84. Birth Control vs. Fertility Awareness: An Honest Conversation

Ever found yourself questioning how birth control impacts your body's natural hormonal flow? In our latest episode, we peek behind the curtain of hormonal contraceptives, from the pill to IUDs. We shed light on the obscured truths behind birth control's effects on women's health, discussing how they can often mask the symptoms of issues like endometriosis without actually healing the body (but in fact causing more harm).

We're sharing not just our own stories but also the voices of many who've walked this path, aiming to open your eyes to the realities of treatment options and ignite a conversation about the personal and spiritual dimensions of fertility choices.

When I realized my mental health was in freefall, coinciding with the start of hormonal birth control, it sparked a fierce quest for understanding the link between our minds and the medications we take. This episode doesn't shy away from the gritty details of how contraceptives can influence everything from our mental state to our nutrient levels and even our choice in partners. By confronting the challenges around IUDs and the potential side effects of various birth control methods, we stand as a rallying cry for informed consent and a holistic view of the female endocrine orchestra. Hear from those who've been on the front lines, fought for their health sovereignty, and won, inspiring you to reclaim your body's autonomy.

This journey culminates in an empowering rallying call to embrace the Fertility Awareness Method (FAM), a beacon for those seeking harmony with their body's natural rhythms. With tales of transformation and the reclamation of control over their reproductive health, we illustrate the profound difference FAM can make. Our conversation is an invitation for you to learn more about your own body, to consider alternatives to hormonal birth control, and to participate in a movement of women who are informed, aware, and in charge of their health destiny. Join us in this pivotal discussion that is essential for anyone invested in women's health, spiritual well-being, and bodily autonomy.

Transcript

Rebecca Twomey: 0:32

Hello and welcome to the Radiant Mission podcast. My name is Rebecca Twomey and I am here with my awesome sister and co-host, rachel Smith. Hey guys, we are on a mission to encourage and inspire you as you're navigating through your life and with your relationship with Yahweh. Last week, we did an intro episode on God's design for women's health and we dove into some pretty nerdy anatomy stuff, science-y stuff on women's bodies, what body parts and organs we have that men don't have the endocrine system. We talked about hormones, we talked about our cycles, and I hope that you found it fascinating and that it got you really thinking about just how amazing women's bodies are. Yeah, we really wanted to lay the groundwork to you for this next conversation and the conversations to come to have in mind. It was a very quick lesson on the female anatomy, but without us everybody understanding the point we're coming from, then these next conversations might not all connect. Definitely, because we really want to make sure that we're all on the same page of understanding how our endocrine system and our fertile organs, how they're all working, and I like to call it just this beautiful symphony of hormones and our cycle.

Rebecca Twomey: 2:14

We left off with describing a woman's cycle because that really sets up the T for birth control pill. And how does that work? Birth control in general. We're going to talk about a couple of different types of birth control. We're going to talk about the pill. I'll mention the ring. There's the implant, on which is an implant, and then there's IUDs. Those are some of the most common. Also, the shot you can get shot with birth control, which seems like the worst possible option of all of them. But that's just my personal opinion.

Rebecca Twomey: 2:50

Again, I'll remind everyone this is not medical advice. We are not doctors, we are women and we have experienced taking birth control and we have been told many of the things that you listening have probably heard. There are a lot of misconceptions about birth control and here's the thing. I'm not trying to come after doctors, obgyns, who are prescribing this stuff. In some ways, maybe I am, because I'm threatening a part of their bottom dollar by suggesting not to partake in those products. Again, this is about informed consent. At the end of the day, you're going to make your own decisions. I'm not trying to influence your decision with my individual story, but I do want to emphasize that there are thousands of other women like me that have similar stories.

Rebecca Twomey: 3:51

I'm not the only one that is the problem, and why we want to have this conversation is because this isn't talked about enough in an honest way. There's no honest conversation about this because many women see birth control as black or white when it's for birth control purposes. A lot of us get into this taking of birth control because we have bad periods and that's what doctors say we have to do to regulate our hormones, which you're not regulating them. If you have a health issue like endometriosis or something like that, the quote-unquote treatment that they recommend is putting you on the pill, which isn't a treatment, it's just suppressing symptoms, and that is just lack of informed consent. Like you said, our goal here is Understand what you're getting yourself into, or to know that if you've been gaslit, you're getting gaslit and we're here to confirm that you're not nuts. That's the other part of this.

Rebecca Twomey: 5:06

What I wanted to say about women in general is there have been times in the past where I tried to talk about birth control and I've had women get mad at me because they're like why are you attacking birth control? We need it. We need birth control. I didn't have an argument back then because I didn't fully understand all of this, but my argument today would be learn about God's design for your body and hormones, meaning, learn how the cycle works, and you'll understand that you can only get pregnant six days out of the month when you know what days you potentially are ovulating. There are many ways to do this, and you can use technology to do it too, by tracking your basal body. Temperature is a way that you can do it and be pretty accurate about it. Also, in conjunction with your cervical. I don't like that they call it me, because I think that's so rude. I say fluid, cervical fluid or mucus, but even still, you couldn't have given it a nicer name C'mon Cervical gel, something. The point is there are ways to do this, and the more that we learn about our body, the more empowered we can be, I guess. Let me just invite you If you feel, if you're listening, and you kind of feel hostile towards this conversation because you don't want to get pregnant, say prayer right now and pray that the Lord will open your heart to potentially learning something new or having a different perspective, because there's the other side of it too, which is I don't know if we want to go that deep on this episode, but why are you wanting to prevent pregnancy?

Rebecca Twomey: 7:02

That's another avenue to go down, and perhaps another conversation for another day is the word birth control and controlling our fertility, that we want to be in control of it and we are God and make the decision on when we want to get pregnant and when we don't. When we don't want it, we are willing to sacrifice the health of our bodies to stop its normal functions from happening, and then we have health issues as a result. Don't understand why we have health issues. We go to doctors. They have no clue why we're having health issues. If it's depression, they're just going to give you another pill and tell you take this and that'll fix that problem. If you have something else going on, they're going to give you a pill for that and then you're just putting pills on top of pills, trying to solve for problems that were started from taking synthetic hormones in the first place. If you went that route, there's other things out there. There is a lot. This is a big conversation and that is why this is a series, because we'll continue to unfold some of these things over time and as we're going through different conversations.

Rebecca Twomey: 8:30

I also want to say about doctors. I think that it is very easy to do the same thing that you've always done. The job of an OBGYN is not to educate anyone on the female body. An OBGYN is a trained surgeon. That's their function. What they want to do is perform surgery because that's what they paid to go to medical school to do. They're not nutritionists, they're not fertility experts or anything like that. They're not even necessarily hormone specialists, because they're not hormone specialists. To think that they would want to even care. They're like no, you don't want to get pregnant. Take this thing that this rep came by my office said this is great. Yeah, it has side effects. So does every other pharmaceutical. Good day, there's not a thought about it. But that's the problem. Let's put more thought into this than everybody's doing it. We help each other out.

Rebecca Twomey: 9:45

Birth control has been on the rise over the last 30, 40 years. You know our mom before she had kids like it wasn't popular. Yeah, I think it. I think 40 years ago. Yeah, I think it was invented or really like came to the market in the 50s or 60s, which kind of then followed the sexual revolution and rise and feminism and things like that. So I think that's a really, really great resource for this whole topic and like how birth control even got to started and then developed to where it is today.

Rebecca Twomey: 10:31

I've mentioned it on the RPI forecast before, but it's a documentary called the Business of Birth Control. It is. I don't know if you ever got a chance to see it because it was hard to access last year. I don't know if it's available on like Amazon streaming now, but it wasn't before. It was only available on their website, which is the business of birthcontrolcom. I think that's the website, I'm pretty sure, but we can link it in the show notes because I highly recommend it. So eye opening of to see like where it started and like there were.

Rebecca Twomey: 11:01

So there was a huge, actually feminist movement when it first came to market of women demanding for it to be for the birth control pill, the original one, to be taken off the market, because there were women dying left and right from the pill, and it was. They were like pleading and begging with Congress to do something to keep this off of the market, and they didn't listen because it is a business and that's. You know, we're kind of putting the cart before the horse here, but it is no, you're absolutely right though. It is a business and that is why you know it's a. It's an industry in and of itself. Yeah, it's a billion dollar industry.

Rebecca Twomey: 11:46

So it's like these pharmaceutical companies are making billions of dollars at the at the sacrifice of our health, and they sell it to us in this pretty package of you don't want to get pregnant, then you have to take this pill, and so I think you're kind of wanted to introduce this episode as like if you feel some hostility towards us, kind of railing against that Like we want to share that there is another way. This isn't like we have been sold a package that the pill or an IUD is the only way, and that isn't true, that there is another way. And it might sound like like I've I've explained fertility awareness method to people before and the response I got is like yeah, but people don't want to do all that. That's a lot of work and the thing is that so that's so like I think you don't realize when you first hear it is. It might sound like a lot more work than popping a pill, but it is no side effect, free, yeah, and it is so empowering Like we want to shine light into this conversation because we want to just really share a testimony of empowerment that, as women, like we can all be, you know we don't have to control.

Rebecca Twomey: 13:14

You know our fertility cycle, that we shut it all down and prevent it from doing what it needs to do to get pregnant. We can ride the waves and feel empowered that we know where we're at in our cycle and you know what's really empowering If you don't want to get pregnant and you know you're in the six days of the month that you could. That, as an empowered and informed woman, you can be like I'm not doing anything to get pregnant. And I heard this time yeah, yeah, and that's that's what. I just think that there's a side of it that people don't necessarily realize. Until you've got you, you have really been educated on fertility awareness and you're in the female anatomy and and start practicing it Like I love it. I mean, I hate my cycle. I shouldn't say my cycle.

Rebecca Twomey: 14:15

Hormones are a bee. At times it's hard. That is not a very nice way to talk about what the Lord designed. You know I want to mention on this episode. I thought of analogy and analogy when I was driving in the car this morning. Okay, so you know how when you work super hard to cook a delicious meal for your family. Amazing, you spend all this time. It's perfect, everything about it's so good, and then you sit down at the table and your kids look at it and they go. You know how that feeling, yes, and then you know how you feel inside. It's this mixture of like you're hurt, you're mad, you're angry, you're upset.

Rebecca Twomey: 15:07

All right, now let's take that example and let's look at God Yahweh, the creator of life. He created us perfectly in his own image. Well, I wouldn't say perfectly right, because we're not perfect, you know, we don't act perfect, that is. But he created man and woman in his own image. He formed all of our organs. This is amazing. Symphonies, so incredible. And now we're here on earth, alive, and we're women, and we're like yeah, yeah, give me the pill, I'm going to just alter this. Or yeah, yeah, I don't like my nose, I don't like my boobs, I don't like anything about me, I'm going to get surgery or I'm going to. You know, we mutilate ourselves in many ways, physically and emotionally, and I don't know.

Rebecca Twomey: 16:10

It was just something that I was thinking about from that perspective. And how must the Lord feel when he looks down on a woman and he's like I created your cycle perfectly and people have even written books about it, called for taking charge of your fertility, and they explain exactly how I created your incredible 28-day cycle. And we're like nah, nah, just give me a pill. It's like the same thing. I want chicken nuggets, exactly. I just want a fucking cheese. That's what we're doing. No, it's true, yeah, we are, and it's, it's terrible, and it it does seem complicated at first.

Rebecca Twomey: 16:55

I remember when I first read the fertility awareness method and I was learning about charting and I was constantly texting you pictures of charts like what does this mean? Yeah, it was a little bit hard to figure out, but I'll tell you what. There's hundreds of apps out there now. Yeah, people can just use an app, ladies. Just use an app that tells you everything.

Rebecca Twomey: 17:17

Now, granted, that's not going to be as empowered as it would be if you figured it out, but I've actually learned over time that I can track from cervical fluid, like we were talking about. Like I don't even tempt anymore, I just track my cervical fluid and that is a good measure for me. But I have become more in tune with my body over time. So at first it's a struggle, at first. It's not that easy, but the more in tune, the more we tune into our intuition and learn our body. It's amazing. It actually is amazing, like I know, when my body is getting pregnant because of how I feel I can tell, and it's. It's this crazy thing that just happens when you choose to listen to your body versus listen to someone tell you to take a pill. But it comes over time and that's why we weren't ready to have this conversation now and in our lives, right like publicly, because we ourselves have learned over the years to get to this point where we're, you know, in tune with our bodies and what's going on.

Rebecca Twomey: 18:30

So I definitely want to encourage those listening, check out Taking Charge of your Fertility or the fifth vital sign, or another book that talks about fertility awareness method. And also you said something when you're explaining it and you're talking about empowerment. Listen to the difference between these words birth control, fertility awareness, control, awareness yeah, that's a really good point. Birth control, fertility awareness it's like you can try to control with pharma or you can just be aware. Learn how to be aware where you are in your cycle and then you can make the decision with discernment from the Lord, because I don't know. We're not going to get into the conversation about open womb or anything like that, but that is a conversation we could have. Maybe we will, in this series, talk about what that means to have an open womb.

Rebecca Twomey: 19:29

You know, many women feel convicted not to control anything and other women feel like the Lord has provided us with awareness about our cycle for a reason, and it's to open the womb when the woman's body and soul and spirit and all that feels in alignment with having a baby and you're entitled to have. You know your own opinion and you meaning Rachel and everyone listening and me, like all of us, can you know we're not going to tell you like, just stop doing everything and don't do anything. That's the whole point of fertility awareness is it's you're learning about your body. Yeah, but let's talk about the pill and how it works, because what are we told? The pill? It's just some hormones and it just regulates everything and your whole life will be better, right, like how? I don't even remember how it was sold to me.

Rebecca Twomey: 20:36

I went on birth control as a teenager. I had terrible periods. You know we talked about last episode how, during your period, during menstruation, it is a time where you should rest. Do you remember how I would just lay in bed and our brother would try to beat me up and understand it at first and you're like what she's just trying to like get out of doing anything? And thinking back on those times I thought something was wrong with me, but now I realized that it was just new. We, yeah, and I also think that there is an element of when a girl starts her period, you know for the first time in the first few years that this whole system of hormones and the endocrine system and all that it's not mature.

Rebecca Twomey: 21:33

So things are a lot more intense. Because I also had and I think this is very common very, very heavy periods like crazy compared to what my period is today. Sometimes I think about that, and I've heard it from young girls as well before. So I think that, yeah, there's an element of like it's new, like it is kind of crazy to think about that you are human with just like you're bleeding out of a hole in your body constantly and you have to just like survive, like if you have crazy cramps too, if you think about what's happening with the uterus and how, how much is cramping now that you've been through physiological birth. I'm sure you can really relate to this.

Rebecca Twomey: 22:22

Could you imagine being 12 years old and having contractions? Because that's basically what's happening to you, yeah, and so it's no wonder why there is this system, this medical system that has targeted teenagers and said oh well, we can give you a pill to stop that, to stop all the heavy periods and the heavy bleeding and the horrible cramps. Like we can, we can take care of that for you. And then they get you into the pharmaceutical cycle and to the medical system, because now you're taking something that's gonna have side effects, and then you're gonna be going to the doctor for those side effects and then it on and on and on right and and you're suppressing important hormones like estrogen and podgesterone from a very early age, when you're actually still going, you're still developing, you're still like puberty isn't over yet, like I think I got my period around 12 or 13 and you were about the same age too. Right, I got my period pretty young. I was like 10, maybe 9. Yeah, I was very young. I remember being you Super young, but it was yeah. So it's tough in the beginning.

Rebecca Twomey: 23:48

And here's the thing I want to encourage if you're a mom and you have daughters. I want to encourage you to talk about this stuff with your girls young, like I already am talking to my four-year-old about the uterus and eggs and fallopian tubes, and like I'm also a nerd about this stuff, I'm passionate about it, clearly. But I think it's important if we fully understand, if our girls fully understand, what's going on and that it's normal, and then we can find some natural ways to support them. We can bypass these teenage years of getting them on birth control, like if I had known as a teenager that evening primrose oil was a natural thing that could help with my cramps, or if I was taught that cramps are you know, you can just embrace it that it's the uterus contracting and or related to something else I don't know. Maybe I would have had more understanding about it and this is, by the way, this is not me blaming our mom for anything. This is no fault of hers.

Rebecca Twomey: 24:59

I was sucked in by the doctor too when I went to go to the doctor that they're like oh well, we can just fix it. And I didn't know enough. And we also didn't Google things back then because I'm old, yeah right, Like can't just go online and ask the internet. Is this safe or what's going to happen? I don't know.

Rebecca Twomey: 25:20

I think Ask Jeeves existed by the time I went, because I sort of in my period I think around 12, and then I was put on the pill for heavy periods and I remember being told and possible endometriosis, like it sounds like endometriosis, but they never did a scan, they never did anything. Just because I had heavy periods and painful cramps. They said that I probably have endometriosis. They told that to I was 15. They said to a 15 year old and that the only treatment for endometriosis anyway, so like it doesn't really matter whether you have it or not because the treatment is hormonal birth control.

Rebecca Twomey: 26:01

And so, yeah, like I agree with you, like we don't, it's no fault at all of our moms, because like, imagine being a mother and hearing that like that your daughter has a this like reproductive medical issue and that the treatment is this pill and it sounds like the right thing to do and it's like, honestly, it's kind of sick because that's not the right thing to do and it really like I will try to give you know doctors who say that the benefit of the doubt that they believe that that the best thing for endometriosis is the pill, but there's just so much more evidence on others. Yeah, you know, but here's the thing like it doesn't matter because I don't need to, we don't need to get in a conversation on endometriosis. We are not, we're not qualified to speak to a illness we don't even have. Because that's the point, I didn't. I don't have endometriosis, yes, and they shouldn't be putting girls children, because that's what a 15 year old is on a medication for something that they don't have and that they didn't test me for, because you have to do an ultrasound to determine if someone has endometriosis. So I'm not saying anything like I don't know really what should be done for endometriosis, but I do know that you shouldn't be giving someone a treatment for something that they don't have when you don't know that they have it. Absolutely, yeah, definitely.

Rebecca Twomey: 27:40

So let's talk a little bit about the different forms of birth control. The pill is the simplest one, the one that they put most girls on as teenagers when you go to the OBGYN and, of course, any young woman that goes to an OB who is known to be sexually active. When they go, when they ask them, they're going to try to put them on the pill because they are not educated on fertility awareness. Actually, funny enough, I had an OB when we had Brooke, well before we got pregnant with Brooke, and I had an IUD and he was the one who removed it. And he said what are you going to do now? That's a fertility awareness method and he goes. You know what I call that Parents? That's what he thought that was. His opinion on fertility awareness method is that everybody just gets pregnant because it doesn't work. But that's the whole point of what we're trying to point out here is like you're not going to go to OB and they're going to support you. Maybe they will some of them, hopefully. Hopefully there's a good one out there but don't count on OBGYN being supportive of you, telling them that you're doing FAM because they are indoctrinated into the birth control matrix and that's just what it is. So we have the pill.

Rebecca Twomey: 29:04

There is also the NUVARING. I hope to God it's not still on the market, but it probably is and that is a silicone ring that squishes flat and you stick up in there. Guess what I did that. Can you believe that? It's so dumb when I think back, like who even was I? Why did I do any of this stuff? That gave me severe. So let's just go through that. Pills Got on it.

Rebecca Twomey: 29:32

I had heavy periods. I also felt emotionally unstable. Well, guess what? I was a teenager. Of course I was emotionally unstable, that's part of it. So I go on these pills, but that just makes it worse. Like I just feel not myself. Change pills a bunch of times, still don't feel right. Go on this NUVARING, feel even worse, start to develop cramping in my vaginal canal Literal cramping. Yeah, I used to have that too. One day I have excruciating pain. I thought my appendix burst. Go to the hospital. It was a cyst that ruptured.

Rebecca Twomey: 30:16

They tell me oh, you have NUVARING. That's known for causing ovarian cysts. But they didn't tell you that before they prescribed you the NUVARING. They didn't say that ovarian cysts are a side effect. No, so that was when I'm like, all right. Well then, what do I do? I've already taken all the pills. I'm not doing that again. I've already done this.

Rebecca Twomey: 30:41

And my doctor at the time? She said oh, you got to get an IUD. The IUD is the best I have one. I have NEMORENA. You should get this. Literally, the doctor herself had one, according to her. Talks me into this, tells me, oh, it's great, you'll never have to think about a thing again. Doesn't explain the fact that I am now officially messing myself up into oblivion, because those hormones don't stay localized, they spread throughout your whole body and they are synthetic, totally synthetic.

Rebecca Twomey: 31:20

So I get this thing put in, which is very painful, by the way, because they have to go in. It's shaped like a T, like this, and it's. The arms are folded. The arms are folded down when they insert it into your cervix, up into your uterus, and then, once it gets in there, the little arms pop out and it has fishing wire string. Basically that goes all the way out, and then they trim the strings, sweep them to the side and send you on your way. So they basically put a plug in you and you're just told like, oh, this just is going to prevent pregnancy, it's fine, I go home, it is painful for a couple of weeks and doesn't feel good. I did not like it at all.

Rebecca Twomey: 32:06

From day one Over the next couple of weeks, I develop acne. You've known me since the day I was born. Well, not the day I was born, the day I was born, the day you were born. I've never had acne in my life and my skin was terrible and I called the office and said I need to talk to someone, I need to get this out. And they were like oh no, just give it more time. Your body, your hormones need to regulate. They're talking as if my hormones are benefiting from this Totally wrecked and I leave it in for longer and then over the years it kind of builds up, but I don't realize what's going on, right, like I don't know that what is happening to me is necessarily from this, because we don't think about it. It's inside the body. You're never thinking about it unless it comes up.

Rebecca Twomey: 33:05

And merena was the worst one for me because over time it's almost like the hormones, the synthetic hormones. I want to very cautiously say, when I say hormones and I'm talking about birth control, I'm not talking about our body's hormones, I'm talking about synthetic, man-made hormones that are created in a lab based on the structure of our natural hormones. So I was crying all the time, which I've always been a very emotional person, so nobody thought anything of this. Everyone was like, oh, this is just always how you've been crying, every day, feeling upset Just Mike likes to use the word crazy, which no woman would like to know but just totally out of it.

Rebecca Twomey: 33:49

But the thing that really did it for me was I started to have, I started to fantasize about killing myself, and I've never been suicidal or struggled with depression. And so for me to just like lay in bed at night and fantasize about how I was going to kill myself, that didn't seem right. That almost seems like possession, if you ask me, or some kind of oppression that a voice is telling me like make a plan to go kill yourself. Does that sound normal to you? Because that doesn't seem normal to me. No, not at all. And what's crazy is that this is a side effect of hormonal birth control and like depression and suicidal ideations is. And what really has kind of like rocked me is I was, you know, as mentioned, put on the pill when I was 15 and I struggled even before this.

Rebecca Twomey: 34:55

I struggled with anxiety and depression pretty much since I started puberty, which is interesting. I'm sure it has something to do with those hormones, because that is the thing is, estrogen is linked to our, our serotonin levels and which, you know, plays into depression. That's why one of the side effects of hormonal birth control is depression. But I developed, you know, as you know, eating disorders in my teenage years and then there was a point in time when I was probably around 17 that I, my depression, was at all time high and I was also having suicidal ideations, like you mentioned as well, and fantasizing about, about suicide and even planning attempts and things like that. And while I, for so long, I always tied it, oh, I was very mentally ill and I did. I. It was a whole journey on getting treatment, you know, psychological treatment and help and and healing. That took me a really long time. Excuse me, it took me years and years and years.

Rebecca Twomey: 36:18

But what kind of why I even wanted to mention this, as you're saying that and you asked me if that sounds normal, is no, it doesn't sound normal. But coming into the realization of, like what you're describing about this being a side effect of hormonal birth control is would I possibly not have gone through that as a 17 year old if I wasn't put on the pill two years before? I always just thought of it as, oh, I was mentally ill. That's why I went through all of that, and while I maybe would have been mentally ill either way, would it have gotten that bad if I had never been on the pill? And that is just something to think about and why we want to share our stories, while also sharing information about these contraceptives and their side effects, is so many women have, like go through things like this, and we never correlate it, we never connect it back to the birth control because all we're told is that it's couldn't. All it's doing is preventing you from getting pregnant. We don't realize how it impacts our mental health and, like you said, like that wasn't normal for you, that wasn't anything that you had ever felt before. And then, if you want to finish that story, you eventually yeah.

Rebecca Twomey: 37:50

So and there is an interesting part in there that I'll get to with this story on what happens when you go to your doctor and you're on birth control and you tell them I'm thinking about killing myself from depressed. So I wake up one day. I wake up and I'm like I got to get this thing out. This is the cause. I knew I felt like the Lord came to me and said this IUD is what is causing you to want to kill yourself and end your life. Get it out. And I woke up and I said I'm getting this thing out and I found a OB close to where I lived at the time went there, told her what was going on. She didn't press me too hard, I feel like she attempted to get it out and couldn't, and she was like I just can't get it out I don't know why, but I can't and she didn't have an ultrasound machine on site to be able to look for it to see what was going on, but why she couldn't get it pulled out with the strings or whatever the case might be. So I leave that office and I was on that mission.

Rebecca Twomey: 39:08

When I make a decision about something I'm for sure, right, I call my insurance company at the time and I said I need you to help me find an OBGYN that can take me right now. And they did they actually just so you know you're paying a gazillion billion dollars for health insurance. Have them do things like this for you, because that's what you're paying for. They found me a practice that had an ultrasound machine. I go there. It's a male OB, which was the first time I'd ever had a male OB to that point in my life.

Rebecca Twomey: 39:46

But I was desperate. I'm like I don't care, I will let a gorilla tear this thing out of me. Maybe don't do that. So I tell him what's going on and why I want it out, and he the audacity of this man says oh, you don't need to get that taken out, you need to go to a therapist and get on antidepressants. Oh my gosh, I legit almost punched this guy in the face. I did in my mind and I don't promote violence. So this is the definition of gaslighting. It's medical gaslighting.

Rebecca Twomey: 40:28

So if you are experiencing this ladies listening, depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation and you go to your care provider and they tell you need to be on antidepressants, walk out of there, they are not for you. Go to someone else who will listen to you because this is messed up. So I tell him absolutely not, I want it out, absolutely not. And he's like all right. So he uses ultrasound, he finds it, he can't get it out either. And he uses all these tools. They have this brush scraping tool to scrape it out of your uterus. I had this on painful. It was not fun, you know, and I hadn't had any children, so I'm not used to anything to do with my uterus aside from having these contraptions put in there. So he's like sorry, I can't get it out. I think the only next step reuse the hospital. So I go to the hospital, I'm like I'm getting this thing out.

Rebecca Twomey: 41:30

That woman was the nicest one of all of these people. She was very like I'm going to try to help you out here. Takes a look at everything and all that and then is like listen, the bad news is, this is embedded to your uterine wall. I cannot get it out today. I cannot remove it. We have to surgically remove it. But then here's the worst part. Right, she goes well when I take this out, you know you could just get the copper IUD. It doesn't have any hormones and it'll help you prevent pregnancy and whatever, whatever. And I at the time was like, yeah, okay, she's like, oh, you know, then you won't experience any pain because it'll be done when you're under. That sounded like such a dream, right. But I had to experience it getting placed. So I had it removed, surgically removed, and was literally a different person the next day. That day I don't even remember what time I got out of surgery, whatever it was, but I felt free. I felt like I literally had my whole personality had been cloaked by something, and the next day I was just calmer, not because I had surgery, but I just was calmer and more at peace and just even, and I never after that had another suicidal thought again. So tell me, it wasn't from that IUD.

Rebecca Twomey: 43:03

I actually called the manufacturer of Morena and filed a report about what happened to me. Because this is the other problem with this industry is, unless we report things, the statistics are not going to be accurate. And how many women experience symptoms and actually call the company? Most of them do not. It's kind of like VAERS data, right, it's only a small percentage of people that are even calling to report an adverse vaccine reaction. The same thing applies here, but I called to report that. So they placed the cop paragard, the cop riot, and for a short period of time, because I came off of Morena, I was doing better.

Rebecca Twomey: 43:55

But about a year later, maybe a year and a half, I started having heart palpitations and I felt like my heart was racing all the time and there was a lot of stuff that was going on. So I thought maybe it was anxiety, like maybe I just was anxious. I literally went to a therapist to see if talk therapy would help me. I stopped drinking my random dirty chai lattes and caffeine, but I wasn't getting better. So I started to Google some of my symptoms and came across a group on Facebook called copper toxicity from IUDs, something like that. Join this group, start reading people's stories. I'm like this is me, this is literally me.

Rebecca Twomey: 44:34

And that was when I went back to the OB. It was the same story. Right, get this thing out of me, this is what it's doing to me. And that was the male doctor that said what are you going to do for birth control? And I was married at this point and I'm like fertility awareness method, and that was the last time I was ever on birth control. That was six years ago maybe, and yeah, that was the end of that era.

Rebecca Twomey: 45:05

And so that's why I say it's taken time to be able to have this conversation, because when you're in it, even when you're experiencing it, you don't fully understand the ramifications of it. And even now I've just recently come into the understanding of what truly happens with an IUD that you, literally the egg that you drop every month could still become fertilized and drop into your uterus, but it is so inhospitable because of the copper, which has created inflammation, and that inflammation doesn't stay localized to your uterus either. You can have inflammation throughout your body because of it. It destroys that embryo. So I mean it's honestly horrifying when I think about it, like how sad how many potential babies were ripped apart in my womb because I chose to put… an artificial piece of copper. That doesn't even make sense. It's an internal organ. For a reason we should not be. We meaning me, I should not have been messing with my body and God's design for my body by inserting something into it. And if that makes sense, then so does taking something worldly. It's the same thing, you know, like we're messing with God's design for our bodies and for our hormones and for our health, and there's ramifications to it, whether we want there to be or not.

Rebecca Twomey: 46:52

I actually pulled a bunch of information on side effects for birth control. Blood clots is a big one. So when I was considering us doing this topic, I actually asked Audrey who she was on from a joyful birth. I asked her to pull her audience if she didn't mind, to see if anybody would be willing to share their stories with us on the podcast, and there were a number of women who replied to her ask saying I experienced blood clots, or my cousin had a blood clot from her birth control and they played down that it's like one in 10,000 or something small, but it sounds like it is much higher. There's also a lot of cardiovascular risks. There are bone density risk. Prolonged use of hormonal contraceptives it has an impact on our bone density, like we were talking about before.

Rebecca Twomey: 47:57

Mood changes, it changes your libido. You become nutrient, nutrient deplete. It can affect vitamins. Get this. You know what specific vitamins birth control depletes? B6, b12 and full weight. Those are like the three most important things when you're pregnant and we're depleting them. Yeah, that's what's interesting of like you get off the pill and then you like start trying to get pregnant, because that's what most women do is they get off the pill and then they try to get pregnant right away and to go into a pregnancy without stores of those hormones Like vitamins and nutrients. Yeah, yeah, I didn't mean hormones, I meant vitamins. Yeah, but could that possibly contribute to like increase in morning sickness and things like that? Some other ones that you might like we might not think about as women that you know we're like? Oh, yeah, we know that it impacts our mood, but did you know that it can impact your eyesight? There's a link between changes in vision. I think about how horrible my vision got Once I was 16. I mean, my vision went from being like I barely needed any readers. I had like a negative 0.25 prescription for when I was driving and I went all the way up to a four a negative four rapidly when I started taking birth control.

Rebecca Twomey: 49:39

It changes our vaginal fluid too. Like the way that we smell is different and we talk about this, or they, they, they, the notorious they on the Internet. We talk about how women it's been proven that apparently we are attracted to people in a different way when we are on birth control that we don't even there's a study on it that because it changes our sense of smell. I think that's what you meant by smell, because I thought you meant something else at first. Well, I do mean that our vaginal, the way that our way that vaginal fluid smells, changes too. Yeah, so there's a study that it and our hormones, yeah, our sense of smell, yeah, like an automatic process, and that apparently women who aren't on birth control, you have this like automatic process of using your sense of smell that you don't even realize, that makes you attracted to a partner, and usually a partner that even is like biologically compatible with you and for having children, and that apparently women who have been on hormonal birth control. This system is essentially like shut off, and that there is been a lot of cases of women coming off of the pill once they're married and then they're not attracted to their partner, and so there's, you know, just a possible link between who you know that kind of system, and by attracted you mean the pheromones of the other person, exactly Not like physically attracted. But then the end result is in divorce, like there's a higher divorce rate of women who have been on hormonal birth control is essentially the message that was the conclusion of that study Right.

Rebecca Twomey: 51:44

And the birth control also impacts your liver and can cause liver tumors, which not for nothing, our livers are weak as it is, so to weaken it even more is pretty, pretty bad. And then a lot of women will experience headaches and migraines. This was another common theme that came up when we asked women what they experienced was having bad migraines. And I thought back and guess what? There was a period of time that I totally forgot about. That I experienced was experiencing migraines, and I'd never experienced migraines before. And guess what they did? They put me on a medication for it, but the medication made me really sick, so I only took it like twice and I was like I'm never taking that again, or maybe it was once. So look at that Take something causes a problem. Take something else. It impacts our weight. Why does it impact our weight? Because we've just totally disrupted our natural hormones and that cortisol that we were talking about before. So there are a lot of side effects besides just these, and we're going to dive into more birth control stories over the coming weeks.

Rebecca Twomey: 53:00

But the moral of the story is birth control is poison. It is toxic for the natural process of women's bodies. I'm just going to say it. That is what it is. It is not the best thing for our health. If we are sold it, it's a lie and I think that it's time that we have this conversation. So there it is. Put it all out there. Put it all out there. I mean my experience that's all I have to say after what I've gone through is I've been poisoned. That's what it feels like I was poisoned, and what about my health? And my life was stolen because of it.

Rebecca Twomey: 53:52

Yeah, I hope that this helps somebody. I don't know, maybe I'm just talking to the air. Well, you're talking to me. We've already talked about this so many times. But we have you and I have been through this and we've been through the worst of it. And thank God for you because you introduced me to FAM and you're the one who was like you got to read this book. You got to read this and listen, ladies, just read it. I don't have to explain anything to you because you'll read it all from someone who's way more credit in than I am, and she explains why it doesn't help with these health problems like PCOS and endometriosis. She explains it in the book, so definitely read that.

Rebecca Twomey: 54:43

But anyway, yeah, it's not going like fertility awareness method isn't going to cure anything, but just like the pill isn't going to cure anything. It's a matter of taking charge of your fertility. No, but taking charge of your own health, because, to go back to kind of, one of the original points of our message that I said is your cycle and ovulation is important. Whether you want to have children or not, like that is, this is a health marker and to suppress ovulation is suppressing part of your health and that's why there's so many side effects, and some of the side effects are very severe, as severe as death, and that's just a fact. These are listed on any birth control insert and, like you said, not everything is reported.

Rebecca Twomey: 55:56

And I think the conversation that we're trying to start now and we're going to have more conversations with women who've had negative experiences with birth control is how much of us women can relate to each other and to hear ourselves and each other's stories from symptoms that we did not realize were from our birth control. You know, like you sharing about what you experienced with an IUD and how it affected your mental health, that there are so many of us women, including me, that have struggled with mental health and never contributed it to our hormonal birth control, and you know we want to be healthy, we want to take care of these bodies that God gave us, and the medical system is just the solution is, pill after pill after pill, that you get on the birth control pill and then, oh, that's giving you depression, so get on a antidepressant and it's. There is another way, like it doesn't have to be that way. Yeah, totally. I was thinking of some parallels while you were saying that it's like when someone starts having seizures after they have been vaccinated and then now they're on seizure medication, like there are so many cycles that we get into because of taking one thing and it causes something else. So I hope that this does empower women to learn about your body and just know that there is another way you can learn about how your body functions, without using suppressants or other things to manipulate it the way that pharma tells us to. Yeah, right, yeah, I think that's our message. Yep, all right.

Rebecca Twomey: 58:08

Well, stay tuned more to come on this topic and you're going to hear some interesting stories and I'm sure a lot of women will hear themselves in their stories, like you said. So, thank you, ray, I appreciate you. Yeah, yeah, awesome. Thank you for tuning in and for being on this journey with us. If you'd like to follow along outside the podcast, join the mission on Instagram and Facebook at the Radiant Mission, or you can watch on YouTube at the Radiant Mission, or by searching for. Don't search for Rachel Smith, because you'll never find us right. Search for Rebecca Tumi or the Radiant Mission or TRM, and you will find us. And today we're going to close with something positive. We're going to be on one verse two Beloved, I pray that all may go well with you and that you may be in good health, as it goes well with your soul and we're wishing you a radiant week and we'll see you next time. Bye, everyone.