As a form of birth control that was once widely available in China, the IUD has often been associated with “pain”. Sometimes this pain is the redness of menstrual blood, sometimes it is the feeling of falling in the abdomen, and sometimes it is broken down to such a small degree that the body that holds it is unaware of it. For decades, mothers were silenced in shame, swallowing the pain alone. It was not until 2020 that the issue of birth control rings for women of the previous generation entered the public domain. Young girls are suddenly aware that the metal ring, as distant as the last century, still remains in their mothers, in the womb that once nurtured them.
I. A birth control device embedded in flesh
The doctor pushed open the door of the operating room and handed the 22-year-old child a small glass vial: “Take it to the pathology department.” At that Time, Whispering Child’s mother was lying in the operating room while the doctor continued to help her complete the surgery to remove the birth control device.
On the way to the pathology department from the obstetrics and gynecology operating room, Yutong examined the contents of the small glass vial. The bottom of the bottle was lightly covered with a layer of white potion, and what was soaked inside looked like a bloodied polyp. The child suddenly understood what it was: “This polyp was scraped out of the mother’s womb.”
In January 2021, during the lunar month, Tianshui City, Gansu Province, was in the middle of winter. Families were not allowed to enter the operating room. Through the white walls of the operating room, Whispering Child could not see the procedure. Her mother later recounted to her what she felt in the operating room.
First, the vagina was sterilized, after which the doctor dilated the vagina and inserted a probe to confirm the location of the birth control ring. After that, the doctor removed a 20-cm-long IUD removal hook and penetrated deep into her uterine cavity. The doctor could feel that he should have carefully tried to change the angle several times, after which the IUD was hooked away from her body by the long circle at the top of the hook.
It was a birth control ring with small hook-like structures on both sides. Because it had been in the mother’s body for more than 18 years, one end of the ring had hooked into the surrounding muscle tissue and was adhering to the inner wall of the uterus. The polyp was hooked from the mother’s uterus in the process.
A study shows that women wearing birth control rings after menopause for more than two years, the proportion of difficulties in removing the ring amounted to 43.9%, while 96.1% of the women who received the study, less than two years after menopause, successfully completed the ring removal surgery. If the IUD grows into the flesh and becomes “embedded”, there is a risk of hemorrhage when it is removed. The IUD needs to be replaced regularly, usually in 3 or 5 years, up to 11 years, and must be removed from the body. Most women do not realize that the IUD needs to be removed until the metal in the uterus poses a greater safety risk.
After the operation, Yutong accompanied her mother to take a nap in the lounge. As the blood faded from her mother’s face, she asked, “Mom, did it hurt?”
The mother’s voice was thin, “Yes.”
She was too weak to speak, gently holding Yutong’s hand, and after a long time she said, “It hurts almost as much as when I gave birth to you.”
When they came out of the hospital, it was already dark. Outside the hospital, the crowd dispersed, the wind rushed in the open, the mother wrapped in a hat and gloves, with the support of the child moved in small steps. The reaction to the anesthetic was too great, and by the side of the road, the mother of the child bent over and threw up several times. The street light was dim, and the idea of “my mother being so skinny” came to me for the first time as I watched their faltering shadows. 22 years old, I was already much taller than my mother.
The walk Home from the hospital, which is usually only six minutes, took more than 20 minutes for mother and daughter. After taking her medication, her mother went to bed early. She refused to sleep with her mother, and she guessed that she was afraid of disturbing her own rest by calling out when she was in pain. That night, she opened the door to both her mother’s room and her own to keep an eye on her mother’s side. The next morning, she went to buy a chicken and gave her mother a red date chicken Soup. The day after that was ribs. Four days after the operation, except for eating and going to the toilet, Yutong’s mother hardly got out of bed.
The word “birth control ring” intruded into Xiaozhen’s Family‘s Life again after seven years in a more intense way.
On September 10, 2020, in Suqian City, Jiangsu Province, Xiaozhen’s mother, who was the director of a kindergarten, was involved in a car accident on her way to deliver materials to the Education Bureau. She was knocked down by a high-speed electric car on the roadside, and at that time, only bruises were found on her calf belly and the outside of her arm. Xiaozhen’s mother loves beauty, and after the accident, she was most worried about whether the abrasions would leave scars on her body. To comfort her mother, Xiaozhen also bought scar removal products for her mother.
The family did not anticipate that this small car accident had turned up an unexpected aftershock. After the accident, for several nights in a row, my mother felt abdominal pain, which developed to an unbearable level. The family began to worry that the crash had injured their internal organs, so the mother made a special trip to the hospital for a radiograph.
The diagnosis was “hydronephrosis”, and the specialist doctor looked at the film and told her that the cause of the hydronephrosis would need to be investigated, but the treatment plan “would probably involve removing a kidney”.
Now that she thinks about it, Xiaozhen feels that her mother hid her fears and breakdowns very deeply. When she returned home, her mother simply said, “I don’t want to be treated.” But her mother’s face haggardly went down, and on the third day, she told Xiaozhen, “I didn’t sleep all night again.”
After three tests in two days, the doctor asked Xiaozhen’s mother, “Have you ever worn a ring?” After receiving an affirmative answer, the doctor confirmed that it was the birth control ring that had punctured the uterine cavity and displaced into the abdominal cavity, scratching the kidney and causing fluid in the renal pelvis.
On September 30, 2020, a 5 cm incision was made on the right side of Xiaozhen’s mother’s abdomen, after which the birth control ring, which had wandered into her abdominal cavity, was removed by the doctor.
Xiaozhen’s mother lost 6 pounds two days after the operation. After the anesthetic passed, the wound began to tear painfully, Xiaozhen’s mother often turned her back to her daughter, lying on her side and curled up in the hospital bed to relieve the pain. Looking at her mother’s back, Xiaozhen felt the urge to cry several times. Her mother, who used to be athletic and would dress herself meticulously before going out every day, was now a huge contrast, her face was ashen and she was struggling to recover from the pain.
Secondly, the memory of childbirth of previous generations of women
After the operation, the doctor showed her mother the birth control ring that had been placed inside her for nearly 19 years. It was the first time that Yuyutong’s mother saw its pattern: a T-shaped birth control ring wrapped with copper wire, unwashed after being removed from her body, with blood and flesh still attached to it, lying quietly on the doctor’s palm spread out with medical gloves.
In 1998, three months after giving birth to the child, the mother went to the hospital to get the IUD certificate. “Everyone does it because you have to have an IUD to go to work after giving birth,” her mother told Yutong, “Everyone wears one, and you’re the one who’s weird if you don’t.”
Yutong’s mother had the experience of repeatedly wearing and removing the IUD.
After the first IUD, she had to remove the ring because the shape of her cervix did not match the shape of the ring, causing heavy bleeding during her non-menstrual period and abdominal pain and back pain. After that, she experienced an unplanned pregnancy and a forced abortion, and in 2002, she wore the IUD for the second time.
Although she did not see the procedure herself, she knew what happened after the IUD was placed in her body. More women remember being ignorant and “getting the IUD” back then.
Min-Ying, 52, is one of them.
Growing up in a Yao autonomous county around Guilin, Guangxi, Minying gave birth to her daughter, Maggie, in November 1998, and soon afterwards she took a bus alone from the town to the county to get an IUD.
In the county, her eldest sister, who had settled there, accompanied Minying to the obstetrics and gynecology hospital where she was fitted with a “Y” shaped birth control ring.
“It was a small operating room with a bed. The whole procedure was quick, about two minutes.” That’s all Min-young remembers. In her time, the doctor would open the vagina with a sterilized dildo, hold the ring with a forceps, and insert the “Y” shaped ring deep into the center of the uterus.
“Don’t worry about anything,” Min-Young remembers the doctor telling her at first, and then adding, “It also depends on your body type, it might be inflamed just after.”
And so, in less than five minutes, Min-young finished the procedure, took a stamped IUD card, and left the hospital.
“As a woman, it is inevitable that there will be such and such minor illnesses and pains, which are very normal.” Min-Young said.
In the eyes of others, Min-Young is a quick worker, and many describe her as a “breeze”. As an elementary school language teacher, Min-Young arrives at school at 7:30 a.m. every day to attend classes and handle classroom chores, sometimes standing up almost the entire day.
Born into a two-income family, Maggie had no elders who could stay home with her until she started kindergarten, so Min-Young took her to school with her to work. While Min-young was in class, Maggie played alone in front of the classroom listening to her mother’s voice. At lunch break, Min-young had to rush home with her daughter to cook for the children and her husband. “Mom didn’t have to deal with any of the meals. Every meal in our house is basically three or four plates of Food.” Maggie said.
But Maggie, the daughter, knew that her mother was not feeling well every day. As far as I can remember, the largest number of medicines in the family’s Medicine cabinet were all kinds of medicines for gynecological diseases. “It seemed like it was always like that.” Maggie said. Vajra, Ying Hua Tablets, Gui Zhi Fu Ling Pills, the names of these medicines have long been overwhelmingly familiar to Maggie, the side effects of wearing a birth control ring followed her mother like a tail, making her wrinkle her brow and making her tired and sore.
“In those old days, getting an IUD was a very, very small thing.” Min-young said. Unfortunately, at the time, post-operative follow-ups for such procedures also rarely received the attention they deserved. Few doctors would directly instruct post-operative follow-ups for such procedures. Many warning signs needed to be worked out by the women through the pain in their bodies, and some women were not informed about them and thus were stricken with gynecological problems without ever noticing that they were related to the birth control ring.
After the operation, Min-Young began to feel pain in her lower abdomen, and with it, she noticed that she was bleeding from her lower body even when she did not have her period, sometimes leaking a few drops of blood and then stopping, and sometimes this irregular bleeding was as much as real menstrual blood. The back pain was getting worse and worse, and eventually she was suffering from sitting on the stool as long as it was a little harder.
For 22 years, Min-Young often went to the hospital because of these abnormalities, and received various diagnoses of “inflammation”, including pelvic inflammatory disease, vaginitis, and cervicitis, and the doctors prescribed all kinds of anti-inflammatory drugs.
It never occurred to Minying that the gynecological problems that had accompanied her for more than 20 years might be related to the birth control ring. As a contraceptive device placed in the uterine cavity, the IUD prevents the embryo from conceiving by causing sterile inflammation of the uterus. The IUD irritates the endometrium at all times and it takes about three months for women to fully adapt to the inflammatory response.
After many unsuccessful attempts to find medical help, even Min-Young herself, forgot about the small metal ring in her body.
It was always a sickness that could not be spoken about. Her husband couldn’t understand it, and she couldn’t talk to her children about it, so some women had to endure it. As a nurse, the mother of a child says that colleagues in the same department rarely talk about the IUD when they get together. She learned all about the IUD by secretly asking her colleagues in obstetrics and gynecology.
“Even the doctors and nurses don’t pay that much attention to the IUD. Some people subconsciously avoid it, and some really forget about it.” The mother told Whispering Child.
III. Understood the mother’s discomfort
As she listened to her mother’s description of the IUD removal process, the word “horrible” popped into her head.
She had heard of the “birth control ring” when she was a child. “Since it is something that most women are required to wear after giving birth, it must not be harmful to a woman’s body.” At that time, she was still far away from childbirth and had no motivation to understand its principle and mechanism of action, and was reasonably sure that this device, which was approved for widespread use, must not cause pain.
It wasn’t until 2020 that she happened to catch a women’s health blogger tweeting that “some birth control rings can displace and cause perforation of the uterus, and some rings are deeply embedded in the uterine cavity ……” that she first realized that, in addition to ensuring basic safety, the birth control ring
It turned out to bring pain to the women who wore it. In the same year, Yutong saw the artist Zhou Wenjing’s exhibition “Woman Series – Birth Control Ring” on the Internet. The exhibition collected 300 copper birth control rings that had been used in real life, arranged them neatly, and displayed them on a blue velvet wall. At first glance, they are exquisitely beautiful and glisten in the light, but knowing what they do, the exhibits reveal a cruel undertone. “Behind the birth control rings in their various shapes and sizes is a real, concrete woman.”
Yutong’s experience is representative of how many girls born in the late 1990s came to know about birth control rings. They had no context in their lives that was strongly related to the birth control ring, but through popular science or art exhibitions like “Women’s Series – Birth Control Ring,” they learned about their mothers’ connection to a small birth control device. Some of them, like Whispering Child, encouraged and accompanied their mothers to the hospital to remove the overused metal birth control devices, some of which had been in place for more than a decade.
During her mother’s gradual recovery, Xiaozhen first talked formally with her mother about the IUD.
In 2008, Xiaozhen’s mother secretly removed the IUD from a small clinic in a neighborhood near her home. It was a clinic hidden in the corner of a residential garage, a small space stuffed with various medical instruments.
“There were aunties going in and out, and they all had unhappy faces.” This is how Xiaozhen described the clinic she saw at that time.
At that time, Xiaozhen asked her mother what the “ring” was. Her mother replied vaguely, “It’s in the mother’s belly. If you have a ring in your belly, you can’t give birth to your siblings.” This formed Xiaozhen’s first impression of the “ring”: “A small circle in the belly sounds fun. It sounds like a toy for mommy.”
Maggie also learned about the connection between motherhood and the birth control ring through discussions on the Internet, and on November 5, 2020, Maggie overheard a women’s health blogger start a conversation about “taking your mom to get the ring.
“My mom has taken it out before, and I heard that it was yanked straight out of her flesh. Mom’s stomach was uncomfortable for a long time.” “I asked my mom to take it out and she was particularly angry, saying that everyone took it then, don’t scare people here. She and I had a big fight.” “Mom had fibroids and her uterus was cut.”
There are more than eight hundred comments under this microblog, Maggie went through them one by one. “It turns out that so many women have the birth control ring, it turns out that the birth control ring can do so much damage beyond the use of years, and it turns out that there are many diseases because of the birth control ring.” Recalling that time, she used several “so” in a row.
The answer to Maggie’s confusion over the years was pieced together with one “so” after another. Maggie’s mother often do housework to do half, put down the work at hand to lie in bed to rest; every Friday school cleaning Maggie recalled, her mother’s pain for many years found the cause, she felt heartbroken for Minying.
After sorting out her emotions, Maggie forwarded this tweet to Min-Ying, expecting her mother to avoid or not take it seriously, but she immediately called.
During that phone call, Maggie and her mother had a long conversation about the birth control ring. “We were talking for science purposes, and I could feel her trust.” Maggie says that was the first time her mother had ever said the word “IUD” to her. Maggie thought to herself that her mother might have been looking forward to putting aside the shame of “not being able to tell anyone about this disease” for many years and talking seriously and formally about her body pain.
A week later, on November 13, Min-Young removed the birth control ring she had been living with for 22 years at the county’s obstetrics and gynecology hospital.
A week later, on November 13, Min-Young removed the birth control ring she had been living with for 22 years at the county’s obstetrics and gynecology hospital.
Xiaozhen saw a post on the Internet: the girl had a scar on her stomach after a C-section, and the girl’s husband later tattooed the same scar in the same place on his stomach. Xiaozhen felt moved to share with her mother, who replied coldly: “What’s the point. A man who can tie the knot after you have given birth is really good for you.” After knowing her mother’s history of wearing rings, Xiaozhen finally understood her mother’s reply.
Since she was young, Xiaozhen knew that her gender might not please her family. She heard her mother say that after learning that she was having a girl, her father angrily pushed down the row of bicycles parked outside the hospital. During meals, while watching TV, many unusual moments, her grandfather and grandmother would suddenly lose their heads, followed by the sentimental phrase, “If only you were a boy.”
It was only when she grew up that Xiaozhen slowly began to think about it, as a child, she felt the indifference of her elders. And what kind of cold eyes and aggression did the mother endure to want a boy so badly?
After the removal of the ring, Xiaozhen’s mother got pregnant with a boy as she had hoped. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to its customers. Pancakes, fried chicken, candy canes, foods that she could not normally eat, on that day, her mother would buy for her.
Two months later, the baby was unexpectedly miscarried. The mother hid in a relative’s house in the next county for a month. Soon after her return, the ring was removed. 2013, the mother removed the ring again, and after safely giving birth to her second daughter, the mother took the birth control ring for the third time, until 2020, when it was removed in surgery.
Xiaozhen wanted to ask her mother why her father did not get tied. After thinking about it, she actually knew the answer herself.
“Why didn’t you let my father have his tubes tied?” Whispering Child had asked her mother the same question. Mother said faintly, “People don’t want to.” The mother talked about a friend and couldn’t hide her envy: “My friend’s husband had a ligation. I know people, only her family is the male ligation.”
The child had a strong sense of resistance to the birth control ring. After her mother’s IUD removal surgery, her colleagues at the hospital jokingly said to Yutong, “After you get married and have children, you’ll have to get an IUD too.” Yutong righteously told them, “I am determined not to go.” The adults laughed with disinterest.
“They probably think I’m still young, and when I’m old enough to get married and have children, I’ll get an IUD voluntarily.” Whispering Child guessed, in an angry tone, “Contraception can be tied for men, so why must women be left alone.”
“It’s been decided that you don’t want a child, and you can already take it out, so why not?” Whispering Child was the one who kept persuading her mother to remove the IUD after she learned about the damage it could do, both softly and firmly. “You don’t have to be afraid, I will be with you.”
Perhaps in response to her daughter’s concern, the mother began to open herself up and confide in Yutong about her discomfort and fear of the procedure. Sometimes the father would overhear the conversation between mother and daughter and would accuse the mother, “What are you doing talking to the child about this in a nice way.” The mother would often immediately fall silent, while the child would immediately retort, “What’s there to avoid!”
In the end, she could not help her share more of her worries. Once, her mother suddenly sighed softly, “If you really take out the ring, you have to take other contraceptive measures.” The child froze, his heart sore: “You can take other measures.” The mother was silent, and the child did not know what to say.
In contrast, Maggie’s attitude toward the birth control ring was more peaceful. “Wearing an IUD is a very good long-term form of birth control. Compared to multiple repeated abortions, wearing an IUD is less harmful to the body. And now the materials and structure of the IUD have changed so much that the side effects are minimal.” Maggie says, “She didn’t resist getting an IUD after having children.”
To this day, women are still the primary party responsible for contraception. Although the after-effects and difficulty of reversal are significantly higher for women than for men, and male sterilization has long been proven to be a safe and effective birth control procedure, women’s sterilization has always been more accepted than men’s.
After removing the birth control ring, Maggie felt that the most obvious change in her mother, Min-Young, was a relaxed frown. “I’ve rarely seen her frown so much.” Maggie said. Those medications for gynecological problems, which Min-Ying no longer takes, lay quietly in the medicine cabinet, reminding Maggie of what her mother had been through. When she returned to school, her colleagues asked her with concern, “What happened to you? Why did you take a leave of absence.”
Min-Young graciously said, “I’m going to get the birth control ring, so you should get it early too!” Inspired by Min-Young, two middle-aged women also went to the hospital to have their lingering IUDs removed.
It was not easy for Min-Young to say the word “IUD” in a frank way. Yutong’s mother, Maggie’s mother, and Xiaozhen’s mother, all of whom have different professions and personalities, share the same reticence.
They had never looked at the metal object inside their bodies until they talked openly and honestly with their daughters about the birth control ring. Everything associated with the female body experience, whether it be periods, the uterus, or the IUD in the womb, was subconsciously considered a private, non-publicly shared experience.
Both Maggie and Yutong described their mother as a strong mother, and on the other hand, they both clearly felt their strong mother’s dependence on them in the matter of the IUD removal. For the first time, the mother unfolds to her daughter her full vulnerability, and the hurt she had felt.
“In addition to the mother-daughter relationship, I feel that between us, there is a friendship that exists as a fellow woman.” Maggie said. The daughters felt heartbroken, encouraging and persuading their mothers to remove the ring, and the mothers listened and confided, finally confronting their bodies and reclaiming their bodily autonomy from the pain of the old days.
Yutong is still remorseful, blaming herself for not driving her mother to have the IUD removed: “It was so cold, and I couldn’t get a car. She was already suffering so much, and I let her walk so long in the cold.” She thought of her mother’s shadow shrinking under the streetlight, while her own was so strong and steady. At times, their shadows nestled and overlapped, and it was as if the child felt the pain she shared with her mother.
But what mothers remember more than anything else is the relief their bodies felt after the birth control ring was removed. Before the IUD removal surgery, Min-Young was given general anesthesia. After a big, empty dream, Min-young woke up. The ring with red flesh and blood was disposed of by the doctor. In the 20 minutes she slept, the ring that she had shared for 22 years disappeared cleanly. Min-young said she had never felt so light. After the procedure, her mother usually ate a few bites and went back to the bedroom to lie down; her mother’s eyebrows were knitted all the time, and whenever she was asked what was wrong, her answer was always “my stomach is a little upset”.
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