The Cost of It

They teach you that a womb is not an organ, but a malevolence. A threat lying in wait, ready to hurt you. At any moment (so the story goes), it will erupt and snatch away everything good from your life.

Birth control’s not as reliable as you might think. In my circles, I can only think of one person who had a kid on purpose.

I’ve tried six types of the Pill. Each gave me unlivable-with side effects. I wrote them down, to show the doctor.

• Hair loss
• No libido 
• Mood swings 
• Panic attacks 
• Suicidal thoughts

It also made my skin look great.

A lot of my friends are childfree: they don’t have kids and it’s going to stay that way, damn it. I consider myself child agnostic. I don’t want to be a single mother. I would be rubbish at it. In the right circumstances, a child could greatly improve my life, I’m sure, but how do you get those circumstances right?

I’d like to say loudly and clearly that mothers are amazing, and I’ve never met one who isn’t doing a fantastic job.

But I only want a wanted child, and I don’t want a child.

There’s a lot of good things in my life right now. I have a fantastic job. I love where I live. I have a rad group of friends. All those things - a kid would change all that. I couldn’t live in this expensive inner city apartment with just one close friend. My job is flexible, but does it pay enough I could afford childcare? But an IUD is so effective. What if an accidental child was my only chance for a child at all?
I though, “What if you had had a kid with any of your exes?” I thought, “What if you got knocked up last week, after those cocktails?”

I was prepared to fight with my doctor, but she looked over my notes, and said, “Well, I certainly wouldn’t recommend hormonal treatment for you.” She had, three times, but I didn’t argue. It costs $54 to visit my doctor.

Condoms break. There’s the morning after pill for that, but it’s a pill too, so it’s not something I enjoy taking. It costs $45, and you have to go to a pharmacy, and pharmacies are only open in work hours, and a lot of them are closed on Sundays.

I tried to be open about getting an IUD. The Prime Minister talks openly about his vasectomy, but there’s a lot of silence, a stigma, around being a grown-up adult lady. Why is it hard to say, “Yeah, I’m actively trying to not be pregnant”?

People sent me messages. One person thanked me for saying anything openly, online. A few people said unhelpful things:

• Do you know it hurts a lot? 
• My mum said it hurt more than labour. 
• Are you sure you’re having sex enough to make it worthwhile? 
• Do you know, the string hangs out and until it softens up, it can stab your boyfriend in the dick? 
• The string can also wrap around his dick. That’s a thing that can happen. 
• Did you hear about the [hormonal] injection? Or the [hormonal] rod? 
• Just try to relax your vag 
• My vasectomy didn’t hurt at all 
• You know it’s easier to have it inserted just after you’ve given birth.

The doctor sighed, “You’re getting an IUD? Well no one told me. Come on, let’s get this done.”

The doctor told me to put my feet up on the table, and handed a package back to the nurse - “Not that one - the other one. The copper one.” All morning, my hands had been shaking, and my heart racing. I tried to relax my vag.

There are two types of IUD. One contains a hormone (how? I don’t know). It stops your periods too, which some people like. The other one is made of copper, which I think I read years ago is naturally antibacterial.

The hormonal one is $370, unless you’re low in iron, in which case it’s $170. The copper one is funded, so you pay just the insertion fee. I think they undercharged me so mine was $134. I asked my boyfriend to pay half of it. He agreed, unhesitatingly. Fair’s fair. I checked my account, and he’d rounded up, given me more than I said was his share. I think he felt guilty: “Don’t do this for me,” he said.

I couldn’t find the words to explain it’s a selfish thing. Fuck you, biology. Fuck you, the continuation of the human race. Fuck all that, I want Thursday-night cocktails instead.

“First they manually dilate your cervix,” said a friend. I clapped my hands over my ears and lah-lah-lahed. I didn’t read up on the procedure. I don’t like medical things. I can’t even watch blood being drawn on TV.

They don’t sedate you before inserting the IUD. Someone said, I should ask for local anesthetic. Someone else said they thought an injection in the cervix would hurt more than the actual insertion.

It’s recommended you take two paracetamol and two ibuprofen one hour before coming in.

There was a red hot thread of pain.

I was walking along a beach. The waves were crashing and the machinery in the factory was whirring and I was running through white halls and a thousand years later, I was screaming in a room I had never seen before.

“You fainted,” said someone who hadn’t been there before. “You were only out for a second,” they lied. They were holding my hand.

There was beeping everywhere. I had sat bolt upright without knowing how and the person I’d never seen before encouraged me to lie back down.

“This room is soundproofed, so you can scream all you want,” said the doctor.

They said, it’s really common to faint in shock when things are inserted through your cervix. It’s called Cervical Shock. They had silenced the alarms. I was crying.

“You gave us all a fright,” said someone, “But you’re fine - you’re fine. You’ll be fine soon.”

“It’s all done now,” said the doctor, pretending to be soothing. “And it can stay in there for five years! Isn’t that nice?”
“It bloody well better,” I said and they all laughed.

“Let me just clean you up here,” said the doctor, scooting her chair between my legs again. “It’s a good thing you’re wearing black,” she said, but she didn’t say why.

The doctor left, and the new nurse left, and it was just me and the first nurse. “How many children do you have?” she said. I said none, and she asked how old I was. I said 27, and she said oh. She told me about her four children, their names, ages and professions. She said, one was getting married, but didn’t want children, so what was the point of getting married? She said, she herself had her first child at 21. Now, her daughter looks like her sister.

She said, “You should have lots of children, lots and lots, because you’re so beautiful.”

I asked for a drink of water.

No one talks about presumed fertility, and the cost of it. I have never been pregnant, but people look at me and don’t see a person. They see vector for continuing the species, a young woman “with those hips? You’re made for babies.”

When I was researching this, looking into IUDs, I didn’t google it. Stories like this are clinical and scary. I talked to people instead. “It was awful,” said my friends. “I was in pain for three months. I would recommend it in a heartbeat and do it again in a second.” They say, “It’s the best thing I ever did.”

They don’t tell you about the pain, because pain is fleeting. There is paracetamol and ibuprofen. I made a list of things which hurt more:

• UTIs 
• An unrequited crush 
• An ill-fitting bra

Other people chimed in:

• A broken collarbone 
• An ingrown toenail 
• Dental surgery

We talk about those things, even in polite company, even in public. I think we should talk about this too.

Categories: Issues, Lists, TMI