I meant to take a 3 month podcast break and it's turned into a full year. It's been a year. This is a catch-up episode because I feel like it would be weird to just jump back in after such a prolonged break. I talk about my endometriosis excision surgeries and iron infusions and other controversial things in the crunchy world that I zero percent regret.

**Trigger warning: This episode does briefly mention some sensitive subjects like postpartum hemorrhage, blood loss, anesthesia, and pediatric hospitalization. Like I said, it's been a year. But you might want to hold off on listening if the above subjects are particularly activating for you.**

In this bonus episode, my friend Stephanie Risinger (@stephanie.hopefulandwhole) and I talk about our personal experiences with the birth control pill and our professional experiences in working with women who are not always seen, heard, and respected in medical settings. In short, medical gaslighting is very common in the perinatal settings in which we see clients. So when the Washington Post came out with an article titled, Women are getting off birth control amid misinformation explosion, I knew we had to talk about it.

In holistic spaces, there's a lot of backlash against this article, referencing medical gaslighting but also calling out media at large and its glaring biases.

We discuss the article with an eye on critical thinking and curiosity more so than making a definitive statement or writing a thesis on birth control or feminism. As I re-listened to our conversation, I realized these are the kinds of discussions we need to be having as the media prepares to tell women how to feel and think and act about their bodies for the next 8 months of this election cycle.

So while I will be back to my postpartum and motherhood content soon, I think this discussion is an important one to have in the larger conversation about women's health and where the authority really lies (hint: the authority lies with you, not your doctor and not with social media and not with poorly-researched "news" articles).

For more on birth control's potential side effects, check out episode 16 on the Are You Menstrual? podcast.

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