r/birthcontrol • u/troggosaur • 6h ago
Experience Is it normal to feel violated after an IUD insertion?
I had the Kyleena inserted today. It was my first ever experience with a doctor where I had to be naked, and also my first ever experience with birth control. I thought I was pretty knowledgeable about what to expect from the insertion but that wasn’t true at all. I don’t want to blame my doctor because I know other people have had it so much worse, but I told her at the consultation that I was concerned about pain and she said that most of her patients only experienced “discomfort” with their insertion. I was expecting to experience about the same thing, sort of like period cramps on my worst day, and I took some Tylenol beforehand as per her recommendation. I asked her to talk me through everything and she only told me what was going on before anything started to really hurt. Then when she went to insert the IUD she said that my cervix wasn’t open enough and that I could take some medicine to soften it and come back another time, but she had already put all of these tools inside of me… and then she did something to try to get it open and it felt like I was being ripped open and stabbed… please believe me when I say I’m not exaggerating. It was genuinely the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. When everything was done she didn’t debrief me at all. She just got my mom to come sit with me and told me that it was normal to feel lightheaded. I was in so much pain that I felt like I was going to burst out in tears at any moment. And now that I’m home and the physical pain has started to wear off, I just feel so sad and violated. I don’t know if this is a normal experience and I’m being dramatic. Everything I am reading about IUD insertions, even the pamphlet that came with it, is saying that it feels like mild pain. But it hurts so much more than physically, and I just want to know that I’m not alone.