Pain management options for IUD placement!!#iud #iudinsertion #iudexperience #painmanagement #mirena

Added: 2026-06-10

[00:00:00]Pain management during IUD placement is a hot topic. People are worried about how much it's going to hurt for a long time because it's a quick procedure. A lot of providers are like, you can do anything for a minute or two, right?

[00:00:12]Which is like true. That kind of runs over people who just don't want to feel pain even if it's just for a minute or two. What can we do to make that pain more bearable and a lot less? First thing is using nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories like Tylenol and Motrin or Tylenol ibuprofen are going to help immensely with pain before, during, and after your procedure. Often these medications are like, oh it's just a Tylenol. Oh it's just an ibuprofen. But when you're taking it at the doses recommended by your doctor, these can be really, really helpful. So I have my patients take 800 mg of ibuprofen before IUD placement, four of the usual tablets of ibuprofen. So they take that before the procedure and then every 6 hours after the procedure they can additionally dose that ibuprofen if they happen to need it. I would say that's my mainstay for pain management, but there are definitely other options and you can kind of escalate up as needed. The next thing I'll offer to my patients is if they can bring a driver, somebody to bring them home after the procedure, we can do kind of conscious sedation which is essentially giving medications to make you a little bit less aware and to manage your pain during the procedure. I typically will do this with an anxiolytic in combination sometimes with a stronger pain medication who maybe have never had a child before or have had C-sections only so their cervix might be a little bit tighter and that it might be just a little bit trickier to pass this device through the cervical canal. For those patients, a medication called Cytotec or misoprostol can be helpful. This medication softens and sort of gently dilates the cervix.

[00:01:53]It can cause some cramping the night before and the morning of as you're using this medication to prepare for the procedure. However, it may make the procedure itself quicker, smoother, and less painful. Finally, you can use injection medication to locally numb the nerves that are supplying the cervix.

[00:02:09]That's called a paracervical block and that's where you use a needle to inject medication right next to the cervix on either side and that can help with pain control at the time of the procedure.

[00:02:20]It's a quick procedure, but you don't just have to grit your teeth and bear it. There are things you can do to make it more comfortable. Talk to your provider and see what are the things that they offer in their office, pain management strategies, what you should do ahead of time and afterwards just to make this kind of the smoothest and easiest process that it can be for you.