birth control pill

Motherhood can be a mind-boggler! Betty Wayne posted this funny conversation with her daughter in the Mommy Club group in the LilSugar Community.

When my daughter was about 4 she saw me taking my birth control pill and asked what it was. "Oh it makes me not have babies," I said, naively thinking it was a throw-away comment that she would never remember.

She's 6 1/2 now and a few days ago came to me in all seriousness, out of nowhere, and asked, "Mommy where do you get that medicine that makes you not have babies?"

"At the same place I get all my medicine." Face meets palm... now.

"Yes but where?" She asked again, urgently.

"At the pharmacy sweetie, why?"

Then she looked at me with a look of deep distress and said, "Mommy I need to get that medicine because I don't want to have a baby." I tried not to laugh as I explained that girls can't have babies until they're teenagers and promised to get her that medicine when she's big. Still worried she asked, "But mommy what if I forget?"

So I promised I would remember. Here's to hoping she's still open and eager to talk birth control when she needs it!

Start asking questions and sharing your advice and tips in The Mommy Club!

Having a baby changes everything, including birth control for many new mamas. When visiting the doctor for a postpartum checkup, one subject sure to be discussed is birth control options going forward. For women who've been on birth control pills for many years, the idea of remembering to take the lil tablets each day is simply too much. For others, the convenience of something they only have to think about a few times a year makes more sense in their newly hectic world. Still, others decide to scrap foreign objects altogether and turn to more natural prevention like the Fertility Awareness Method.

Did you switch up your birth control after having a baby?

I doubted blogger Rabbit Write's anecdotal evidence of women leaving men after going off birth-control pills, but there's actually a scientific explanation for it.

A 2008 study found the pill could screw up a woman's pheromone-sniffing ability — a deciding factor in the mate-selection process — and choose someone she otherwise wouldn't.

Typically, we're attracted to the people we're most compatible to have babies with — men with different MHC (major histocompatibility complex) levels. If birth-control pills prevent pheromones from doing their sniffing job, then we may end up with a less-than-compatible breeding partner or (worse, I'd say) wake up permanently turned off one morning.

Jena Pincott, a writer who specializes in the science of love and attraction, says we should classify this as good-to-know info but not gospel. "What women need to bear in mind when hearing these studies is that effects are statistically significant, but they are generalities.”

Attention users of the pill: according to a new study, women who use hormonal contraceptives are at a higher risk for sexual problems. The German study, published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, evaluated over 1,000 women using various birth control methods; the pill, the ring, and condoms were most popular. Most of the women involved in the study were in a stable, monogamous relationship for at least six months. Researchers found that nearly 33 percent of the women were at risk for female sexual dysfunction, including lack of orgasm, desire, satisfaction, arousal and lubrication.

Women using nonhormonal contraceptives experienced the least dysfunction. Women using non-oral hormonal contraceptives — like the ring— were at highest risk, followed closely by those using oral hormonal contraceptives. Researchers can't explain the exact connection between hormonal contraception and dysfunction, but cite one possibility: oral contraceptives have been found to reduce circulating levels of androgens, perhaps leading to low circulating levels of testosterone, the hormone needed to trigger desire.

How do you feel about this study? Do the findings mirror your experiences with birth control?

The birth control pill celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, and it's had a roller coaster history.

Most recently, the pill has been implicated in the masculinity crisis, and the moral objections to oral contraceptives have been around since the beginning. On the flip side, there have been studies that show health benefits of taking the pill, including one of the largest ever released this March that found that women who take the pill are less likely to die prematurely from causes such as cancer and heart disease. And while in some ways it changed less than promised, it helped give women freedom from their traditional roles in society. It gave women options — the choice to have children, have a career, or have both.

We read about how other women's sexual experiences were shaped by birth control, but since many of you are on the pill, we want to know about your experiences. Tell us, how has the pill affected your history — sexual or otherwise?

Are we having more sex than our moms? Well, if your mom was sexually active before the 1960s, maybe. After that, the birth control pill arrived, and women no longer had to pray and men no longer had to pull.

Writing in the London Times this weekend, five women of different generations open up about their sex lives. One woman, who turned 16 in 1960, explains how the sexual environment was very different than today's — abortion was illegal, women were expected to get a ring on their fingers before they had sex, and young women at her college actually shared one generous student's diaphragm. But once the pill came on the scene, everything changed. Women no longer risked unwanted pregnancy and the associated stigma.

Women enjoyed more sex during the post-pill era, but the mood of the sexual revolution didn't last long. Presumably once off the pill, the women of the '60s began to have children who would have the advantage of oral contraceptives, but also the fear of AIDS to shape their sexual experiences. After AIDS, a younger writer explains, women carried their own condoms, and sex in a monogamous relationship seemed less risky than sleeping around.

So the sexual practices of different generations have been shaped by liberation (the pill) and fear (AIDS and other STDs) — guess what we're left with is protected casual sex. Good thing condoms have been around for thousands of years.