Married and the mother of 2, Emily decided during her second pregnancy that she didn’t want to get pregnant again. After a C-section delivery, her OB immediately performed the sterilization procedure, completing the final step of her and her husband’s family plan.
"My biggest accomplishment that I have the most pride in is my kids. Secondary to that is having waited until after I was married to have my kids. I had complications with my first two. I had gestational diabetes and I was also a diabetic baby, so the likelihood of me developing full Type 2 diabetes is a lot higher than for the average person. Plus I’m overweight, so that adds to it. And I was just miserable being pregnant, and I really didn’t want to do it again. (Laughs) My husband and I decided that two or three kids would be enough for us. And then about halfway through my pregnancy with my second, I decided that that was it, like I just couldn’t do it again. Before we ever had kids, we had discussed what we were going to do for birth control after. We didn’t want to be one of those families that didn’t discuss it and then ends up with the accidental pregnancy and has to worry about how are we going to change our financial situation to adapt to having extra children. So it was something that we had really planned out. The doctor who did my sterilization was actually my OB through both my pregnancies, and I didn’t have any issues finding somebody to do the procedure I wanted, because she was so well informing with my first pregnancy to let me know about my birth control options, which were implant, sterilization, birth control pills, or shots. And then into my second pregnancy, one of the first things she actually asked me was, “What do you want to do for birth control after you have this baby?” Because she knew that I really didn’t want to have any more. And I let her know from the beginning that I wasn’t really sure. I was debating between sterilization, IUD, and she performs both of those services. So I wasn’t really pressed to find anybody to do it for me. It was just a matter of me deciding which one I wanted to do, and she was more than happy to do it, because I had a Caesarian with my second child, so while they had me open they just went in and did my sterilization then. My name is Emily. I’m 28 years old, and my birth control method is sterilization."