Diaphragm: Testimonials

You know, never say never, but as of now I do not want to have children. I – my two, or my three biggest goals in life are to travel the world (laughs), which I think everyone kind of has that goal; the second one is to rescue cats and dogs, and then the third one is to work on costumes and fashion. And I just think that having children would not help me accomplish any of those three goals. When my current boyfriend and I started having sex, I knew that I would have to be on birth control, and I knew that a hormonal option was not so attractive to me, and I knew that the male condom alone was not 100 percent effective. So I decided to talk to my gynecologist about possibly getting a diaphragm. And I had to talk to her about it, because in the United States you cannot get diaphragms without a prescription. So I talked to her about it, and she actually seemed kind of surprised that someone in her 20’s would want a diaphragm. I told her why I don’t want to be on hormonal methods, and I need a backup to the condom. So I told her that I think that the diaphragm is the best decision for me, and – and she supported it. I use the condom and the diaphragm every single time without fail, because the condom is not 100 percent effective and I’m not willing to take any chances. It’s just not worth it to have unplanned pregnancies for me. So the diaphragm has been a very successful and useful backup to the male condom. The nice thing about the diaphragm is that you can put it in several hours before having sex or you can put it in literally three seconds before having sex. So you don’t need to at all have some sort of sex schedule or plan it out ahead of time, because you know, you can’t really always know ahead of time whether or not you’re going to have sex. So –so most of the time I don’t know if I’m going to have sex, and I usually just run to the bathroom real quick beforehand, pop it in, and then you can have sex right away or if it doesn’t end up happening immediately, that’s – that’s fine, too. Spermicide is absolutely essential to use with a diaphragm. As far as I know, the diaphragm is almost useless without the spermicide. I – they go hand in hand. The spermicide comes in a tube. You just buy it at the drugstore. It’s essential. The spermicide kills the sperm and you know, without it, it’s just this little like gate up into your cervix, and I think sperm can still kind of get past it without being killed if you don’t have the spermicide. I’m Veronica. I’m 24 years old, and I use two methods of birth control at the same time, a condom and a diaphragm.