[Continued from "The Pill (Part 1)."]

I went off the Pill only once. I was 23 and felt it was time to take a break from guys. I went off the Pill since I knew I would probably be too paranoid to fuck with just condoms. I stopped taking daily pills at the end of a monthly pack and didn’t start a new pack following my period.

I wasn’t off the Pill a month when I went on my first date with the man who would become the Ex. Of course we eventually had sex–before I began taking the Pill again. I had never had regular periods so I had no clue when my period was supposed to come. I freaked the fuck out. I bought a pregnancy test, the only one I’ve ever purchased.

I was not pregnant, and I went back on the Pill. As a form of birth control it was extremely effective and very convenient. When I was monogamous it was great–no condoms to use, ever.

Now that I’m not monogamous the Pill plus condoms are great. Every once in a while I forget to take a pill but then I just take one when I remember. It has never been a big deal. I’ve been on the Pill so long I doubt even missing two pills would give my body a chance to drop and egg, and chances are I’m not all that fertile anyway (both my mother and my sister tried without success to get pregnant when they were in their 30s).

Even during the years when I had no reason to pursue forms of birth control beyond the Pill, I continued to keep up with the latest birth control advances. Shots, patches, rings, and so on were all just different forms of what I was already on, hormone-wise, and I had no problem taking a pill daily, so I stayed on the Pill.

Now that I’m single, I like to be able to have sex whenever I want. I don’t like to have to wait for my period, or to bother with the period explanation with some of my fucks. So I began skipping the placebo pills included in 28-day pill packs and immediately taking the first pill of the next month. This would cause my period to be skipped, most of the time.

It was during this time, when I was supposed to have a period but I took hormone-laden pills instead so I could skip my period, that Mr. RI came over to fuck. Apparently I was bleeding a bit. Ooops. I really didn’t know until he looked down at his dick with an odd look on his face. I apologized, but it was obvious he was none too pleased. He later told me he really hates period sex. If I had known I would have rescheduled our tryst.

For years it had been known that having fewer than monthly periods is actually healthy for women. Skipping periods for honeymoons, for example, has been advocated in women’s magazines for quite some time.

I was to the point where I would have a period only every three months, and only because my prescription allowed me to get only three months of pills at a time. I had heard with envy that the IUD pretty much eliminated periods. I began thinking women who’d had at least one pregnancy were lucky in some way, which was SO not my style.

I began hearing IUDs discussed more and more. I continued to dismiss them as a viable form of birth control for me since I had never been pregnant. Then in April 2009 I had an annual exam.

The exam went as it had every year for several years. Women on the Pill are always asked if they smoke because there’s an increased risk of blood clots in the legs and cardiovascular disease in women who are on the Pill. The risk increases exponentially if a woman is both on the Pill and over 35. Now that I’m over 35 these facts are reiterated, a lot, during annual exams.

I don’t smoke. I decided it wasn’t for me when I was sixteen. I tried smoking cigarettes with the result of puking every time. Add to that, my father told me that if I smoked I’d be asked to do so outside, nothing else. Sixteen-year-old me determined that that lack of reaction wasn’t worth my nausea and vomiting. In my early twenties I went through a phase of smoking clove cigarettes when I commuted to and from work, but I grew out of that after not too long.

So in April 2009 when I asked the nurse practitioner who had performed my Pap smear what I could use for birth control if I did smoke considering my age, it was purely for curiosity. At that point during the visit to the clinic the nurse practitioner had already given me a year’s prescription for birth control pills, which, given my practice of skipping the inert pills during what should have been my monthly period, would not have lasted a full year.

The nurse practitioner told me she’d prescribe an IUD for me, most likely. I reiterated (in case she had not read the paperwork I was required to fill out at the beginning of the clinic visit) that I had never been pregnant. She informed me that my information was not current and that while they did not implant IUDs at the clinic, Planned Parenthood Golden Gate did so.

Soon thereafter I made an appointment at Planned Parenthood to have an IUD implanted. The appointment was over a month away, and in the mean time I needed to get my medical records from the clinic so Planned Parenthood was sure I’d had a recent regular Pap smear.

On July 13, 2009 I went to Planned Parenthood and had a hormonal IUD implanted. I was told to finish the current month of birth control pills, which had less than a week until completed.

After almost twenty years I am finally off the Pill; I took my last pill, late (I should have taken it on Sunday), on Monday, July 20, 2009. Of course I’ll be writing about my experience getting the IUD implanted.

I swear. True story.