), as I mentioned it on stories this week but didn’t quite explain further. Happy Friday!!!

I decided to get the Paragard my senior year of college. I was on hormonal birth control my sophomore year, and it made me one crazy kitty. The original dose I was on (the lowest dose) resulted in spontaneous crying, zero sex drive, and dry as sandpaper sexual experience. Not the kind of friction you want. Undesirable as heck. I went back to my gynecologist and the solution: go on a higher dose. Not having nearly as much knowledge as I have now, I blindly accepted as I genuinely thought this was a normal reaction and a sensible solution.

When I went abroad for the entirety of my junior year, I went off the pill as I didn’t quite have as much of a need for it. When I returned and was still seeing the same person, I decided to go with the copper IUD, as it’s non hormonal, lasts for 12 years, and is over 99% effective. My GYN was not keen on this decision; I really had to fight for it. It’s difficult to place if your uterus hasn’t seen the likes of a child inside of it, and if placement is incorrect, it can result in infertility. It also results in more painful and longer periods. Despite this list of horrors, I decided to go through with it.

The insertion process was less than to be desired. The first time the GYN tried, she couldn’t quite get it, and had to stop because I was green in the face from pain. It was excruciating. I took a lap around the block (walked around Jordan’s furniture with my mom for awhile), while wearing a diaper as I bled. The glamor of it all!!! I then had to go back to the GYN so she could use an ultrasound to get the exact placement. Again, jaw clenching agony, but she got it the second time around. At the time I was a server at a fast paced restaurant and I had to call out for two days because the pain persisted for at least 72 hours after placement. Definitely not purely good vibes, despite what my shirt my say in the cover photo.

The reality of it all: my periods last 7-9 days, they’re pretty heavy and painful, and the placement process was nauseatingly yuck. BUT, I don’t worry about birth control, and my hormones are my hormones – not affected by synthetic ones. There are pros and cons to each form of birth control, and not everyone’s experience is the same. The friend I am sitting next to, in fact, describes the process as “nothing more than cramps of a period for a day or two.”

Truly everyone is different and unfortunately it only takes trying it on your own to discover which experience you more closely align to, or you could fall somewhere in between.

I am currently playing with a thermometer type of birth control that abides by the Fertility Awareness Method (using the Kindara app), and perhaps that will be the wave of the future!!! The book that references this method is Taking Charge of Your Fertility, and was recommended when I was first seeking advice regarding resources for an all natural approach to women’s health and birth control. Updates and a blog post to follow!

Enough about me, on to you guys:

1. My junior year of college (after two years of plenty of antibiotics due to the never ending college strep throat) I studied abroad in Florence, Italy. I went out to eat with some friends, we all shared a steak, some pasta and a bottle of wine. At around 2 am that night I woke up with the worst stomach pain I had ever experienced. I tried to get to the bathroom but instead fell to the floor in pain. One of my 9 roommates quickly determined it was an appendicitis, the other claimed it was food poisoning, and another threw a Gas X at me and said, “this should work.” (my first of thousands of Gas X’s I have taken) I called my mom as I rolled around our bathroom floor in sheer pain. For the next 5 hours I sat on the toilet throwing up in a trashcan one way and out the other way and for the next three days I nibbled on rice and apples. Everyone determined it was food poisoning, yet everyone ate the exact same thing as me that night, so I didn’t think it added up. I decided to not worry about what I can’t control and realize it was over, so time to move on. A month and a half later I arrived back in home and my first stop was Chipotle with my boyfriend, within ten minutes of eating that pain returned. I tried to walk it off, no luck and soon enough I was laying on a picnic table in front of 50 people telling my boyfriend to call my mom, probably the lamest thing I have ever done. Once I was home, the same thing happened, minus the throwing up, but this time it only lasted an hour. Again, the three days after were filled with rice and apples and once again I was fine.

I spent the next year and a half of college popping Gas X’s, looking for the nearest bathroom and relying on muscle relaxing medication given to me by the doctors who diagnosed me with post infection IBS.  The pain would come anywhere from every 6 weeks to every 2 weeks, and it was the exact same thing every time. A wave of nausea would over come me, I would feel light headed and weak, knifes would start to poke my right side, what felt like a rock would sit perfectly in between my ribs and within minutes it felt like 400 knifes were tearing my stomach apart. I would run to the bathroom, hunched over with the thought that, “okay maybe I should call 911.” I would reassure myself that I had been through this before, it will pass, it will pass. I would take out my phone, watch anything on YouTube to distract me, call my mom crying that it just wont go away and anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half it would all be over. I would then crawl into my bed and try to sip on a ginger ale with hopes that I would be okay soon. I graduated from college last May, moved to a new city, started a new job and my stomach issues were now blamed on anxiety. On July 25^th of last year, I sat down with some left over Ramen to watch the Bachelor and the pain was like nothing I had ever experienced. Not only was I frustrated that I was missing the bachelor (!!), but I was completely perplexed as to why now? I was eating what I ate last night and had no issue doing so previously and I was anything but anxious. The pain lasted for hours and that was the closest I got from calling help. It passed, I went to sleep and for the next four weeks after I could hardly eat a piece of bread without running to the bathroom. I was anxious to go anywhere, to eat anything and my already small 118 lbs. self was losing weight quickly. I got an appointment with a gastroenterologist a month out. In the meantime I didn’t know what to do, so I ate the BRAT diet and the FODMAP diet, nothing was working. The gastroenterologist was stumped yet again and she quickly scheduled me for a colonoscopy and endoscopy two months out. She didn’t even feel my stomach before saying “colonoscopy” and my mom was skeptical, thank goodness for mother’s intuition!

We cancelled the procedures and it was then that we decided to look for a nutritionist to help me find ways to gain weight without a stomachache. And that’s how I found a naturopath who gave me the OAT test and determined I had candida overgrowth along with some other minimal things. He gave me a probiotic, bacteria killing supplements and put me on a strict 75 grams of sugar a day. Immediately, I started feeling better but within four weeks my symptoms returned and I had a lot of new side effects. I got off birth control in January with hopes that it would help and it did slightly, but it threw my hormones for a swing. Anyway, it wasn’t until February that someone mentioned to me, you should read the ingredients in your food. So I did and that’s when I realized that counting out Veggie straws to get to 10 grams of sugar was so stupid. I decided then to give up processed foods and focus on eating all things that were whole, organic and fresh. It changed the game for me! I had been eating 75 grams of sugar a day for five months and once I stopped counting and just focus on the food I was actually eating, it worked. I had never felt better with my digestion and I was shaking my head at the months I had wasted trying to fit that bag of chips in to fulfill my craving.

I then had the clarity to focus on something that had been subtly controlling my personal life since returning from Florence, painful sex. My naturopath did a hormone test and my hormones were that off someone going through menopause. For example, my progesterone was 195, about a thousand lower than the minimum average. He quickly concluded that that was the reason for my painful sex. I decided to see an acupuncturist to see if she could do the trick and it was then that I realized I hadn’t had my period since the New Year and that that was indeed a bad thing. I was lost, my hormones are painfully deprived, my period has (literally) seen better days and I still couldn’t have sex with my boyfriend without stopping midway and making it the most uncomfortable, awkward and sad moment ever. That’s when I heard about pelvic floor therapy and at my first appointment she told me, “so what you have is really common and I can help.” I was in awe. Not only was that the first time a doctor has told me what I was going through was common, but she said she could help with the upmost confidence and true sincerity in her voice. She explained that a lot of women with digestion trouble have pelvic floor issues, due to our brain protecting (tightening) our pelvic muscles when any sort of pain is occurring in that area. So, with every stomachache was another clinch of the pelvic floor, it made so much sense! Out of everything I had been through that year, the never-ending stomach pain, anxiety of food, weight loss, hormones with complete control of my body, this sex thing was the most isolating of them all. It’s embarrassing to talk about, especially when you are 23 and all of your friends find it to be the best experience ever. So, for nearly three years I let it slide by as something my previous doctor told me, “its just part of being a woman.”

But I am so glad that my stomachaches brought me on this journey, because with out them I wouldn’t be where I am today. I am in a constant balancing act with life. I try to have a budget when it comes to groceries and not spend too much on dark chocolate and organic veggies. I try eat things that will help me gain some weight, but not too much that I get a stomachache. I try to see my friends and go to my twice a week acupuncturist (to help normalize my cycle), once a month pelvic PT and occasional naturopath (to make sure I am still on the right track). I try to still be young and have fun while also realizing I need a little extra self care than most and taking fireball shots is most definitely, in my past. I try to find time for the gym to gain some muscle, but not too much that I lose weight. And I try to wean myself off of supplements while balancing every random stomachache that comes my way, always wondering was it too much sugar or was it just what I ate? And lastly I try to stay in tune with my hormones so I can have a clear mind to body connection and figure out how this being an adult thing works. I may have some stomachaches, some hormonal imbalances and a sensitive area below my belly button but that’s okay, because I am (very) slowly but surely figuring it out. I have even already started my 2018 Christmas list: 1. My period 2. A year long supply of Simple Mills cookies 3. a Yoni egg and 4. A Kombucha brewer. Here’s to hoping for less stomachaches, more progesterone, some pain free sex and smoothie on the side. -Ali (alwaysalida.wordpress.com)