Leveling Up Ginger

I think Weight Watchers if finally starting to get it.   One of the reasons I've been avoiding weight watchers for the last couple of years is because of the wearable and fitness tech I own.  I didn’t want to buy new weight watchers branded stuff and I wanted it to work together. 

About a month ago I gave up and decided to give it try anyways.  Well, I was pleased to find out that they wised up.  Now you don’t have to purchase additional stuff to take advantage of the full plan.  My vivofit and my Withings smart scale both connect to my Online weight watchers account and seem work well with the weight watchers apps. The integration of the smart scale to the the app lead me to choice just the online plan instead of paying for meetings. 

I know that i haven't been posting very regularly but I've been spending more time creating things instead of talking about them.  

It’s cosplay season and We’ve been spending a lot of time gaming.   i went from having exactly no hobbies to having way way to many... 

So from now on i’m going to try and make it a point to post about what i am working on...  Expect ukulele covers, water color and pencil art and hooping.  and hope fulling some other singing and music related items.  If i’m just going to shove in in a draw whats the points of making it?  

so today i’ll leave you with one of the first water colors i did... not finished but there. 

Hormones aren’t for everyone,   The side effects that I experience from even the lowest dose of birth control hormones are not worth it to me.  I have a copper IUD that I have had for almost 7 years.  This works just fine to keep me baby free.  I didn’t experience any of the horrible side effects that others do with IUDs so I am very pleased with it.  I also know the woman who inserted my was an IUD artist and very skilled so I was very lucky but I’ll tell you more about that some other time.

When it comes to Hormone Birth Control I have tried The Shot, The Pill, The Seasonal Pill, The patch and The Ring.    All with varying side effects.  'The Shot' came with sudden extreme weight gain that 14 years later I still struggle with.  I was terrible at taking 'The Pill' plus it killed my sex drive and put my nerves on edge.  I was also lucky enough to have it increase my migraines and it was possibly the cause of other ongoing medical conditions.  'The Patch' and 'The Ring' are both described as the lower does hormones and maybe that's why they didn’t decrease the time I spent bleeding.  I also had to deal with random spotting throughout the month and my lady business dried up like a desert.

I get it, you are going to tell me “it’s not so bad” that “lots of woman deal with the side effect” or "it's better then the alternative"  Well... I’m not okay with that.  I refuse to take something that’s ' routinely described as "not so bad" when I know there are options out there that won’t negatively impact my life.

Even medical professionals are surprised by my distrust of HBC. When I got my IUD I had a choice, I could get the hormone filled Mirena that had a chance of stopping my periods all together or the Paragaurd which was hormone free and lasted twice as long.  It was a easy for me to pick.  10 years without having to worry about it and reducing the hormonal side effects to 0, it seem to me like the choice everyone would be making.   I was wrong about that. You would have thought I was an alien the way the nurses looked at me when I picked the Paragaurd.  They kept questioning me asking if I was sure, saying “But Mirena MIGHT stop your periods all together”.  I responded with “"Might" isn’t for sure,  I’d rather have a better idea of what is going on with my body on a day to day basis then have to wonder if I was pregnant or not because my periods may or not come.”

Of course I have friends that have nothing but good things to say that their oral contraceptive pill improved the acne and their moodiness.  For I moment I consider adding an OCP on top of my IUD.  Then I remind myself that hormones are just not for me.  

I’m on a mission.  To find a better way to deal with my ‘monthly infection’.  

I spend roughly a quarter of my life bleeding and 50% of that time I am bleeding so heavy that it can be debilitating.  I can’t have sex, I can’t ware certain cloths and I can’t do certain activities.   In addition to all the blood I deal with cramping, bloat and GI issues.  Plus I ruin more than just panties.  

I battle with the options available to deal with the blood bath. Tampons seem wasteful, I go through them too fast, at 32 years old I still don’t know if they are safe to flush or not and they don’t absorb fast enough for me.  Pads were a better option for me but almost every company that is making them have switched to a dry weave for the outer layer of the pad.  This is always made out of some kind of plastic that my skin does not like.  Recently I’ve started just lining my underwear with panty liners.  Yes, that “S” was intentional.  If I’m going to bleed out from a super+ tampon it’s not going to be confined to something that is about the size of a credit card.  SO I put 2 or 3 of them down and hope for the best. Even then I leak on furniture, in my car, on my bed etc…

A month ago there was a video going around asking woman how much time and money they spend on their periods.  It made me realize two things #1.  That it’s not normal to bleed for 7 days.  And # 2. That I spend ¼ of my life burdened by the Dred, paranoia and mess of my period.  I decided at that moment that there has to be a better way because I can’t spend 91 days a year hating my body anymore.

So I started my Mission to find a better way…

My goal is to find a better alternative to pads and Tampons, figure out how to manage my symptoms so they don’t disrupt my Day to Day Life (and sex life) and come up with a plan to shorten the amount of time I spend bleeding.  

I’ve got loads of products to try, I’ve done a lot of research and I have a ton of natural and medical remedies to experiment with.  I’ll give my honest opinion about them and I hope to discover more about how we can make the process better and more affordable for myself as well as other woman.

I’ll be trying Thinx Period Panties, The disposable Soft cup and a silicone Reusable Menstrual Cup.  I’ll also be trying some home remedies to slow the bleeding and test them against other medically proven ones.  Plus I’ll be talk to an actual OBGYN to see what other non- hormonal options are out there to manage Aunt Flo.