Ep. 198: OB put her on *3* birth controls instead of healing her hormonal problem

Arianna knew something wasn't right with her cycle, but when she went to her doctor, they just prescribed birth control. It didn't work. So they added a second form of birth control. Then, a third! Without ever getting to the underlying issue causing the issue in the first place. Finally, she had had enough. The journey she took from that point is an inspiration to us all. I know you'll enjoy this episode with fellow FCP, Arianna Bañuelos.

NOTE: This episode is appropriate for most audiences but does mention pregnancy loss and trauma.

GUEST BIO: Arianna Bañuelos is a wife, mom of five, and host of Fertility and Wholeness with Arianna. She’s bilingual in English and Spanish and shares her journey of discovering the Creighton Model, inspiring women to embrace whole-person health.

MORE HELPFUL INFO:

Contact Arianna for Spanish-speaking CrMS services: arianna@fruitfulnwhole.com

Ep. 2: BASICS - Fertility Method of Choice: Creighton

Ep. 143: Preventing Miscarriage by optimizing Thyroid with functional med/NaProTechnology, with Amanda Frederick, FNP

Transcript

Caitlin Estes (00:26)
Welcome back to the Woven Well podcast. If you're a long time listener, then you know how much we value hearing from real women who have experienced transformation and struggle and all the things with their periods or cycle health, hormonal health, fertility, and also how this can have such an impact on the relationship with their bodies and even their doctors. Like it's all kind of mixed up there together. And I think it's so important to hear these real stories.

There's so much broken within women's health and yet I think there's a lot of reason to have tremendous hope. Change is happening, and I think women are at the center of that change. So today I'm happy to chat with a guest who has a great story of this transformation Arianna, so Arianna welcome to the show!

Arianna (01:13)
Thank you for having me.

Caitlin Estes (01:15)
I'm so glad to have you here and why don't you introduce yourself to our audience? Just share a little bit about yourself.

Arianna (01:22)
Well, my name is Arianna and I am a mom of five. I've been married for 24 years. I live in California. I'm from Mexico. My husband and I immigrated to the US in 2002 and we've been here since then. I'm so excited to be here first. But how all started for me was when I was a teen, I kept having migraines.

I think that's like my farthest memory about me having any issue. I just remember having them and then being gone for a while and then coming back. Fast forward, I got married and I was diagnosed with thyroid issues. And so I'm very into, my husband and my dad are very into holistic approaches. So I went to a naturopath, he gave me all the meds, all the supplements, and a diet and all the things. And it seemed like all my symptoms went away within a year. And I was able to have my first child. I got married really young, so I wasn't worried about like I'm running out of time. I'm not going to figure out. I was married at 17. So by the time that I figured this out, four years had passed. So at 21, I had my first daughter. Really nothing seemed awful or weird at all. And I, soon as I got into the postpartum appointment, I was being asked, what are you going to use as a form of birth control? And up until that point, I had never taken any birth control because that wasn't the point. And so I remember being 21 and I realized that responsibility that it is to have a kid. And I was like, I need to space the next one. So I was, I chose the IUD.

Arianna (03:10)
So I had the IUD for many years, around five years. And we started thinking like, we should have another one. I'm gonna have it removed. And I had it removed. I got pregnant right away. But after I had that second baby, that's when I started having difficulties, more obvious difficulties. Like I had really heavy bleeding.

Arianna (03:38)
I started to notice that my migraines were actually related to my cycle. I would get a migraine for a couple of days and then I would get my period. So I was like every month, like for two days, I cannot function. I cannot take care of my kids. It's hard for me to work. At that time I was working as a server in a restaurant. I couldn't stand people or my husband, right? Or my husband. Yeah.

Caitlin Estes (03:42)

Yeah, migraines are the worst.

Arianna (04:05)
So, I remember like throwing up for hours, going to the ER a few times because I was like, I can't stand this pain. But I wasn't, like, I wasn't really thinking it was cycle related. I would just keep thinking like, "I just get migraines. I just get migraines." So I go back to the doctor and I say, there is something really like off this time. I don't know if it has to do with the birth of my baby, but I'm having a prolonged bleeding. I'm bleeding for like two weeks and then it stops and comes back again.

And I keep having these migraines and he's like, well, let me do an ultrasound and like do a pap smear. Right. And so he did the pap smear and then he's like, the ultrasound is not going to be covered under, not under family planning visits. So I need a, that's going to be billed separately. Are you willing to pay for it for the copay? And I was like, okay, yeah. He did the ultrasound for like two minutes and then he went like, looks good.

Arianna (05:04)
So you want to get back. We can put the IUD and then get you on the pill. So I was like.

Caitlin Estes (05:10)
Hmm, a two. Two things.

Arianna (05:14)
the IUD and the pill, he's like, well, you know, like the IUD is gonna have an effect in like six cycles and six months. So until then you can have the pill so your body kind of like gives you a break so you're not bleeding all the time. And it didn't seem like I was like too, like, because I was already like trying to like realize, I was already trying to avoid birth control pills because my mom had varicose veins.

And my mom told me that they got really bad when she went into the pill. So in my history, I was like, let's avoid that. So I don't want to get into the pill. So I'm like, well, it's only six cycles and I really need this because I'm not like functioning well. Like I'm really like not functioning for three or four days out of my month. So I, I agreed to it. And at the same time I was going to church and the priest told me like, you should check into Billings method. Just to like learn about things and I was just like, okay. So I learned about the billings method.

Caitlin Estes (06:19)
For anyone listening who may not be familiar with the Billings ovulation method as an early method that is almost like a simplified version of the Creighton model system. It just looks at sensation from cervical mucus and Creighton was actually built upon the Billings method to get a little more detailed and get a little more  hormonal information, but that's what she's referring to. It is a type of fertility awareness method or natural family planning methods. Okay, keep going.

Arianna (06:47)
Good. So I learned that one and I was learning that one. I had the IUD and the pill at the same time. So I was hearing a lot of conflicted information like this isn't good for you. And then the doctor keeps saying, this is the only thing that is going to work for you. And then I started having moral issues around all the things that they were giving me. And so I go back to the doctor and I said, I'm going to take off the IUD. Please take it out because you're also giving me the pill. He's like, no, no, no, let's just do the patch and the pill and the IUD because I wasn't getting any better. The hormone, my migraines was still there. My bleeding wasn't going anywhere. And I just kept thinking that in my head it was like there must be something that were left during the birth of my daughter. So I kept thinking that it was related to the birth the whole time. I don't know why, but I kept thinking. So it's like, let's just put you on the patch. Try the patch for a couple cycles. If it doesn't work, we'll remove the IUS. I'm already taking all these things.

Caitlin Estes (07:47)

Yes. And can we just pause here for a second to acknowledge the fact that you came in with horrible symptoms, migraine, extended bleeding, bleeding that was happening every other cycle or every other week. So two weeks on two weeks off. And the first response was not to figure out why that was happening, but was instead to insert an IUD and to add birth control to that.

And then when those things were still unresolved, even at that point, it wasn't, well, let's go figure out why, like something's going on. Instead, it was, let's put you on a third type of birth control. That blows my mind. That is just wild to think about that you were put in that situation to be on three different types of birth control. Okay.

Arianna (08:49)
I was, like, now looking back, I'm like, why did I even agree to all this? So I was like, okay, I'll take the patch because I really don't want to be bleeding every day.

Caitlin Estes (08:54)
Mm. Yeah, you wanted resolution. You wanted to feel better. You didn't want to have the migraines. You didn't want to have the bleeding. Of course you were going to do whatever they told you to do.

Arianna (09:09)
So at the same time, I started tracking my cycle and I realized my cycle was crazy. And I was like, this is why I'm feeling all of this. This is like crazy. There is no pattern. There's no nothing to this. And so I told the lady too, I'm like, this is not following anything. I felt like if I was just using this, it just relying on this information, I'll be very confused. And she said, let's add the temperature,
just to make sure that you can confirm ovulation if you're ovulating. So, IUD, pill, patch, ovulation tracking with the Billings, and adding the temperature, which now makes a sympto-thermal, which is a different form of, right? So I felt like I was going crazy for a year, trying to figure out all these things, and I'm like, I felt really, like, really lost.

Caitlin Estes (09:52)
billings.

Yes.

Yeah.

Arianna (10:06)
And at some point my husband was like, why are we doing this? Can we just like stop? We have two kids. We just like, he thought like it was going to go away if I just get sterilized. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait, this is not about sterilization. This is about me not feeling good.

Caitlin Estes (10:09)
Can we just pause there for second? There's so much good in everything you're saying, but that is so common. I think we get so frustrated and burdened and overwhelmed by not feeling well and not having good options and resources available to us that your husband is not alone in feeling like, hey, let's just nip this in the bud. Let's do a vasectomy. Let's get the tubes tied or removed or whatever, and then it's going to take care of all this, but you are exactly right and you were exactly right back in that day when this happened, that that does not solve the underlying issue here. Even if you had had your tubes removed, you would still have this hormonal imbalance. It's not about fertility at that point. It's about the hormonal health from your cycle.

And so I love that you sense that and you were able to advocate for that and explain it to your husband. And it sounds like maybe explain it to the doctor too. So what happened at that point?

Arianna (11:28)
So I removed everything. It took me a while to get the IUD out because they refused to get it out. It wasn't a priority for them. So they made me wait four months. And then when they made me wait four months, and then they canceled. When then they said, we don't have another appointment for another three months. I switched doctors and said, there's just no way that I have to wait seven months to get this thing out of me. Now I don't know if my symptoms are actually worse because I have the IUD on and my body's trying to reject it.

So I changed doctors and then I stick to stop the pill, stop all the madness. And I just went with Billings method and the sympto-thermal,  the added temperature. And we quickly got pregnant, with number three. But that pregnancy was rough. I was put onto bed rest for the entire pregnancy, nine months, not getting up. Because I would get up and I would start bleeding, would start dilating and having contractions. So having two kids running around, quitting my job, staying home to be in bed rest, not able to do laundry, nothing, just pretty much. She said, you can only go to the restroom and come back. And I would literally start bleeding. I had my third child and I went back to the previous. I'm like, this is, I don't know what to do now.

Arianna (12:52)
Now even like a pregnancy is hard, not only on me, because nine months of thinking you're going to miscarriage or you're going to lose a child. I don't know wish that on anybody, right? You're thinking like, I have to take care of this too, take him to school, do the things. And then I can get up and we are immigrants. We don't have parents around. We don't have siblings around. We don't have anybody around. It's us in California. So I didn't have.

Thankfully, my church was really providing a lot of things for us. So that was good for us. But then the same priest said, I think you need the Creighton model system. And I was like, wait, another thing? I got to learn another thing and pay for another thing, right? Because at that point, you're also financially exhausted, right?

Caitlin Estes (13:38)

Yes

Arianna (13:48)
I was like, I already like we spent two years and a half trying to figure this out and I need to learn another. And out of all the systems and all the things that we have learned, Creighton was the biggest expense upfront for us. And so my husband was like, why do we need to do this? You come into the system, we get the instruction to onboard for 30 days. And he's like, wait, we already done that like four times, right? And so, so we learned it.

Arianna (14:18)
And ⁓ my goodness, by the second cycle, I was like, my cycle was speaking back to me and I can understand this.

I was like, now I know what it's saying to me. Now I know I have signs of low progesterone. my estrogen levels are probably really high. I have long cycles. I have a lot of peaks. That's why Billings wasn't making sense to me. And, now I can, like, I can see it and it's like literally saying it back to me and I can understand it. That to me was like big.

Arianna (14:57)
I was like, now I know what I'm doing, right? At least I know what I'm doing. So

Caitlin Estes (14:59)
Yes.

Arianna (15:01)
my husband was like, sold into it because we quickly started getting to the right doctor. And then the doctor did the blood work. And for us, it wasn't about getting pregnant. It was about keeping babies alive once we got pregnant too, right? So my husband was like, I don't want to go through another pregnancy when we're thinking every single day that we're going to lose this baby. That is not okay.

Arianna (15:25)
we thankfully got to two doctors. Actually, we got two napros. ⁓ One was a medical consultant, which is that's more just the hormonal. And then we got to a NaPro doctor that was looking more into my fallopian tubes and any scarring from the IUD and trying to fix the problems.

Arianna (15:46)
My husband was sold out into it. He's like, why is this thing not in Spanish?

Caitlin Estes (15:52)
Hmm, yeah.

Arianna (15:54)
It would have been a barrier to us. We didn't know any English, And I even told the priest, why you didn't tell me this from the beginning? Like, I was almost like, what? And he's like, well, because we wanted you and your husband to learn it, to learn it the best at your own, your native language.

Arianna (16:13)
This information was available to me because I got to the right person. I persevered long enough. I didn't settle for let's get a pap smear and everything looks good.

Caitlin Estes (16:24)
Yes.

Arianna (16:25)
because that was the first thing that I was like, well, he just did a pap smear, but he didn't tell me anything about my ovaries.

Caitlin Estes (16:31)
Yes, you are spot on. How many times are women put in that situation where they may not know that? They may not know that a pap smear doesn't actually tell you anything about your hormones or your hormonal health or your periods or your cycles at all. A pap smear just checks for cervical cancer. That's all it does. ⁓ And so your base level knowledge was more than maybe other women out there knowing about their own reproductive system. And I love so much that, you know, some would say that it was Creighton that was the transforming thing there. And I, in ways it is, but also it's like your ability to understand what was going on. Like you went from a place of frustration and feeling overwhelmed and feeling stuck with how to know what's going on and how to advocate for something different, to being at that place where, like you said, you could see what your body was saying and you could respond. Like you could see it right in front of you and know what it meant. And how did that transform things for you in your life?

Arianna (17:45)
Well, I think now, because we have a family of five, my last two kids would not be here because we were like, we're ready to give up. We're not going to be gambling pregnancies. Right? So now that I see my last two that I had once I started with Creighton and I got the right help, no more bed rest. I was given the right hormonal support prior pregnancy, during pregnancy, and delivery and postpartum. Because it's not like, oh yeah, you just have a baby and you're done. I felt like I navigated postpartum with Creighton with Napro care. And it really changed. I have a two year old, I'm 41.

Having the information with Creighton has allowed me to see my fertility as a journey, not as just an age limitation. And people ask me all the time, are you gonna have more kids? I'm like, I don't know, I'm 41. I'm probably not gonna go into menopause until 50, right? But it really opened the ability for me to build my family and the family that I have now.

Caitlin Estes (18:35)
That's beautifully said. Arianna, thank you so much for being on the show and sharing so much of your story. It's very powerful.

Arianna (18:59)
Well, thank you. And as a result of all of that, I became a fertility practitioner. ⁓ I teach in California English and Spanish. I became--my mission, my vocation came about because I saw the need in the Spanish speaking community. So that is what I do. Thank you for having me.

Caitlin Estes (19:18)
I love it so much. Well, listeners, if you're ready to explore alternatives like Arianna did, then we would love to help. If you'd like to work with someone in Spanish, I'll make sure to get you connected to Arianna because I know she'd be fantastic. And you can register for one of our upcoming introductory sessions or download one of our many free resources on the website. Or of course, reach out to us personally to talk about your next steps all at our website, wovenfertility.com.

As always, thanks for listening as we continue to explore together what it means to be Woven Well.