Can Your Birth Control Method Impact Future Fertility?
I have heard that different methods of birth control can impact your ability to conceive. Can you elaborate?
Question:Toni Weschler, MS
Toni Weschler is the author of the popular book Taking Charge of Your Fertility. By offering a simple and effective means of identifying... Read more
The two forms of birth control that can potentially pose the most problems for future fertility are the IUD and all forms of hormonal birth control.
In the case of the IUD, women are put at greater risk of developing PID, or pelvic inflammatory disease due to either the insertion of the IUD itself, or subsequent exposure to sexually transmitted diseases. In the former case, during insertion, bacteria can enter the sterile environment of the uterus and cause a serious infection. In addition, the most notorious discontinued Dalkon Shield had a twisted string that acted as a type of wick to draw bacteria from the non-sterile vagina to the sterile uterus. Often, this resulted in PID, wreaking havoc on the woman's fallopian tubes.
In the case of the Pill, Norplant and Depo-Provera, many women find that it takes a long time to resume cycling again after having been on hormones. It usually takes even longer for women coming off Norplant and Depo-Provera to resume cycling, but in any case, once women start recycling again they tend to revert back to their former pattern. So, for example, if you used to have very irregular cycles before going on the Pill, your cycles would probably revert back to that irregular pattern.
The other more insidious problem with the Pill is the undetectable effect it can have on the cervical crypts within the cervix. These channels produce the healthy, slippery cervical fluid necessary for conception to occur. The Pill often destroys the cells that line the channels, preventing a woman from producing the wet cervical fluid, which allows the sperm to swim through the cervix around ovulation. Often a woman's body will be able to regenerate the destroyed cells, but if not, she may need to resort to intrauterine insemination (IUI) in order to bypass the "biological gate" which is preventing the sperm from reaching their prized destination of the egg.
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