agent99 wrote:
[...]
Well, I just called their office, and spoke with her assistant. She
says that because the IUD is most likely to wander out of place in the
first six months of placement, they recommend that you use a condom
during that time.
[...]

Never heard this advice before in my life, and I have a diploma in
family planning. I've just checked out a couple of good sources
("Contraception - Your Questions Answered" by Guillebaud, which is
pretty much the contraceptive bible for family planning doctors, and the
most recent review of IUCDs in the Journal of Family Planning and
Reproductive Medicine) and couldn't find any mention of this advice.
Sounds like waaaaay overkill.

Ask her what, specifically, the figures are. The risk of an IUCD
wandering out of place at _any_ time is very low, so, although I don't
have actual figures for the first six months compared with any other
time, I wouldn't have thought the figures could be that high. I did
manage to find out that the overall failure rate in the first year is
less than 1%, according to the WHO 2000 review. So even if the entire
failure rate of the first year was happening in the first six months,
that would still be a very low overall failure rate. Of course, risks
are going to vary from one type to another, but it still sounds like a
very low risk to me. I wouldn't bother with condoms, at that risk
level, unless I really felt pregnancy would be an out-and-out disaster
(in which case, I would be using them anyway regardless of how long the
IUCD had been in, because there is no such thing as a foolproof method
of contraception). HTH.


All the best,

Sarah
--
http://www.goodenoughmummy.typepad.com

"That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be" - P. C. Hodgell