Scarleteen

I have a question about periods and my kyleena iud.

I have had it since January of this year. Since getting it my periods have been somewhat irregular and just light spotting for a out 2-3 weeks when I do get it. Last period I got was July 2nd and very very light lasting almost 3 weeks. I haven't bled since and have gotten worried. I've taken 4 pregnancy tests (including one this morning) all have been negative.

My fiance and I also use condoms and withdrawal every time. Should I be worried about pregnancy at this point? It just seems weird because I feel like I'm late for my period. If you could help explain things to me that would be helpful!

Thanks,

Hi gatesy,

I see you've had worries about this before, and you know that because IUD's can change or stop our periods the way we know we are protected is because they are SO effective.

Here, The Buddy System: Effectiveness Rates for Backing Up Your Birth Control With a Second Method, we give the effectiveness rate of IUD + condoms as 99.88% for typical use. To put that in perspective, for every ten thousand person-years this combination is used only 12 pregnancies occur. That's 1 pregnancy for every 830 years of use! That's a really small number, and it get's even smaller with perfect use, and smaller again when you add withdrawal as another method.

So, what can you do to manage your anxiety around this? I'm not going to answer any more questions about the possibility of getting pregnant, you know the answers to that. But I can talk to you about managing your worries, or accessing resources to help with this. What do you say?