I recently got my copper IUD removed, and the difference is so staggering that it’s almost depressing.

Please note: this is NOT meant to bash the importance or necessity of birth control methods! I will ALWAYS choose the risks of an IUD or other BC methods over the risks of an unplanned pregnancy. Also, sorry in advance for the TMI.

I don’t know if this is the right sub for this rant, but this experience just makes me so damn frustrated. Maybe with the healthcare industry; maybe with medical gaslighting; maybe with how confusing it is to inhabit an AFAB body; maybe with just how fucking hard it is as a woman to find a birth control method that isn’t compromising one’s physical status quo in some way.

I recently got my tubes removed, and had my Paragard of 6+ years removed during the same surgery. When my husband and I had sex for the first time after, it felt completely and utterly different. My vag feels … softer, somehow? Everything just feels smoother, I guess, like there’s no friction whatsoever. Honestly, my pre-IUD days feel like a lifetime ago, so I can’t say whether sex feels like what it used to before the IUD or not. But the change was literally overnight, and I was wracking my brain trying to figure out what would have changed. And then I realized—vaginal dryness. My IUD had been giving me vaginal dryness.

For the last several years, sex with my husband had become more uncomfortable than it had been our first few years together. I used to have high libido, and could get “wet” practically at the drop of the hat. Then I got my IUD, and it took my body almost a year to fully adjust to it (that’s a whole other saga). After that, I started noticing changes in how sex felt. It was harder for me to feel “turned on” or naturally get wet; I often experienced a feeling of friction or burning if we didn’t use enough lubricant (something that had not been a problem before), and I sometimes experienced spotting after. I went to my doctor complaining of these symptoms, and even wondered aloud to her if it could be the result of the IUD—to which I never really got a direct answer, other then that the Paragard is non-hormonal and so it shouldn’t cause side effects aside from heavier periods. They gave me some blood tests (not a complete round of tests), found nothing abnormal, and then the conversation just … ended. No follow-up or suggestions of what to do or check next.

After awhile, I went through a kind of mourning process with sex and resigned myself to the idea that maybe this was just normal for my age and for long-term relationships—that it was normal for my sex drive (and in turn my ability to get wet easily or feel comfortable during sex) to diminish over time. My husband and I actually made the best of it by learning to take more time during foreplay and using more lubricant to make sex feel better for both of us, and I was just starting to get used to the “new normal.”

But now I’m thrown for a loop. I know copper IUDs aren’t supposed to cause vaginal dryness, but the night and day difference is so immediate and so staggering, I don’t know how there can be any other explanation for it. I wish I could be happy about the change, and the possibility that sex start will feel closer to what it used to again. But instead, I’m just disappointed and mad.

I’m disappointed that there was next to no info about this as a possible side effect of the Paragard, and that a lot of concerns about copper IUDs don’t seem to be documented or studied enough. I’m mad at myself for not advocating for myself enough, or trusting myself enough to know something was off. Maybe I wouldn’t have had to go through so much discomfort or self-doubt for the last several years if I or my doctor had taken my concerns seriously. Maybe I could’ve had a normal sex life this whole time. Or maybe it wouldn’t have changed my mind on keeping the IUD at the time—but at least I could have felt more informed about what was happening to my body.