#kyleena

disclaimer: i am not a licensed health professional. i am only making this post to share my experience with hormonal birth control in the hopes that it will educate and empower other individuals who are thinking about starting / stopping it.

i have been on and off hormonal birth control since i was 16. when i was 16, i started taking birth control pills for the first time because i was sexually active and wanted to stay protected. i don’t remember if my doctor at the time told me about any side effects, but i do know that i did a bit of research and knew that depression and weight gain were common ones. during this time, my breasts grew 2 cup sizes and my acne cleared. i wasn’t in tune with my mind or body enough to understand any other effects it had on me at the time. i took the pills for around 3 months and stopped because i felt that they were making me moody.

when i was 20, i started taking birth control pills again because my period was late but i wasn’t pregnant and my doctor wanted me to be protected for the future. i told her i was concerned with starting hormonal birth control again because i had just been diagnosed with major depression a few months ago and my mood was finally starting to stabilize so i was afraid taking birth control pills would trigger additional changes in mood. she told me not to worry and sent me along my merry way with a new bc prescription. i don’t remember what pill i was on this time but it definitely gave me intense mood swings and triggered a depressive episode that lasted around 3 months even though i stopped taking the pills after 6 weeks since the depression was too much for me to handle. 

it wasn’t until 2018 when i was 23 that i considered starting hormonal contraception again since my boyfriend and i were moving in together and weren’t planning on having kids anytime soon. this time i wanted to try an IUD since 2 of my other friends had one and said the only bad part about having it was the insertion. i was still pretty wary about hormonal contraception affecting my overall mood and mental health but i did my research on the different kinds of IUDs out there and decided that i wanted the kyleena because it had the lowest dosage of hormones out of all the IUDs that lasted for 5 years. the insertion took around 3 minutes and felt like a sharp pain, then a bunch of induced cramps from the IUD being inserted. it cost me around $300 after my insurance but you can get one for free from planned parenthood if you can’t afford to pay that much. i spotted/bled a little immediately after the insertion. 

my first couple of periods after the IUD insertion were a lot heavier than normal and i experienced different cramps than the ones i normally had. i started getting cramps in my lower back instead of my lower abdomen area and they were a lot more crippling/painful too. my mood also varied for the first 2 weeks after but the moodiness gradually went away. i didn’t experience any weight gain or acne. after 3 months, my period almost went away except for some spotting once a month preceded by period symptoms such as acne, bloating, cramping, and occasionally breast tenderness. i knew my “period” was about to come when started to develop cramps in my lower back once a month. over time, i also noticed that my sex drive went away and i also sometimes felt a dull pain in my cervix while having sex. it definitely affected my confidence and mood in the bedroom.

after a bunch of internal debating, i ultimately decided to get it removed after 1.5 years mostly due to the back cramping but also because i felt like it was a barrier to me being able to fully understand my body and its signals. i was torn because i loved the convenience of being able to have sex without worrying about pregnancy but at the same time i wanted even more to get back in touch with my hormonal cycles and i actually missed having a period. so i got my IUD removed last week and it was a super quick and easy process. the removal took probably 15 seconds and only felt like a small pinch when my doctor took it out. my back cramps immediately went away and i got my period 4 days later as expected from my estimated cycles. my sex drive also returned along with a lot of my confidence. now i’m focusing on listening to my body and understanding the signals it sends me without any sort of added hormonal interference. 

I got my Mirena four years ago. Right now the Mirena is approved for five years and they are currently working on approving it for more. I chose to get mine replaced a little early because my periods were starting to come back. It’s relatively common for your periods or spotting to start back up on the four or five year mark. Because I have really bad periods and experience gender dysphoria during my periods I wanted to get a new one in ASAP. 

If you’d like to read my guide to getting an IUD inserted you can read it here. The procedure for getting it taken out is very similar and many of the same recommendations still apply. I’d definitely still recommend having a buddy, although it isn’t necessarily as bad coming out as it is going in. 

At the clinic I went to they didn’t have the Mirena available, only the Liletta and Kyleena. Liletta is approved for 4 years, Kyleena for 5. They are also currently working on approving Liletta for longer so my doctor said that by the time the 4 years are up they’ll probably have it approved for longer. Despite only being recommended for Liletta, and it being a little bigger than Kyleena, is because Liletta has a higher amount of hormones that more closely resemble Mirena. Because I use the IUD to end my periods and I know the Mirena does that I was hoping to get the IUD that most closely matches it. 

Below is a detailed recount of my experience. It can get a bit graphic, if you’d like I put the main steps in bold so you can get the gist by just reading that