[Brandye]

The strings on an IUD sometimes seem a bit sharp. This softens with use. Tell your doctor about it and it may be trimmed or otherwise adjusted.

Matt, if you use condoms five days each month and nothing the rest of the time, you may as well start planning for a baby. Ina perfect world, the woman will be fertile for about five days. The sperm live in the reproductive system up to four days and then there is a day for the egg to travel down the fallopian tube. In actual practice, women vary a bit in when the egg is released - one day off and pregnancy can occur. There are a variety of system to determine when the egg is released. The simplest is to simply go by the calendar. Not very reliable. The use of basal temperature improves this a bit. The most advanced approach requires training for both the woman and her partner to determine the status of the mucuous plug in the cervical os.

My recommendation is that there are better systems for birth control.