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After she was born, I had one put in and it was in for over a year and then it fell out, so I had a better one put in, but I had problems with that so they told me I had to go back on the pill, so I went back on the pill for a little while. Then I wanted a coil again and this was when I met my son’s father and I had real big problems with it, real bad bleedin’, I went up the hospital it was so bad. Handfuls and handfuls of clots, and I went up hospital and they wouldn’t even do nothin. He just felt my tummy and said ‘oh well it hasn’t perforated your womb so you’re ok’ and the blood was unreal.

I had to change my clothes like every ten minutes, just wouldn’t stop gushing, it just kept coming. In the end I got in the bath ‘cos I thought well if you get in the bath it stops and within 5 seconds of being in the bath the water was red. Luckily it fell out that night so the bleeding stopped.

So the main problem was the bleeding?

Well I don’t know, ‘cos the first one I had was brilliant. I had no trouble with it, I had a bit of heavy bleeding but then I’m heavy when I’m bleeding anyway so’ but then that one they put in I just couldn’t stop bleeding, it was just coming out and they can’t do nothing when you don’t stop bleeding.

I went to the doctors to say it’d come out again and they said ‘well I think its best if you leave it, obviously your system keeps rejecting the coil, they said maybe I should go back on the pill again. I said yeah, I don’t really want another coil now and she said well give it a few weeks, and I said I don’t really want one so I went back on the pill and that’s when I fell pregnant with my son, when I was on the pill, on the mini pill.

But I did have a lot of problems as well when, before they would fit the coil, before they fit it you have to have a smear to make sure you aint got no infections, with the first one, when the first one come out, I did have an infection that’s why it came out.

Which infection did you have?

Chlamydia.

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I don’t mind using it but then it’s the same as when I was a bit younger and they’d say ‘well you know you should have used a condom’ and things like that and you think well I’m down here to do something about it so don’t give me a lecture.

Who gave you a lecture?

The woman at the Family Planning, ‘well you should really use a condom, you shouldn’t rely on the mini pill, the a morning after pill its like, well I know accidents do happen and that’s the only thing, that sometimes you feel uncomfortable which is like when’ well you feel like they’re putting you down or trying to give you a lecture about something.

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All you hear is like to prevent sexually transmitted diseases wear a condom, the pill does not stop sexually transmitted diseases and that’s the only thing you hear. You don’t hear anything about the diseases or anything like that, and you only hear like ‘well if you use a condom you won’t get any sexually transmitted diseases, but the pill don’t stop sexually transmitted diseases and that’s all you all you seem to find out about with them really, use a condom to stop them but the pill doesn’t stop them

So in your opinion do you think that there should be more detail in these classes?

Yeah I think they should, I think like until you know what it is or what can be done or what can’t be done about it, apart from Aids but everybody knows HIV and Aids, but other things they don’t know. So you tend, it doesn’t tend to stick in your mind if you know what I mean, like oh yeah well you could get one, but you could not and then until you get one and find out what it is you’re dealing with and things like that then you don’t think about it.

I didn’t really know what they were, it didn’t play a part in my mind, that sort of thing. I was just like ‘oh well. And then you actually got one and you was like but I think if I’d known more about them and what they are and how many different ones there are and things like that then I think it wouldve like opened my mind a bit more.

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When I was younger I used to think, oh I know best, I’m older than I think and everything like that and now I wish I’d waited, its not all that its cracked up to be. But ‘cos you just want to know what it’s all about, what everybody’s going on about and I just wish I hadn’t done it so young.

Why not?

I think ‘cos I personally… I think I made the wrong choice of the person, the first person I went with, he ended up being not a very nice person and I just wish I’d waited until I’d found someone I was more committed to and he was committed to me and actually waited until our relationship had like progressed that far, but I’d only been seeing the bloke well a month or so and it just happened.

Do you think that there was any kind of peer pressure involved?

In a way, yeah, but I used to hang around with people who were a lot older than myself. They’d be like several years older than me and a couple of them like already had got children, they were in their late twenties and I was still only a little teenager, just. So in a way I did feel a bit like well they keep going on about it so why not just try it.

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Something like Microgynon 30. I think I took that one for about a year and then I was getting severe headaches and stuff, so they told me to come off the pill and, so I came off the pill and they told me just to use condoms, but I never and that’s when I fell pregnant with my daughter

Well I’ve only been on it for the past month, just over a month, but its like I’m meant to be on and I’d get like a spotting of blood, then I’d use something and then it’d disappear and it’s all gone, so you don’t put anything there ‘cos you think its stopped again and it starts again.

Do you have any concerns about the health affect of any of the contraceptive methods?

No not really. Well they put me on the combined pill, well my doctor put me on the combined pill after I’d had my son ‘cos I wanted to go back on the pill, and I actually went to the Family Planning and I said can I have some more of these and they said ‘well if we had given them to you we could just give you some more, but I had to see the doctor.

I said OK, so I saw the doctor and she looked at my records and she said ‘why was you on the mini pill before you fell pregnant with your son’ and I said well I got severe headaches and she said ‘who gave you this combined pill I said my doctor and she said ‘you shouldn’t be on it’, because where I got real bad headaches like when I was 18 I went sort of like numb down one side of my body with it. She said being on the combined pill could cause me to have a stroke, so she quickly took me off it and put me onto the mini pill that’s what I’m on now.

So you went to your GP?

And he gave me the combined pill.

Did he know about your history?

Yeah hed been my doctor all my life, my whole life. I said to him that I wanted to go back on the pill and he was like well here you are, just gave me that one. He done my blood pressure and everything that was about it really, just gave me the prescription for one of the combination pills.

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Yeah well after that I would… when it come to the point, if they said no I said well sorry I’m not going to do it then.

So in a way your attitude changed?

Yeah ‘cos one of my ex boyfriends he came up and I went to bed and he was like trying it on and that and I said ‘well are you going to wear something, he said no, so I said ‘I’m going to sleep then’ and so I just turned over and went to sleep. I was really wary after that.

Yeah, having… once I had that I was like right, after I’d been with a different bloke or like every six months, I would go and get myself checked out, Cos I wanted to know that I wasn’t like passing anything on or didn’t have anything myself, that I was fine. So it was the Chlamydia that done it.

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Yeah definitely I’ve always said, I can’t if shes 15, 16 the same age as I was, I can’t stop it, I can’t tell her she can’t do it, but I’d talk to her and say that it isn’t easy like unless you get like the support of your family, because I like did at the time and like she wouldn’t of had half the things in her life that she had if we hadn’t had that support and when I was younger it was like easier.

I thought it was easy having a baby ‘cos like you babysit all the time and like see these perfect babies and perfect children, but you don’t see the teething and the diarrhoea and the illnesses and sickness and the sleepless nights and I think that all girls about 12, 13 should have those dollies that look like real babies. I think that would stop a lot of teenage pregnancies.

‘cos it’s hard and some people can’t cope with it I mean theres quite a few people I know that are older than myself and they’ve had kids taken off of them because they can’t cope with them. And when you’re young you think that these little babies in their prams are nice and you don’t think about how much the prams cost and the nappies and the clothes and everything you need for a baby, it’s so expensive.

And it’s hard and sometimes you can actually see how people can do it but if you’re the right sort of person you think right, walk out of the room the babies safe in the cot, you count to 10, count to 100, like if you have to count to 100. Calm down and walk back in again. But it does get to the point sometimes when you think just shut up please just shut up.

That’s the most frustrating thing, when they’re screaming and you don’t know if they’re in pain or just having a winge and you check their nappy and the nappy’s fine and you try to give them a bottle and they don’t want that and just like everything. It just winds you up really, cos you don’t know what they want and it upsets you and gets you wound up so…

So its not easy being a mum?

No its not easy at all, not easy, I mean you have to have a lot of patience especially when they’re a baby and when they get older they back chat you and you have to have even more patience, that isn’t easy and all of it’ like people that babysit a lot can actually see that it isn’t that easy maybe they’d think twice about having, being more careful and things like that.