Getting to Know You...Getting to Know ALL About You

One day, between fifteen and twenty years ago, I got it into my head that the only birth control method for me was the cervical cap. I can't recall why I was so taken with it. It may have been that you weren't absolutely required to use spermacide with it -- unlike the diaphragm. It may have been that it has a sort of crunchy, counter-culture reputation. I've always been susceptible to that crunchy granola shit. It may have been experimental -- I would have loved that twenty years ago (now, not so much.) Anyway, I found a crunchy women's health clinic that dispensed them and I made an appointment for a fitting.

I sat in the waiting room until a clinic employee came out and called my name -- along with eleven other names! Wow, I thought, they must have a lot of room back there. I stepped in line and we all walked down the hall and followed the clinic employee...into the same room! WTF? I nervously arranged myself on one of the brightly colored sofas in the room. Because, here's the thing about me: I like to imagine that I am a very open, counter-culture, crunchy kind of girl -- but I'm not really like that at all. I'm very private, somewhat pessimistic, and really pretty conventional.

Hi, my name is Joan, she told us. I'm going to give you some basic information about the cervical cap and answer any questions you might have and then we'll proceed onto the fittings.

Whew! For a minute, there, I thought we were going to have some kind of group fitting. We talked about the cap for awhile. She described how it fit snugly over the cervix. That there were only 4 sizes available, so it was possible that some of us would not be able to be fitted -- and that didn't mean we had freaky, misshapen cervices. She told us about cleaning it, storing it, about how boyfriends and husbands couldn't feel it during sex...And then she passed out little mirrors on stands, speculums and little packets of KY and told us to take our pants off.

Shit! Fuck! Ass! It was a fucking group fitting. How did I not know this before hand? For a second or two I just sat there with my mouth open and my speculum in my hand and weighed my desire for this ultra-hip form of birth control against my distaste for showing a room full of strange women (and I do mean strange) my giny. If anybody else walks out, I'll go with them, I thought. But, amazingly, nobody else even looked surprised. Everyone just stood up and started taking off panties. Apparently, all the other women had prepared wisely by wearing loose-fitting, flowy cotton skirts. So, even though the giny was showing, the hiny was not. I, unfortunately, had worn shorts with a pretty skimpy t-shirt. So there was a LOT of me on display.

Well, we all got our speculums in with varying degrees of difficulty, lots of cheerleading (and a demonstration on herself) from Joan, and several bad duck jokes. For the first time, we gaze upon our own cervices. Then Joan comes around and takes a peek for herself and gives each of us a little container with four cervical caps in it -- one in each size. And she gives us recommendations on which size to try first. The speculums come out and are whisked out of the room by Joan's helper. You can try lying on your back, Joan tells us, or squatting, or putting one foot up in a chair, but you've got to get that cap all the way up against the cervix.

I start off on my back with my giny and hiny pointing toward the wall because despite the fact that I've just shown off my cervix to the whole room, I still feel the need to protect my privacy. Unfortunately, this position is a no go for me. I decide to squat -- but then I have to decide if I want to show off my hiny to the room (complete with a pimple on the left butt cheek) or do I want to face the room with two fingers in my vagina. As I'm pondering this great question, I take a quick glance around the room and realize that it just doesn't matter. I'm in a room full of half-naked, imperfect bodies. And the faces we were all making! It was just too funny. Everybody was starting to loosen up. After a minute or two, I felt confident that I had my cap in place. Joan came and checked -- I honestly can't remember how she checked. It must have been with a vag exam, but she confirmed that I had good placement and a good fit.

Then we all had to take the caps out. This turned out to be much more difficult than putting them in. But by this time we were all laughing and giving each other advice: Try putting one foot up on a chair and going into a semi-lunge...bear down like you have to do a poo...no no no, squatting is the way to go...Then somebody farted, and we all just lost it.

What type of birth control do you use?

My apologies for including hysterectomy the way I did. I wanted to include it because if you've had one, it eliminates the question of birth control. However, birth control is never the primary reason for this serious surgery.

Please feel free to expand on your answers in the comment section. Thanks!