- It’s easiest to check your threads in the shower as being naked makes it easier to reach! Make sure you don’t have soap on your hands
- The threads can feel quite sharp for the first week or so but they will soften to like a hair and wrap round your cervix – if they’re too short they may not wrap so well.
- Put 2 fingers into the vagina and “walk” them up the front wall until you feel your cervix. Your cervix feels like your nose, and you can press it and move it but it is definitely attached to something! If you can’t find your cervix, you haven’t gone far enough. Your partner is likely to know where your cervix is so ask him/her! Sometimes it’s easier to use just your middle finger.
- The coil threads are usually wrapped around the cervix but they move most of the time. Rub your fingertip around or across the different to anything else in the vagina. That is the check done.
- The first time you do this you won’t have much idea of what your “normal” feels like, but over the first few months you’ll develop a feel for them and recognise what’s normal for you. Then if you forget to check it for a month, when you do it will trigger the memory and you will know all is well.
- If you have your threads checked by a nurse/doctor you won’t have learned what is normal for you. The coil is supposed to be a fit-and-forget method that need no checking for 3, 5, or 10 years but if you are unable to feel the threads please contact clinic so we can teach you again how to do it.