Pregnancy Tests with Mirena

This reads like common problems with this form of birth control. This and Depo Provera are known to cause weight gain that is extremely difficult to lose as well as anxiety and depression among other things. I suggest having the IUD removed and consider your options. I, personally, will not use birth control pills/shots/patches/rings etc. any more. I've done my homework and learned how much damage they do to our bodies. It is all silent while we are younger but poof! we hit 35-45 and our world begins to fall apart and we blame it on menopause but menopause isn't supposed to be as dramatic as it is these days. It is all of the hormone imbalance we've been putting our bodies through our entire adult lives by using birth control. Do some research before making a decision about YOUR body.

If you are not pregnant I would have your thyroid checked. My sister-in-law had the same thing happen to her. She looked like she was 5 months pregnant and it ended up being her thyroid.

I also have a Mirena and have went through the same thing. This is my second Mirena, I had my first one for about 3 yrs and then had it removed and had my daughter. Now I have had my new one for about 15 months. I have noticed that after the first year you seem to put on weight, mine just started happening recently also. I even went and got a pregnancy test too! Hopefully, this will pass because I am not happy with all the weight gain either. I think I am going to make an appointment with my obgyn and see what my options are because I have also noticed a lot of moodiness and a very low sex drive:( Hopefully your bc didn't fail you!

I had a Mirena - loved it for the first year. But, definitely not worth it in the end. It will make you put on weight. I am regularly a very small person, about 96 lbs. I got up to 115 and kept thinking I was pregnant. I don't have the Mirena now, but am still dealing with the after math (fat stomach area) of it. I had it removed about 6- 9 months ago. I am now doing Natural Family Planning due to the experience I had with Mirena. (The doctor cut the string too short and it was very difficult to remove. They wanted to do surgery to remove it, cost $20k - not covered by insurance. I begged them to try harder to get it out - thankfully, they got it out with out surgery, But, I'm still not sure if there are any lasting problems from having it removed that way. It was very painful and hard.)

Fibroids can also cause you to look pregnant and feel crampy. Most women have them, but sometimes they grow really big during or after a pregnancy due to hormones. My mom had one removed when I was a child and it was the size of a bowling ball...she definitely looked pregnant. They are usually not a big deal at all, but your doctor can just watch them to make sure they aren't growing. Good luck!

If you had two pregnancies on other birth control, and might be pregnant again, I think you might want to check out a book like Taking Charge of Your Fertility by Toni Weschler or Your Fertility Signals by Merryl Winstein. The first is the Fertility Bible and the second is like the CliffsNotes version. That way, you can start to recognize times when you might possibly be fertile, which is when any birth control you might be taking would fail anyway. And if your cycles are very regular and such then you might not need another form of birth control anyway--if you practice the "fertility awareness" correctly it works just as well as if you take the pill correctly (although, of course, most people don't quite get to perfection). At the very least, you might have more of an idea of whether or not you ARE pregnant because you'll know what your cycle has actually been doing, since a lot more happens in a month than just period or no period. The books make it so much less of a mystery.

Either way, I hope it works out well for you. It sounds stressful! I hope you're all right and can work things out as easily as possible. Good luck!

Hey, R.! The only thing I can tell you is that my friend got pregnant with her second child while she had that. Appearantly it didn't work. She said she'd never use that again! Of course, her daughter is a cute perfectly healthy little girl! Good luck and go to the doctor in case there's a problem.