on being female and growing older
Despite the historic, worldwide subjugation of my sex, I remain grateful to the universe that I was born a female human. Only female humans have the capacity to experience so many distinct phases of life: childhood, puberty, fertile sexual maturity, gestation, nursing, and infertile sexual maturity. Males of our species, in contrast, can ever only know childhood, puberty, and sexual maturity. They might not always be fertile during their sexual maturity, but that contingency has less to do with their age than it does in the case of their female counterparts.
Over the past year my body’s been changing. As I approach my thirtieth year my hormone levels are fluctuating, with the result that my trusty oral contraceptive is giving me fits: bouts of nausea, dizziness, headache, irregular cramping, and spotting. All for no apparent reason other than the passage of time.
My precocious 17 year-old self had difficulty getting acclimated to The Pill, and tried several brands and formulations before settling on the one with the most bearable side effects. Once I found it, though, I dutifully ingested it at the same time each day and thanked the universe that I had a reliable, easily available contraceptive method. When my employment and economic situation changed, however, I could no longer afford that brand of oral contraceptive. So I took the next best thing Planned Parenthood could provide for me at a cost I could afford, and I’ve stayed with this brand ever since. Even though I now have Student health insurance which offers me a plethora of contraceptive choices, I’m reluctant to put my body and mind through any such hormonal rollercoaster unless and until it becomes necessary to do so. Unfortunately, that may be sooner rather than later.
This most recent pack of pills has made for an exceptionally difficult 4 weeks for me, and my GYN nurse-practitioner tells me that I’m healthy and normal; that there’s nothing to worry about; that the changes are just a result of the ordinary hormonal fluctuations of aging reacting with the hormonal contraceptives.
Here I thought I could dutifully consume one of these little pills every day until it’s time to get knocked up, but it looks like I might just have to go through that nasty finding-the-right-pill business again. Because my rational, planning self knows that now is not the time for pregnancy, despite what my biological clock might be telling me…
[...] previously noted, my pharmaceutical hormonal contraceptive has lately been giving me trouble. Coincidentally, it was [...]
birth, control, and feminism « ~*~ tangled bougainvillea ~*~ said this on January 16, 2012 at 1:45 pm |