Birth Control Methods

- What’s is a hormonal IUD?

Explanation:

IUD stands for Intrauterine Device — a birth control method that sits inside your uterus. A hormonal IUD is a small piece of flexible plastic shaped like a T. The hormonal IUD releases a tiny amount of the hormone progestin into your body over several years. Progestin is very similar to the hormone progesterone that our bodies make naturally.

The hormones in the IUD help prevent pregnancy, and can also help with painful or heavy periods while you’re using it.

Hormonal IUDs prevent pregnancy by keeping sperm cells away from your eggs. If sperm can’t make it to an egg, pregnancy can’t happen. The hormones in the IUD prevent pregnancy in two ways:

1) Hormonal IUDs make the mucus on your cervix thicker. This mucus blocks sperm so it can’t get to an egg.

2) The hormones in the IUD can also stop eggs from leaving your ovaries (called ovulation), which means there’s no egg for a sperm to fertilize. No egg = no pregnancy.