Contraception Never Again: The Upside of Menopause

It was Glasgow, 1995, and a condom catastrophe had occurred. This was back in the days when chemists did not sell the morning after pill, so I did need to get to a doctor. But I was a producer at BBC Scotland and it was my job to collect Blue Peter presenter Diane-Louise Jordan and CBBC’s Toby Anstis from Glasgow Airport early next morning. I would be rehearsing with them all day for a new studio-based kids’ TV show.

‘I’ll have to go the day after tomorrow,’ I said to my boyfriend who was back from his two week shift on a North Sea oil rig. Our sex life in those early days was all hellos and goodbyes and perhaps this hello had been a bit too exuberant.

As a post-menopausal woman now, there is not one single thing that I miss about contraception; it had always been a pain in the neck, and occasionally a pain in the vagina.

In my 20s, I had relied upon the diaphragm, totally ignoring the critical laments of my friend, Jane.

‘Yuck, all that spermicide you need to use. Then you stand up afterwards, and out it comes. I hate that sensation of trifle dribbling down my leg,’ said Jane. ‘And aren’t you worried that by the time you get the thing in, the prospective man will have escaped?’

‘No, Jane, I am not, funnily enough.’

Gone but not forgotten, and never missed!!

By my early 30s, condoms were firmly in play. Reliable little critters they were for many a year. Not that I ever forgot Jane calling me one day to tell me, ’The earth didn’t move but the condom broke.’

On this July evening in Glasgow, the earth did move but the condom had disappeared, later retrieved from somewhere north of my cervix. Next day I was up at the crack of dawn and off to the airport I went.

I spent a hectic day dashing around with the very chatty and delightful TV presenters, then presented myself at the GP’s surgery pronto next morning.

‘You should have been here yesterday,’ the doctor snapped at me, as she wrote out a prescription. It turns out that the morning after pill is best taken the morning after. It’s not called the morning after the morning after pill, is it?

Paul went flying back to his oil rig and I carried on as usual, with no thought that I could be pregnant. But I was, as I found out about a month later. So, I have the long-running BBC Children’s TV show Blue Peter to thank for my first son. It’s a heartfelt and huge thank you, by the way. He’s a darling.

Paul and I had only known each other for seven months, and he’d been on an oil rig for half of that time. Still, we were quite cheerful about the whole thing. I would be 33 when the baby was due and Paul would be 30. These were the halcyon days. The best thing about being pregnant is that you cannot get pregnant and so all that worry goes out the window. It is a marvellous aphrodisiac, for the first pregnancy anyway.

baby born after contraception not working
Hard to complain about contraception not working when the result is so sweet

After son number one was born, I was more precise with contraception and used an IUD for the first two years we spent as a young family, initially in Karachi and later in Sydney. Then Paul was about to head back to work in Papua New Guinea for two months and we decided to try our luck before he went.

Out came the IUD— ouch — but our luck was in. So, our second son was very much planned. And if you met him, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that.

For some now inexplicable reason I decided aged 40 that we really needed another child, or at least to try for one. It took me a year to persuade Paul of this, and during that year he had a referral for a vasectomy sitting on his desk. But he never could quite bring himself to make an appointment with the urologist.

My persuasive techniques worked. Out came the old faithful IUD, another pain in the cervix. I am sure a tool called a fishing rod was mentioned as I lay there, legs akimbo; the little strings had worked their way wombwards. We got going trying to create a new life, our second planned child, third in total.

An IUD – ouch – not the actual colours of an IUD!!

Three miscarriages later, we were on our last throw of the dice, which my doctor recommended should happen on day 12, day 14 and day 16 of my cycle. There was not much romance involved, but his advice was sound. I was pregnant again.

Paul and I popped along to have a scan, and that’s when another startling moment occurred.

‘There are two heartbeats,’ said the sonographer, ‘you’re having twins.’

All my smugness about being such a pro with contraception and conception went out the window once more. We were having our planned child but alongside that baby was a bonus extra.

So our first son was unplanned and so was one of our boy/girl fraternal twins. But which twin is the planned one and which the unplanned? They still argue about that.

twins one was planned
Our dear twins when they were tiny babies

Meanwhile, Paul rushed off and had that vasectomy immediately after our twins were born. Excellent, I thought, no more contraception for me.

This was excellent, as I told Jane on the phone that night. ‘No more contraception for me.’

‘Unless you have an affair of course,’ said Jane. 

Have you had your own contraception never again moment of freedom?

Seriously, is there one thing you miss about it?

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