QuestionHi Brigid,
I am writing you because I NEED the other side of the story from what I find when I google this topic. I am very into holistic health care, but decided that hormonal contraception was a necessary evil since I recently went back to school full-time (in a demanding medical program). Getting pregnant right now is not an option, but I am in a serious long-term relationship too.
To give you some background...I am 32, and tried the pill twice before in my twenties. I usually only lasted a year due to weight gain, nausea, etc. - it just wasn't worth it. For the last 6 or 7 years, I have used vitex and natural progesterone cream for my irregular periods and PMS - which worked well. BUT...I started the patch in January (it is now the end of March) and have had a yeast infection (suspected - not confirmed by a doc) and one BV (confirmed by doc and treated). Now, less than two months later I suspect I may have one or both of them again. Prior to this I have not had either one for 5 or 6 years at least. I have not called the doc yet, since my period just ended. I know about all the symptomatic treatments for this (both conventional and holistic) - but what I really need to understand is WHY the hormones do this? What is the process by which the artificial hormones somehow change the vaginal pH (which I know is usually the underlying cause of both of these conditions). I can't find any info on the nitty-gritty of this, and the usual literature says of course "no big deal"...If you can even point me in the direction of any websites, books, etc. that would be helpful.
I know my body well, and I have always been very balanced and DO NOT have these problems. I don't want to just cover it up, partly because that doesn't work long-term. But I also want to be able to understand and explain this to my future patients if and when they ask. Also, do you know of any other reliable methods of BC that are not hormonal or anything that can help? I understand that you do not agree with BC, but in the interests of my future as a holistic health care provider, please, please help me with this.
I am hoping that with your knowledge of NFP and the consequent understanding of the delicate balance of hormones involved, you can give me some insight. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!
Erika
AnswerI can give you some direction.
http://ccli.org/nfp/contraception/mdexplains.php
answers to the question "how does the pill work"
http://ccli.org/nfp/contraception/methods.php
Effectivenes of various methods and side effects with each (some not all are listed).
http://ccli.org/nfp/contraception/pill.php
More answers to the question "how does the pill work"
http://ccli.org/nfp/basics/advantages.php
answers the question "how does NFP work" and why is it better than contreception?
As you can see, this website specializes in questions from the other side of the story about birth control. You won't get the "Politically Correct" point of view. I hope it helps. If you have more questions, you can write back or call the CCLI organization.
A holistic approach includes your emotional and spiritual wellbeing as well as your physical. Putting harsh chemicals into or onto your body is one thing physically, but have you thought about the emotional and spiritual effects?
this is a long article (actually it's only about half of the whole article) but again, it will not be PC. I hope you read it and find it interesting.
Contraceptive Emotional and Personality Damage in Women
By Dr. Gerard van den Aardweg
Member Advisory Board, The Edith Stein Foundation
Systematic contraception - and sterilization - is part of modern life. Tens of millions of women the world over, inside and outside marriage, are on hormonal contraception (mostly, the pill) and as far as powerful organizations as the UNFPA and IPPF are concerned, many more millions must be added. In countries with intensive pill habits like the Netherlands, there are still increases in pill use among adolescent girls (27% between 1990 and 2000), so that half of them are now on the pill. With few exceptions, this does not seem to alarm anyone, because modern contraception is believed to be wonderful progress and beneficial to the woman. However, on the horizon dark clouds are gathering, although those who might spot them prefer not to see:
Risks of Birth Control:
It is becoming increasingly clear that hormonal preparations are not as effective as they are said to be, and even worse, that the medical risks are more serious than had always been assumed. The advantage of less ovarian cancer is far outweighed by substantially increased risks of breast and cervical cancer, and we must add to this the risk of thrombo-embolism and the escalation of Sexually Transmitted Diseases facilitated by contraceptive relationships and increased promiscuity. These dangers are real enough, and will certainly be recognized some day, like the ominous consequences of chronic cigarette smoking are admitted today.
But there are other grave effects of contraception which get even less attention, although they are common: it causes damage to the deeper emotional layers of the woman’s psyche (soul) and suffocates basic feminine needs. Although contraception is promoted as liberation for woman, in reality it is psychologically traumatizing; initially perhaps in a subtle way, but ever more manifest in the long run.
Fundamentally, it thwarts the maturation of the woman’s psychological nature, not only sterilizes her biologically, but cripples her psychologically. The result is growing inner dissatisfaction and tension. The connection with the contraceptive relationship may not be obvious to the woman, or denied (“denial� is a common defense mechanism).
Contraceptive emotional damage may express itself in a variety of ways, ranging from depressive moods and psychosomatic symptoms to behavioral and relational problems. Put simply and somewhat generalized, contraception may be satisfactory on a more superficial level, satisfying certain more ego-centered needs, but at the same time saps inner happiness and the sense of meaning and personal fulfillment. It offers some immediate rewards, but at the price of a loss of real inner joy.
These things are often not conspicuous at first glance. One cannot “measure� contraceptive psychological damage with a simple poll or questionnaire. However, it may be evident several ways: first, when a woman expresses her feelings without justifications and self-defenses, speaking her mind without reserve to a trusted person, a friend, maybe a doctor, a psychotherapist, or a priest.
It may also become evident after a woman stops contracepting and turns to a more natural sex life. Usually, she will experience this as liberation and a blossoming of her relationship (of course, much more is happening when such a “conversion� takes place, but here I only point to the factor of emotional relief).
Secondly, it may be evident indirectly, from the emotionality and sometimes hostility of the reactions of some women when they explain themselves concerning their contraceptive habit. Many are overly defensive, ambivalent, and uneasy. One reason these things are so poorly understood is the prevailing often shallow and defective psychology of women.
The importance of educational and professional achievement and “independence� for feminine self-realization is highly overestimated. In fact, fulfillment of these needs only contributes secondarily to a woman’s self-fulfillment, provided that they are subordinated to her more essential drives: giving love and life.
The deepest aspiration of the woman’s psyche is to give love in a twofold manner: as the companion of a man and as a mother. She is not really happy if she cannot do that, either because she herself resists this drive, or because she is pressured to frustrate it (for example, by her lover or husband). By nature then, the soul of the woman tends toward fully abandoning herself out of love; deeper, more sensitively and more totally than a man might do. That implies her special power to sacrifice herself out of love and to suffer for others out of love.
Of course she longs for love in return and her power to love makes her especially vulnerable when her love receives no response. Yet she can suffer and sacrifice herself even in that case; she often remains faithful even to an egoistic or difficult husband or to ungrateful children. Contrary to what is often affirmed, these feminine “roles� of companion and mother are not learned cultural habits, but inborn distinctive psychological dimensions. They are related to the women’s special sense for the beauty and sacredness of her procreative power.
It would be a mistake to view the perception of the sacred nature of sexuality, intimate man-woman love, and new life as a typically Christian notion. It is rather a universal human awareness, which is even more keenly felt in many non-western cultures than in our present society. It is rather our numbness to this natural experience which is the product of cultural conditioning and repression.
The contraceptive relationship frustrates the woman’s central “instinct� to abandon herself to giving life and love. Some relationships are more contraceptive than others; living together unmarried, which usually includes maximum contraception, is on the average more dissatisfying than marriage. But likewise marriages that turned contraceptive after one or two children generally suffer from the wife’s increasing dissatisfaction, no matter if it is recognized or not.
This is so because a contraceptive relationship lacks deeper meaning; the woman does not give herself fully, in her complete femininity: either she does not want to share it herself, or the man does not want this essential part of her person. What remains is the game of playing complete man-woman union, but it becomes ever more impersonal, no idealism is shared, self-centered sensuality replaces tenderness.
Especially the woman feels somehow disillusioned, and the relationship cools off and becomes more distant. This is one of the chief reasons so many cohabitation relationships break off. Many begin with the hope - mostly on the part of the woman - that the initial love will deepen, however, as self-giving is blocked, it usually ends in disappointment. Married women, who after one or two children, decide their family is “complete�, often become discontented and may seek “new challenges� in careers, educational opportunities, or even new intimate relationships.
“When one of my friends unexpectedly told me she was pregnant, I saw in a flash that somehow I too had wished for one or more children�, a woman confided to me. She had been on the pill for years and complained about her unsatisfactory, boring, marital relationship. Both of them had thought a long time ago their two kids, one boy, one girl, were just enough, and they continued thinking that way.
Sometimes contraception or sterilization means: “I have no feelings for you any more�, “I do not love you any more�, so “I do not want a child from you any more�. In this way, contraception deepens a marital crisis. The wife of one of my clients was disappointed because of his character weakness and modest professional success. Being ambitious and materialistic, she decided she would from now on live her own life, resume her former full time job (their two kids had already attained puberty), and, after years of contraception have herself definitively sterilized.
Although she denied it at the time, this rejection of her husband was the direct road to increased tensions between them and eventually they divorced. This woman’s self-seeking attitudes made her demanding and merciless; afterwards, though socially rather successful, she was often discontented and hard-hearted, blaming her fate and former husband for her troubles.
She had avoided sacrificing herself a bit more for her husband (and children), but her contraceptive/sterilized “freedom� did not bring her happiness. Of course, this is an old story. Why can’t the admirers of Margaret Sanger, the mother of modern contraception, see that their own lives exemplify the ultimate consequences of her ideal of contraception-based freedom and independence (money and “fame� notwithstanding): loneliness, depression, and a vain escape in alcohol?
Why can’t the promoters of women’s “independence from men� see that the emotional life of their prophetess Simone de Beauvoir, who vehemently denied the existence of the woman’s natural self-giving power as a companion of man and a mother and consistently refused being a wife and a mother herself, was only one of progressive neurotic misery?
On the other hand, why is so little attention given to the universal phenomenon that those women who willfully and freely chose to love and give themselves - generously accepting the sacrifices involved - to a beloved husband and as a mother to a larger family, and those unmarried women who devoted their lives to other people with all the love and self-sacrifice of real mothers, are among the happiest and most fulfilled persons in the world (live on average healthier and longer than various other groups of women, and have children who belong to the emotionally most stable and adapted part of society)?
Does this reality not give the lie to the image of the emaciated, helpless wreck of the mother of a large family which the contraceptive movement has always inculcated in the minds of young women? Evidently, the larger family must be a conscious and personal choice, for love supposes willful surrender to the beloved. Therefore, some mothers of larger families in former days may nevertheless have had a dose of the contraceptive mentality in that they inwardly protested against their having so many children against their wish.
They sometimes warned their daughters: “See to it that you do not have so many children. A few is enough. Enjoy your life, I never had the opportunity�. Didn’t these complaining mothers then love their children? They did of course, every single one of them. But their love was not fully deployed and lacked the fullness of a love that gives and sacrifices with joy.
Which factors inhibit a woman’s self-fulfilling self-surrender to giving love and life? In general, all variants of human weakness; self-centeredness and selfishness, that normally interfere with authentic serving and loving, love of ease, materialism, lack of generosity, exaggerated seeking of self-affirmation in professional work; variants of emotional maturity like fear of responsibility and self-sacrifice, fear of failure and lack of confidence, lack of courage, pessimism.
Such motives are tremendously reinforced by the present culture. Girls are under pressure to be independent emotionally, professionally and financially. Married women are more or less forced to take a job because the modern State, the accomplice of the contraceptive movement, does not allow the average father to earn enough to sustain a larger family while his wife takes care of the children at home.
There is massive and constant negative image-building concerning marriage, motherhood, and the larger family in the schools, in the media, and often at home. The predominant values are success and money; in contrast, there is little education for love and virtues and the deeper idealistic, spiritual, and religious needs of children and young people are terribly neglected. The predominate “scientific� view of man is a prescription for decadence and unhappiness: you have no soul, you are only a piece of biology, not much more than a higher monkey.
