Quote:
Originally Posted by BeyondtheRainbow
This is one bad story so don't be scared off but.....I had a very nasty experience with the Mirena. From the time it was put in I was suicidal and severely, dangerously mixed. It also didn't work quite as planned; I had 2 weeks of bleeding, 2 weeks off, 2 weeks of bleeding so I was still bleeding too much and getting anemic.
We tried everything with meds and IP and nothing worked. So after 9 months we pulled it thinking "can't hurt, might help". I was at a big teaching hospital and my pdoc and gyn had never had anyone with a bad reaction but we were out of ideas. It came out and within days I was improving. Within the next couple months my gyn and my pdoc each found another case of a woman with a mood disorder made much worse by the Mirena and both of them improved immediately when it was removed. After that they've been more cautious with it and women with mood disorders.
I would never say don't try it because it is great for a lot of people but I would say to use caution if your bipolar changes after insertion. The good thing is that if it does cause problems it is easy to remove. And it is such a low dose of hormones it shouldn't matter; I am extremely sensitive to meds and hormonal changes.
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Beyondtherainbow is right. Mirena could be just fine, but it can also be very bad for mood disorders. I saw this a lot on a parenting board I belonged to for 4 or 5 years after my daughter was born. There were moms on there with no history of postpartum depression or depression in general who got Mirena and then had awful trouble with moods.
And Paragard isn't perfect what with the heavier cycles (not good if you already have a heavy cycle or endometriosis). I don't know if it's the reason I couldn't have a sibling for my daughter or not. On the whole, I think it is not because lots of couples end up with unexplained secondary infertility (meaning they have one child without trouble and then cannot conceive a 2nd time).
For awhile, I used charting my cycles on fertilityfriend (had to pay to get the full benefit). For me, this worked great. I took my temperature and charted and we used condoms on my fertile days and nothing after I ovulated. When we were ready for a baby, I turned it around, and yep, got pregnant the first fertile time in the first cycle I tried. But for other people, this is a horrible method of birth control. My youngest sister tried it and ended up with an "oops" baby. The time I used it, I knew I would be planning pregnancy shortly anyway, so if an "oops" pregnancy resulted, it wouldn't be the end of the world for me. Even if you don't use this as a method of birth control or trying to get pregnant, I highly recommend reading the book "Taking Charge of Your Fertility". There is a lot I didn't know about fertility and my cycles. I am going to make it required reading for my daughter so that she understands just what exactly is going on with her body at any given time in her cycle. Now that I have been without an IUD 7 or 8 years and haven't gotten pregnant, I don't think it will happen. I suppose anything is possible, but if I come to that bridge, I will cross it then.