S/O: Copper IUD a good idea?

[brittone2]

I have some nickel sensitivity and always wondered if that would be an issue. I like the idea, but I am afraid we'll shell out the $$ and I'll hate it. I have a high deductible plan so would be paying for insertion and removal OOP. And then I'll have to decide how long to ride it out before deciding to remove. If I end up with a few heavy periods, fine. But how long do you wait it out? 6 months of heavy periods? A year? etc. before deciding whether to stick w/ it or remove. I think that part would be frustrating. You give it 6 months and they are still heavy...do you give it more time? 9 months? A year?

Interesting about the bacterial infections. When I looked into it a while back I read a few anecdotal reports of people having more issues with that with the Paragard.

I do sometimes wonder if *some* of the side effects are related to women in perimenopause (or approaching it) using it (changes in cycle length and so forth, although I definitely believe it can just be due to the paragard too), or people who previously used the pill and had it mask their symptoms (of something like undiagnosed PCOS). WHen I did some reading there were complaints of hairloss, acne, oily skin and hair...which maybe are related to the IUD, but I wonder if some of those women have undiagnosed hormonal issues like PCOS that were no longer masked by the pill, kwim? (PCOS affects 5-10% of women of childbearing age, so not terribly uncommon). The pill can improve things like acne, hair loss, etc. for some women with PCOS, so if someone has been on BCP or pregnant for years before switching to a paragard, it seems possible the pill was masking their symptoms up until they had the IUD inserted.