Dear Alice,

I've had an IUD for about a year, and I'm thrilled with it in general. However, there has been one unforeseen consequence that I'd never heard anyone else talk about before: the IUD string pokes my boyfriend at unpredictable times during sex and causes him a lot of pain. I can't feel it at all, but it's made him bleed a couple times. I've been back to my gynecologist about it twice, and she has trimmed the string so that it's flush with my cervix. Apparently the IUD strings are supposed to curl up on themselves after they're inserted, but mine never did. The trimming hasn't completely eliminated the problem, but we've learned to work around it by not having sex around my period (when my cervix is open). I've never heard of anyone else experiencing this issue with an IUD before, but thought I'd let people know that it is possible.

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Dear Alice,

I've had my copper IUD since 2000, and I love it. It is literally the only birth control that requires no maintenance whatsoever. Cost-wise, you can't beat it - it cost $400 to insert, and it's good for 10 years. Compare that to the $30-40/month of hormones, or the shot. No wonder almost no one knows about it - the drug companies lose money on IUDs! Plus, with no maintenance, there's nothing to mess up; that is, there's no worry about forgetting a pill.