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The past couple of weeks have been awfully busy for me. In fact, I’m at home today with a kiddo who has strep throat. (Here’s hoping I don’t pick it up too!) At my most recent appointment with my obgyn, everything looked good. I’d gained 2 lbs. My doctor is still not particularly concerned because of the overall weight loss that I had during the first trimester. My blood pressure and urine were fine as well. Little one’s heartbeat was in the 150s, exactly where it should be, and I’m feeling lots of movement now.

Labels inside every box of morning-after pills, drugs widely used to prevent pregnancy after sex, say they may work by blocking fertilized eggs from implanting in a woman’s uterus. But an examination by The New York Times has found that the federally approved labels and medical websites do not reflect what the science shows. Studies have not established that emergency contraceptive pills prevent fertilized eggs from implanting in the womb, leading scientists say. Rather, the pills delay ovulation, the release of eggs from ovaries that occurs before eggs are fertilized, and some pills also thicken cervical mucus so sperm have trouble swimming.

Life has scripts. Little socially-agreed plays that we enact rather than trying to figure out all our interactions from scratch every time. Many of them are very simple. There’s also scripts for sex. Unfortunately, the most common script out there is terrible.

While we’re on this topic today, on this day, just a couple reminders about where we stand and what we can help with should you or someone you know become pregnant when it was not wanted or intended. 1. We are a fully pro-choice organization, resolutely supportive of everyone’s – at every age – right (even when they legally do not currently have that right) to choose to remain pregnant or terminate a pregnancy; to choose to parent, to choose to arrange an adoption, or to choose abortion.

One of the biggest messages I (and most other sex educators I know) wish everyone would receive and embrace is that when it comes to how you express yourself sexually with things like this, there is no “supposed to.” All there is, and should be, is what feels true and real for you, what you find…

If cunnilingus isn’t an activity he enjoys, and he’s made clear he doesn’t enjoy it and doesn’t want to do it, in my book you don’t bring it up again as something you want. He’s made clear it’s just not for him right now, and he tried it twice to see. He knows you’re interested in it, so he’s…

From Reuters, today: A large real-life test of birth control methods found more U.S. women got pregnant while using short-acting methods such as pills, patches and vaginal rings — and the failure rate was highest when they were used by women under 21. “We found that participants using oral contraceptive pills, a transdermal patch or a vaginal ring had a risk of contraceptive failure that was 20 times as high as the risk among those using long-acting reversible contraception,” said the research team.

I’m most interested in how you feel now about this, and separate from how you think everyone else would feel. Hopefully, if you haven’t identified your own feelings yet, my answer can give you some help doing that. So, values. Here’s the thing about values: they aren’t universal. They also aren’t…

First things first: you need to take a pregnancy test. ASAP. You don’t have to save up for that: pregnancy tests will be free for you at many public health, sexual health or abortion clinics or providers, including most Planned Parenthood branches. As well, home pregnancy tests you can purchase at…

It’s not even noon and I’ve cried at least 10 separate times today. Hooray. I had another topic in mind for this blog entry, but I’m incredibly emotional today and just can’t quite tackle the topic I wanted. One of the things I’ve discovered about pregnancy is that it amplifies everything. The good…

I wish that I knew more about your relationship and your boyfriend than just this particular conflict. It’d also help to know what a word like “slutty” even means to him. After all, slut is one of those words that’s a lot like the word god: what it means to one person can be radically different than…

Bravo to you for considering safer sex practices as part of the sexual choices you and your girlfriend make in your relationship! Regardless of the history of the partners involved, thinking and talking about safety is really important. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a lot of people, including some…

After quite a wait, we finally got a look at the little peanut that I’ve been carrying around for the past 20 weeks.

You know, anytime anyone says or feels that they literally hate someone’s body or body parts, my advice is going to be that it isn’t a good idea for the person with those feelings to be intimate with the person with that body. If we deeply disdain someone’s body parts, or anything big like that…

If it’s wrong for people to engage in sex with someone without knowing and disclosing all of who they are, might be or become, or will be, in any respect, including sexually, for all of their lives, then every single person on earth who has ever engaged in sex has been doing wrong. We could say…

It’s been an exciting and also unexciting couple of weeks. Life is changing, as it often seems to do. At my last doctor’s appointment I had gained a couple of pounds. My care provider was okay with this because it puts me back on the way to my pre-pregnancy weight. My partner was able to come to my appointment with me this time. We got to hear the heartbeat again.

Well, I don’t think vaginas or vulvas (or penises or anuses or mouths or ears or eyes or fingers or kidneys: any body parts) are gross. I think they’re really freaking cool and totally fascinating, whether I’m talking or thinking about my own, or all vulvas or vaginas. But you’re making quite clear…

3 words…round ligament pain. Oh my. This is probably my biggest complaint over the past couple of weeks. And my goodness, it is uncomfortable! Round ligament pain happens as the uterus expands in pregnancy. There are ligaments (special muscles) that hold the uterus in place in the abdomen. During…

Sauce’s question continued: He would stop me by telling me how much he loved me and how I should give a chance. I met him at university and he led me to a dark place and forcibly kissed me. I say forcibly because I was in shock, unresponsive and had backed up to the wall. It was my first kiss, a…

Today we’ve got the whole of a short interview that was excerpted in small part for a piece over at Ms. Magazine yesterday, Future of Feminism: Sex Education As a Human Right. The added bonus of aiming for truly inclusive sex education is that it can also inform people about the sexualities, bodies, identities and lives of others different than their own, helping them to understand that even if and when their own rights aren’t or don’t seem to be impeded, the rights of others are and that needs to matter.

The Native Youth Sexual Health Network (NYSHN) is an organization by and for Indigenous youth that works within the full spectrum of sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice across the United States and Canada. The reclamation and revitalization of traditional knowledge about people’s…

Yeah, we meant to say that. Boy do we wish we didn’t. Here’s the spiel: it’s Back Up Your Birth Control Day today, but as you may have heard, or personally experienced, here in the states, we’re still having a lot of trouble with pharmacists refusing over-the-counter Plan B (emergency contraception, the morning-after-pill, or whatever you like to call it), for a whole bunch of reasons, including because of age, even though most of those asking for or about it are of legal age to get it over-the-counter, and without a prescription.

As we’re rolling out some redesign we’ve been working (and working to fund) over the last year or so, we thought we’d celebrate by sharing some of our history. Mind, it’s probably more fun for our readers than it is for me, since showing designs from times when the tech to do design blew, and one’s…

We have a good piece on safety when it comes to online relationships and meeting up here, but let’s review the basics and talk about you and this situation specifically. Meeting someone who you don’t know in person and haven’t met before alone, especially if and when they may feel you agreed to be…

I am so fucking fed up. The latest is from Arizona: now, if an employee uses the company’s health insurance to purchase contraceptive pills, they must prove to their employer that they are using them for “non sex” purposes. If they don’t, they could be fired. How is this supposed to go? “Oh, yeah…