Dr Jacqueline Coombe

Whereas women's bodies are different.

Everyone's body is different.

Your experience of side effects of a specific contraception will be different to my experience of that side effect.

And even my life is different to your life.

So what I'm willing to tolerate is different to yours.

And so sometimes it feels a bit, and this comes up for me a lot with IUDs, it's like, well, my experience was really bad and so therefore yours will be too.

And it's kind of treated like law when that's not necessarily the case.

And so I think listening to other women's experiences is so important and there's so much space for us to be able to share women's experiences about their different contraceptive methods more.

I think that's really important.

But also keeping in mind that, yeah, that experience is not necessarily reflective of yours necessarily.

In the same way that birth is kind of different.

Yeah, it's so true.

Like it's a similar experience but it's different for everyone and it's great to listen to other people's stories but also that story is not necessarily your story.

Yeah.

So the pill and condoms are the most commonly used contraceptive methods in Australia by far.

They outstrip everything else basically.

Condoms are really good because they're the only method that prevents against STIs.

So if that's important for you, they're a good one to use.

Um, we also have something called a vaginal ring, which is called a NuvaRing in Australia.

Um, the NuvaRing, it's like a small circle.