The world of birth control certainly doesn’t lack for options — in fact, making the right choice can be downright confusing. To help you narrow down the field of possibilities, you should consider your lifestyle, which plays a significant role in the success of your birth control.
At Abortion Care, our team of family planning specialists understands the importance of preventing an unplanned pregnancy, and we work with women in Somerset, New Jersey, to find the best solution for their unique needs.
To that end, we’ve put together a few tips on what you should consider when choosing your birth control, especially when it comes to your lifestyle.
Birth control breakdown
As we mentioned, there are a wide array of options when it comes to preventing an unplanned pregnancy. To give you a better idea of your choices, here are the general categories for birth control:
Barrier
Barrier methods are those that prevent sperm from reaching, and fertilizing, your eggs. Examples of this type of birth control include condoms, sponges, diaphragms, tubal ligation, IUD, and vasectomy.
Hormonal
These types of birth control use hormones to regulate your ovulation and prevent pregnancy. The choice in this category comes down to the delivery method, which includes pills, patches, injections, implants, IUDs, and vaginal rings.
Natural
This catch-all category of birth control includes fertility awareness, outercourse, withdrawal, and abstinence.
Understanding these categories can help you make the first step in choosing an option that’s most comfortable for you, whether it’s based on your own preferences or on health considerations.
Questions to ask yourself
If you’ve narrowed down which type of birth control you’d like to consider, the next step is to find the delivery method that works best for your lifestyle. You might want to take these things into consideration:
Ease of use
Ease of use is a very important consideration when it comes to contraception. Options like IUDs or implants are very popular because they only require a simple in-office procedure to insert the device or implants. This ease of use comes into play if you’re at all unsure of your ability to keep up with efforts like having condoms on hand or remembering a daily pill.
More than one purpose
Another question to ask yourself is whether your birth control can serve a dual purpose. If you have irregular or heavy periods, hormonal options can help regulate your cycles and normalize menstruation. Some women even use hormonal birth control to help with acne, on top of preventing pregnancy.
If your goal is to prevent pregnancy and avoid a sexually transmitted disease, this too will greatly influence your birth control choice. There are only two methods that can accomplish both — condoms and abstinence (and condoms aren’t 100% effective).
Permanent Birth Control
Lastly, if you’ve decided that you’re done having children or do not plan to have them, talk to us about more permanent options, such as a tubal ligation. This relatively simple procedure is highly effective and also keeps your reproductive processes intact (so you won’t enter early menopause, for example).
If you’d like to sit down with one of our family planning specialists to review which options are best for your lifestyle, please don’t hesitate to give us a call. Or you can use the online scheduling tool to set up a consultation.
