I don’t get lady times once a month. In fact, I don’t get it ever. Due to babymaker problems that you’d prefer not to think about (trust me), I’ve been on a constant stream of birth control for six months so as to avoid more surgery. In short, my reproductive system doesn’t function. The factory has been shut down.

But because a few icky lady parts problems and surgeries just aren’t enough to deal with, I’ve also reacted badly to six different forms of hormones, becoming a bloated, mean, or moody mess after a few weeks on each. So last week, once the inexplicable crying had set in, my chest had inflated to monstrous proportions, and I felt the urge to kick small children, my doctor decided it was time to try my seventh variety of hormone. But rather than switching directly from the patch to the new pill, she told me to take a week off, complete a cycle and then get back to being The Amazing Period-Less Girl.

With all the advances in technology and medical research, it’s about damned time someone discovered a way to minimize or eliminate that inconvenient monthly scourge we ladies call our period. Or so drugs like Seasonale and Lybrel, which advertise their ability to reduce or annihilate a monthly period (respectively) would have you believe. As anyone who watches E! or SoapNet (what? You don’t watch “Being Erica”?) can attest, there’s been an explosion in the marketing of birth control pills that help you manage your flow, but the technology allowing a woman to do this has been around since the advent of the Pill in 1960. In fact, the Pill’s creators allowed specifically for a week-long sabbatical from the hormones that stopped you from ovulating with the specific intention of mimicking the body’s natural cycle, worried that women would balk at the notion of not having her trusty monthly visitor. But the fact is, if you’re on the Pill, there’s no reason to bleed. And yet some women still find the idea of not having a period exceedingly unnatural. So the question is: when you’re on the Pill, is your period really necessary? Two women weigh in, after the jump…

It’s going to be raining birth control pills on college campuses now that the “Affordable Birth Control Act” has passed, which, as part of omnibus spending bill, will give college health clinics and community health centers affordable access to birth control pills. In 2007, due to federal cost-cutting, students were forced to pay up to 10 times more for the pill than they had before. Some went from paying $5 or less per month to paying $30 to $50. Some college pharmacies stopped stopped stocking birth control pills altogether. Now uninsured students won’t have to view the pill as an extravagant luxury and can enjoy the tons of sex they’re having without risking an unintended pregnancy. [USNews.com]

The “Gossip Girl” spin-off is supposedly going to surround the early romance between Rufus and Lily and will be very, very, very boring. [Just Jared]

Some women experience orgasms instead of contractions during childbirth. If this was a guarantee (and I was married), I would have had a child a long time ago. [Dear Sugar]

You don’t have to worry about going raw because if used consistently (taking a pill every day, not skipping any), your birth control pill will protect you against pregnancy everyday. [Daily Bedpost]

 

This Pill, which started the sexual revolution by preventing pregnancy, has also been accused of casting a curse on libido. A couple of the women interviewed for Time Out New York’s Sex Issue made it sound like the pill is damaging to their sexual desire and ruined their physical need to be ravaged.  It’s ironic that the thing that makes women able to engage in slightly more carefree sex is also conversely making them chaste, eh?  One of the women, referred to as “Ditched The Pill,”, who had been struggling with her lack of interest in having sex with her boyfriend, noted, “When I went off it, my libido skyrocketed; suddenly it was easy again.”  Is the pill that powerful?