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Fibroid: What to Do When Fertility Is Not on Your Mind

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If you have fibroids, you are probably saying a choice curse word every time you think of your little (and in some cases) big uterine friend(s). Like a bad house guest, they can be a big pain in the rear end. They can cause bleeding, pain, pressure, and infertility. Bottom line, they are not fun. And unfortunately, this un-fun party is very well attended; nearly a quarter of reproductive-age women have fibroids. Furthermore, fibroids are the cause for about 2% of infertility cases.

Simply stated, you are not the only person who RSVPed “yes” to the fibroid gala. While there are many ways to treat them, not everything works for everyone at every point in their life. Women at different stages of their lives (a.k.a. reproductive “stages”) and symptomology warrant different procedures. For those of you who are nowhere near ready for anything to do with the F word (FERTILITY) but want it in the future (be it near or distant), here’s what we recommend.

Fibroids can be treated medically and/or surgically. Medical treatments include oral contraceptive pills (a.k.a. OCPs or the pill), the intra-uterine device (a.k.a. the IUD), Lupron (a.k.a. “I feel like I am in menopause with these hot flashes and vaginal dryness”), progesterone receptor modulators (mifepristone or ulipristal acetate), SERMs (raloxifene), aromatase inhibitors (letrozole), and anti-fibrinolytics. While some of the medical options are better at improving some of the symptoms (for example, OCPs will improve heavy bleeding but not the pressure symptoms), they very rarely fix it all.

Just like when you’re selecting the OCP you want to marry, you may have to shop around for medical options before you land at your symptom-free spot. While Lupron (a GnRH agonist) will do it all, it will cost you in the side effect department. Hot flashes, sleep problems, vaginal dryness, muscle and bone pains, and even changes in mood/thinking often come along with the reduction in fibroid bleeding, pain, and pressure. It’s because of the side effect profile that we don’t go with Lupron as our first medical treatment.  

Surgically, the options are limited for women who have not yet had kids. It’s basically a myomectomy or bust. Fibroids have been nicknamed myomas; -ectomy means removal so myomectomy = fibroid removal. While a myomectomy is the only option for you ladies who are not yet ready to part with your uterus, what varies in the myomectomy part is how you “myomectomize.”

The procedure can be performed abdominally (through a bikini-cut incision), laparoscopically (through a camera), robotically (through a robot), or vaginally (no explanation needed!). The approach depends on the size of the fibroid(s), the location of the fibroid(s), and the number of fibroid (s). It also depends on your surgeon’s experience and preference. Make sure you are comfortable with all of the above before you commit to anything or anyone.

As with most things, there are pros and cons to both medical and surgical options. If you like lists (we love them!), here are the important points to note. For most young women who have not had kids but want them in the future, we like to go medical first. Most of the medical options are transient and provide birth control (killing two birds with one stone!). While they will not rid you of your “f”riends, they will decrease many of your symptoms:

Bleeding, check.

Pain, check.

Protecting your future fertility, check.

In many cases, with medical treatment, the fibroids will shrink. Fibroids feed off estrogen, so low estrogen equals famine for fibroids, and hopefully your symptoms will dissipate. If medical management doesn’t do much to alleviate your symptoms, you may have to amp up your treatment to surgery.

Surgery will almost definitely bring the bothersome bleeding, pain, and pressure to a halt. However, it can increase your chance for scar tissue (both within the uterus and the pelvis) and other surgical complications. Surgery, no matter who does it, is the real deal. For this reason, you want to avoid going under the knife unless it is absolutely necessary.

The only absolute cures for fibroids are menopause and/or a hysterectomy. For women who have baby making on their mind and in their future (be it near or distant), neither of the above is a good option: major con! It is for this reason that we need to find a way to temporize the symptoms until you get the pregnancy process started. We usually recommend starting low and going high, but only if you have to. Give the easy or simpler stuff a shot first before you shoot in out of the park.

Just a side note: while fibroids are pretty pesky for most of us, some women are completely unaware of their presence. They find out totally by accident during an ultrasound, a pelvic exam, or during pregnancy. And just like if it isn’t broken don’t fix it, fibroids that are causing no symptoms are really no big deal. They can hang with you for as long as you both shall live. No divorce in sight.

If they don’t bother you, don’t do anything with them until you have to. Prophylactic or preventative therapy to avoid future problems is not recommended—no pre-nup here! Fibroids need to be fixed only if you can’t take them anymore. Otherwise, do your best to forget they even exist!

Can I Break up with My Birth Control?

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The 40s are often deemed the decade of freedom. Careers are stable, and relationships are solid (for the most part). You are done with babies or opted to not go this route (and for those still on the baby journey keep this advice for later!). You are a seasoned player on almost all fronts. But just because your brain thinks pregnancy is a thing of the past doesn’t mean that your ovaries are in agreement. Despite a decrease in egg quality and quantity, you can get pregnant in your 40s, so much to your chagrin, you can’t throw your birth control out when you hit 43, 45, or even 48. As long as you are still ovulating, you can get pregnant, no matter how old you are!

The reality is that, although your body is changing, your birth control options are not much different as you move throughout the decades. No matter what age you are, the name of the game for hormonal contraception is preventing ovulation, fertilization, and implantation. While certain options might work better at certain points in your life, they will all work in preventing pregnancy. For example, we are big fans of the hormonal IUDs (Mirena, Skyla, Liletta) for women in their 40s. They not only prevent pregnancies but also do so with little systemic exposure to hormones (a.k.a. the hormones stay in the uterus rather than in other areas of the body). This reduces the risk of negative side effects from hormones. It also reduces the risk of select cancers such as uterine cancer, a malignancy that affects women as they age.

On the flip side, while oral contraceptives may have been your go to in your 20s, they may not be right for you in your 40s. Women above the age of 35 are more likely to suffer the negative side effects from oral contraceptive pills. This is because age plus issues like high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and high cholesterol/triglyceride levels (disease processes that are more likely to be present as we age) equal a greater chance of bad things (stroke, blood clot, etc.) happening while on oral contraceptive pills. So while oral contraceptive pills are not totally out, a good history and physical exam are required before starting them.

The bottom line is that you can’t just assume that your baby-making days have passed you by, even if you used fertility treatments to conceive or if everyone around you is using fertility treatments to get pregnant. While age is a risk factor for infertility, not every woman in her 40s is infertile. Until your periods bid you adieu, you can’t break up with your birth control. This is one relationship you can’t seem to get rid of! While your ovaries may be running on empty, they still have some gas left in the tank. And although we all love surprises, this surprise may be one that will make you do a whole lot more than scream!

It’s Not You, It’s Me: When Is It Time to Break Up with Your Pill?

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As much as it hurts to remember, we have all been the victims of a painful breakup at some point. Whether it was your high school sweetheart, your first kiss, or the guy whose professions of love sounded convincing after numerous tequila shots, we have all been there.

While some are more painful and memorable than others, breaking up with your pill (or thinking about breaking up with your pill) can be pretty frightening. For many of us, it keeps us pain free, it keeps us headache free, it keeps us acne free, and most importantly, it keeps us baby free. However, when you start to think about having a baby, you start to wonder: could all those years on the pill be doing something bad to me?

Although voices don’t carry over the Internet or through the written word, picture us shouting NOOOOOOO as loud as possible! The pill did not harm your fertility, and the pill is not causing your infertility. The pill did not harm your ovaries or your eggs or your uterus or your tubes. Whether you spent one, five, ten, or twenty years on the pill, it does not matter. Fertility issues arise totally irrespective of the length of time you were on the pill. In many ways, the pill protected you from some of the fertility monsters (think fibroids and endometriosis) as well as some of the other monsters in GYN (ovarian and endometrial cancer).

One of the most common complaints we hear is “I spent so much time on the pill I don’t know what my period is like.” And while this is true, it doesn’t matter so much. Yes, it might have tipped you off to menstrual irregularity before you started to try and led you to stop the pill a couple of months sooner, but in the grand scheme of things, it won’t make a huge difference in your fertility or your future pregnancies.

While you may not know you had something going on, the delay is unlikely to change the outcome. The only time it may have blinded you to important information is for women who undergo an early (a.k.a. premature) menopause. In these rare and select cases, had a woman not been on the pill, she might have seen her cycles becoming shorter and more irregular and therefore sought treatment earlier. However, premature menopause is very, very rare (affecting an infinitesimally small subset of the population). Bottom line, breaking up with your pill to rule this diagnosis out is completely unnecessary.

There have been many amazing developments along the way for women and women’s reproductive rights. Oral contraceptive pills are definitely at the top of this list. And while your friends, your mom, or any stranger willing to give you advice on anything and everything, we want you to stop worrying about how many years of your life you have devoted to this daily ritual; you did NOTHING wrong by engaging in chronic pill use. In fact, you did just the opposite—you were proactive in thinking about your reproductive health. This wise and thoughtful decision definitely gets a double thumbs up.