Brenda waved goodbye to her dads and her little sister and watched as they drove away from her dorm.  Until now, she’d had a limited sense of what independence meant: her fathers, Jim and Sid, had devoted much of their time to helping steer her in the right direction.  They had even scouted ahead to identify a new primary care physician (leaving behind her beloved pediatrician) and an OB/GYN in Evanston before starting at Northwestern.  Now, on her own for the first time, she’s excited to make friends away from her parents’ watchful eye.

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By the time she’d finished New Student Week, she felt like she had more friends than she could have imagined and had even met a boy whom she found herself wanting to kiss with increasing urgency.  Conveniently he felt the same way, and a mere 4 weeks into the quarter she had her first boyfriend.  Brenda was relatively inexperienced in relationship matters, and while she knew that eventually things would progress beyond PG-13 she wasn’t sure what she could do to be “prepared” for the impending escalation of their romance.

 

Brenda thought about going to one of her new doctors, but she was worried her parents might find out somehow and she didn’t have a relationship with these new physicians. Instead, Brenda started doing research online and was overwhelmed by the number of sources and conflicting perspectives – the accumulation of information wasn’t hard to read, but it was difficult to process. She felt anxious and distressed and finally begged her friends for some kind of referral, confiding in them about the big decision she planned to make in the next few weeks.  One of her friends mentioned The Freshman 15, a website she’d heard about from SHAPE, the sexual health and peer educator group on campus.  She’d used it to learn more about staying safe at parties, she said, and thought they had great information.  Brenda was curious and decided to check it out for herself.

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The first thing she knew was that she wanted to get on some kind of birth control – getting pregnant would make everything more complicated and that wasn’t a conversation she was ready to have with her parents.  So she went to the web page, saw the array of topics on the home page, and clicked birth control.  On the next screen was a list of articles: an AMA with an OB/GYN, an article written by a Planned Parenthood employee about all the different types of birth control, an FAQ on IUDs, and more.  Since she had little knowledge about her options, she decided to start with the article on the different types.  She pored over their descriptions, taking notes about what she liked or didn’t like about certain options, and finally decided that an IUD might be right for her.  She then used the web page’s search box to find more articles about IUDs specifically, and after reading through them she felt confident enough to take action.

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Brenda set up an appointment with the local Planned Parenthood, armed with her health insurance card and a list of questions she had about specific IUD options.  The doctor was pleased to see she had done her research. After a discussion about how long she wanted the IUD to last and a discussion of possible side effects or issues, they determined the right option for her and set a follow-up appointment for the next week.

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After the IUD was inserted, Brenda felt at peace knowing that no matter when she finally made her decision, she’d taken action to protect herself.  She also found herself returning to The Freshman 15 periodically for information about sex, dating, and more: the mix of perspectives and abundance of factual (and cited!) information made for a source she could trust to give her the information she needed without a lot of hassle.