Why I'm Glad I Got A Hormone Imbalance

I knew very early on that I didn’t want to have kids. I remember when I was a teenager, how weirded out and uncomfortable I felt when I realized that most little girls get baby dolls to play with, me included. I vividly remember the late 90s commercials for these dolls, where you would feed, burp, and change their diaper. These were marketed to little girls like being a mother is the only aspiration they should have.

As I got older and got my period, I started to have a complicated relationship with my body. The limited SexEd we were given focused on the menstrual cycle only being for reproduction. (Which this idea is unfortunately still very present today.) This made me resent my body because it felt like its sole purpose was the thing I refused with every cell of my being.

This resentment was deepened by my irregular cycles. Where my periods would “be late” for weeks at a time. Which made me paranoid of my own body even when I wasn’t even sexually active. This paranoia is what influenced me to plan to get a hysterectomy, the ultimate birth control. But at the time I was in my late teens and didn’t have that kind of money.

My journey with hormonal birth control

While I started to save up for the surgery, I found myself in a relationship. The paranoia of my late periods mixed with a close call, when a condom broke led me to go on hormonal birth control. The minimal research I did before deciding on one was the one with the highest efficacy. Which is how I landed on the Depo Provera shot.

If you’re not familiar with the Depo shot, it’s pretty infamous for negatively impacting your bones. Which is why it’s only recommended to be used for a year. If a medication mentioned it would break down my bones at a faster rate, the current me would try my best to avoid it, but at the time I didn’t care. I just wanted to not have any more pregnancy scares.

As I started to get the injections, my periods became longer. I was spotting for months at a time. I also started to gain a decent amount of water weight. Jumping up 6 pounds in a few months.

Over time the spotting stopped, and I stopped getting my period altogether. After the one year mark came up, I switched to the Nexplanon implant. The implant had its own set of struggles where I dropped most of the water weight, but I started to get severe cystic acne. Acne that would take me 3 years to figure out was a side effect of the implant. I decided to get the implant taken out. And luckily for me, the long term relationship I was in had ended so I could focus on healing my hormonal acne without having any pregnancy scares.

How my hormonal acne led me to love my cycle

Once I got off the implant, my hormonal acne got worse. I had a new breakout every other day. Looking back, I think it was due to my unhealthy healthy eating habits. As my desperation grew, I restricted my diet more and more. Going from vegetarian to vegan and finally vegan keto. Which left me eating a spinach salad with roasted veggies and tahini 6 days a week.

As I was trying every recommendation I would come across online, I found information on how hormonal acne is caused by a hormonal imbalance. Which led me down the rabbit hole of hormone health. Specifically how different herbs can help support hormonal health. After taking a couple of different courses in herbalism, I was finally seeing results in my cycle and my hormonal acne started to lessen. But not completely.

During this time I had heard about cycle tracking and had used it for a few years. I was so interested in it that I wanted to get a certification to teach cycle tracking. Which is how I got into a course that pushed my boundaries and comfort level when it came to learning about conception and pregnancy. But it also taught me the basis of what I now teach, that our cycle is so much more than just for reproduction. It is central to our health and well being. Our cycle impacts our cardiovascular, immune, bone, mental, and breast health, and so much more that we don’t even know about yet because our body is understudied. Focusing on supporting my cycle is how I finally got rid of my hormonal acne that overwhelmed me for 6 years.

While cycle charting gave me something invaluable. Being able to understand what my body is doing in every stage of my cycle. I’m no longer scared or in the dark about my cycle. I know when in my cycle I need to be more cautious and how long my cycles will be. The peace of mind that cycle tracking gives you is truly insane.

I think the narrative of our cycles being only for reproduction comes from people always assuming that people want kids. That getting married, having a white picket fence with a dog and 2 kids is the goal. Yet research that looks at how our hormones (estrogen and progesterone) impact us has been around for decades. How much our cycle impacts our health gets underplayed and ignored, which I think is part of why we are seeing such a backlash of people not trusting medical doctors.

You’ll change your mind when….

I couldn’t finish this article without mentioning all the excuses and push backs I’ve heard over the years. Coming from a Colombian family, it was brought up more and more often as I neared my late 20s. “You’ll change your mind when you’re older,” “It’ll be different when you have your own,” or my favorite, “You’ll change your mind when you meet someone special.”

I kept pushing back my decision because I was tired of hearing the same things over and over again. And I say decision because I was and continue to be open to the idea of changing my mind. If one day I get run over by this sense of motherhood, then so be it. But as of now, at the age of 32 I’ve never had a moment where I’d think, “Damn, you know what would make this moment better? A child.”

And the idea of “You’ll change your mind when you meet someone special” is also flawed. There’s a good chance that someone special will also not want to have kids. I’ve known the love of my life for 16 years, we’ve been together for 7 years, and now we’re happily married. I want to travel and show him the world. Not show him the limits of sleep deprivation and stress. There is also a trauma component that could be a whole other article. Of not wanting to pass down learned behaviors that come up when we are in those states of stress and agitation.

Talking to other people that are childfree by choice is always funny. Because we put so much thought into the pros and cons of having children. When most people don’t think anything about it. This life altering event happens, and they just shrug their shoulders and go with it. I wonder if having more people take a pause and choosing if they actually want kids is another reason the birthrate is down around the world.

It should be if you want to be a parent, great. If not, then don’t pressure someone into a life altering event that you won’t or will barely be around to help with. Especially at a government level.

Thank you for reading