MIRENA IUD: Soliciting positive and negative experiences?

1. Get it done when you're on your period, not after. I read somewhere the optimal time was 1-10 days after your period. WRONG.

Don't know when mine's going to be, if ever, b/c I just had a baby and now I'm on Cerazette and it supposedly stops your periods. 

Tbh I've been worrying about the pain to the point where I'm wondering if it might not be better just to stay on the Pill, b/c when I went last week I had an exam and it hurt like a mo' fo'!  I'm guessing it's b/c I just gave birth 8 weeks ago, but man, I dunno about this.  They said it takes 20 mins., and I can't imagine 20 mins. of that kind of pain again! 

Plus my groin muscle pulled away completely on my left side during the delivery - which was super fast - and my rectus abdominus hasn't gone back together, so that position they need me to be in to get the thing in hurts big time.

They said it takes 20 mins., and I can't imagine 20 mins. of that kind of pain again! 

The whole procedure takes 20 mins--including 10mins of chatting with the doctor, 5 mins after the insertion of having a glass of water and getting dressed... You spend 5 mins in the stirrups, of which 4.5 mins is "normal" gyn procedure. The painful stuff takes a couple of seconds. The first instance of pain is when she inserts a sond of some kind, probably 2 sec, and then when she inserts the coil, another 2 secs. I'd say that if I was able to handle it, with my non-existant tolerance for pain AND never having given birth, anybody should be able to. The pain I was referring to lasts for a total of about 4 secs.

Also, if you have given birth your uterine opening will be a lot bigger than if you haven't, she looked at mine and said, "oh my, that's tight"... She said that for women who've given birth it's usually just mild discomfort, comparable to a standard gyn exam.

Oh, and I'm completely fine today. The period-like pain went away in 4 hours, enough that we went out to eat to celebrate me getting rid of hormonal birth control. I'm still taking it easy today, just in case. I really don't want to do anything that might aggravate my insides and instigate expulsion (although I'm not sure if that's even plausible).

Thanks for sharing your experience, Coffebean!  I'm still sort of on the fence, but I do have some time to decide. 

I don't do poorly on hormonal contraception - crossing fingers that lasts!  I have a physio appointment tomorrow to assess my stomach again, so hopefully I'll get a better time frame on how long it's going to take to recover.  Right now, getting into the position is extremely painful, getting out of it is even worse.     My lower abs aren't so bad, but that groin muscle is a beeotch.

I'm surprised you got a doctor to insert an IUD when you haven't had children.  I have never heard of that.
P.S. The shot (depo provera) is the devil!!

I'm surprised you got a doctor to insert an IUD when you haven't had children.  I have never heard of that.

They don't like to do it here (Finland), but they will if there's a pressing reason for it. I can't take hormonal birth control due to massive side effects, and condoms are too unreliable for a couple who adamantly doesn't want children.
Of course it is very painful to insert if you haven't had kids, and the gyneocologist has to know what they are doing. Another reason why they don't advertise coils as an effective way of contraception is because you become more vulnerable to STDs  (and of course if you haven't had kids cannot possibly be in a stable relationship).

I think that they also think that women are complete morons who need to be defended from themselves as much as possible.
This seems to be universal, as I googled info on the coil I went to British, American and Finnish sites, and they all say things like "a person who has not given birth should preferably not have a coil fitted" without explaining WHY or "a coil is not the primary choice for a woman who hasn't given birth".

 

I've decided to just stay on the Pill until we either have a third or Andrew has a vasectomy.  I read some other experiences of the Mirena on another site that put me off. 

I'm surprised you got a doctor to insert an IUD when you haven't had children.  I have never heard of that.
P.S. The shot (depo provera) is the devil!!

I haven't had kids and I was offered a Mirena coil....

And I'm on Depo and LOVE it. LOVE LOVE LOVE it. Everyone's body is different....