Project No Baby

I'm in the middle of a hormone surge. I sound like an old lady, but I don't care. I made the ridiculous decision to start taking the pill several weeks ago. I have always been an advocate against adding hormones into my body that are unnecessary. I started using a diaphram in college for that very reason. I couldn't justify cramming my body full of hormones, especially since at the time, sex was so sporadic, basically I was taking a pill just on the off chance that someone might take me home on a random Saturday night. It seemed un-feminist of me. That, and the fact that the pill made my period irregular, and it made me a bit crazy. Irrational crazy. Crying during Fear Factor kind of crazy. So, I have tried a variety of barrier methods, the diaphragm, which I felt was effective but I got UTI's which are not cool; the foam, which burns like wildfire; and the sponge, which resulted in an unplanned pregnancy. Turns out the sponge is only effective for women who have never given birth because its one size fits all.
So I have been on the pill for three weeks, and it has riddled me with anxiety and general bitchiness. I'll start off the morning fine, but once I get to work, I start feeling incredibly overwhelmed, and I can't even read the paper because I start thinking about global warming, the war in Iraq, and the recent (very minor) earthquake we had the other day. It is also storm season, and random tornadoes always get me uneasy. So I'm thinking the pill is not for me. I would rather be hormonal and have anxiety for three days a month (like I am supposed to) instead of 21 days a month.
So what am I going to do now? Well, there aren't a lot of options for someone who doesn't want to use hormone based birth control. Its funny how some non-hormone based options aren't even available in the United States, have to be order specifically through a health care provider, or are crazy expensive.
But I did find something. There is a device on the market called Lady-Comp. The name alone brings back memories of the products in the 1970s that were marketed toward women, such as the Lady Schick razors. The Lady-Comp, is a German engineered Basil Temperature thermometer, saliva-based hormone detector and Standard Days monitor. Every morning you take your temperature when the little alarm goes off. After about a month, you will stop seeing the yellow light that indicates it is still learning your body, and you will see either a green or red light. Green means you are not ovulating and are Go for Sex. Red means you are ovulating, so have a plan B. (a plan B. not the Plan B. birth control. I don't want anyone to get into a moral dilemma over my blog). I love this device. It combines my love of natural birth control with my love of gadgets. It is compact, it lights up and it's shiny. Here is the problem. This handy dandy little gadget costs a little less than my laptop. Its comparable to purchasing an iPhone. There is no way I can justify this expense, and I am in sales. I can usually justify anyone into spending $500 under the guise that it is an investment. The only way I can even defend this purchase is it claims to have a 99.3 effectiveness rate, a 5 year warranty and a 10 year life span. That means I won't have to purchase a new one until I am 40 years old.
Oh, I want one so bad. I wonder if my gynecologist can get it for me wholesale. I wonder if the company would let me have one wholesale if I promised to write testimonials for them. I will. I'd be happy to. Hear that Lady Comp- I am happily your shill.
The thing I love the most about this device, is it is the exact opposite of a fertility monitor. While a fertility monitor makes you pee on a stick and tells you if you may be ovulating, because all they have to lose it you won't get pregnant. This device had a 99.3 percent accuracy rate. The worst thing that can happen- your pregnant. Exactly what you were trying to avoid, and pretty much makes all that temperature taking useless. Oh, and suddenly you have a pregnancy you weren't planning on.
This is a device that acknowledges that some women don't want to get pregnant, and they don't want to have to take a bunch of hormones to keep it from happening.
Please, Lady-Comp, send me a free device.
Please.