We thought we’d help and every Thursday our friend Dr. Lissa Rankin will be answering your questions. The ones you couldn’t ask your doctor in person and didn’t really trust the Yahoo community to answer for you. Just leave your questions in the comments, or send em over to us. (We’ll keep it all anonymous for you.) Dr. Lissa will answer anything – really, anything – about sex and other lady things. Don’t be shy; she’s waiting for ya!

Q: My period is irregular every month. Sometimes it comes 6 weeks apart and other times it can be up to 9.  I am not on birth control (can’t handle the side effects) and practice safe sex with my boyfriend. The problem is that I get freaked out every month that I’m pregnant. How soon can I take the test? Are there any signs I can look for that will either tell me I’m absolutely not pregnant or that maybe I am?

A: Sounds like your periods are annoying, unpredictable and scary. Bummer about that.  Chances are, if your periods are that irregular, that you’re not ovulating regularly, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to worry about pregnancy. Your ovaries can still spit out an egg from time to time. When you’re not ovulating regularly, your uterus doesn’t know when to bleed, and your hormones can be all over the place.  Why might you be skipping periods or not ovulating?

Common Reasons for Irregular, Infrequent Periods:

- You exercise vigorously (think marathon runners and competitive gymnasts)
- You have an eating disorder.
- You’re overweight.
- You’re young and your body just hasn’t matured yet.
- You’re under a lot of stress.
- Your thyroid hormones are out of whack.
- You have polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS).

What can you do about irregular, infrequent periods?

See your gynecologist. A thorough physical exam and laboratory evaluation are in order. If you can’t take birth control pills, progesterone therapy may help balance out your hormones, assuming there isn’t some other underlying cause.

In the mean time, what can you do about the pregnancy scares? That’s tricky. There’s no reliable sign to signal to you whether you’re definitely pregnant. Some people experience nausea, breast-tenderness, and fatigue in early pregnancy, but many women do not. Technically, a pregnancy test should be positive within two weeks of ovulation, but since you have no clue when or if you’re ovulating, that makes it tough to time taking pregnancy tests. You can try taking a pregnancy test four weeks after the first day of your last period, when you would expect your period to come if it was regular. If that’s negative, repeat it every two weeks after that until your next period comes.

But that’s just a band-aid. You’re better off getting to the root of the problem and seeing a doctor.  Good luck, honey. I hope you get it sorted out.

Up = no babies.

Downs = weight gain, extreme emotions and severe migraine headaches.

For a while, the ups far outweighed the downs, but it soon got to a point where the headaches became debilitating (thus making me unable to have sex anyway), and I had to call it quits with the little pill. I tried other forms of birth control – the Nuva Ring, which was just too weird, and abstinence, which was just not realistic – and none of it worked.

I figured I was doomed to be sans BC forever, until my doctor told me about the IUD.

What is an IUD?

Basically, it’s a small object that is inserted through the cervix and placed in the uterus to prevent pregnancy. The doctor inserts the IUD onto your cervix where it stays for up to 10 years. If you want to get pregnant, you simply head back to the doctor and have it removed and your period and ovulation schedule return to normal. The IUD is 99.9% effective at preventing pregnancy and you never have to remember to take a pill again!

It sounded too good to be true, but my doctor assured me that it was safe, covered by insurance and the best option for someone like me. So I did it.

The strange thing about the IUD is that it has to be inserted when you are on your cycle. So, not only do you feel kinda gross and bloated, but you have to hop into the stirrups and lay spread eagle in front of the doc. Not your finest hour.

I got a little squeamish when I went into the room and saw the equivalent to a wee wee pad lying on the table. “It gets a little messy,” the nurse told me. Barf. I laid on the table, gripping my sweatshirt nervously, and the doctor went to work.

The procedure took all of 5 minutes, but they were probably the longest and strangest five minutes of my life. There was a speculum, some very long Q-Tips and the IUD itself. I felt extreme cramps (the kind that usually require a heating pad, my couch and Season 1 of Friends on DVD), and extreme embarrassment as I wondered how messy things were getting down there. And before I knew it, the whole thing was over.

No more pills, no babies, and, in about a year, no more periods at all!

The idea of having a strange plastic thing inside my body is a little weird, but it is far outweighed by the fact that I can enjoy my sexual freedom without the monthly fear that I may be a mom sooner rather than later.

If the pill works for you, then stick with it. But if you are like me and can’t handle the hormones in the birth control pill, an IUD is definitely worth looking into. And don’t worry; when the whole thing was done, my wee wee pad was perfectly clean.