navigating sexual healthcare with toxic mother

[phantomdog]

hi all,

recently i've been thinking more about how to take charge of my sexual health more extensively. last year at my doctor's appointment she told me that i should really consider taking birth control seeing as i'm sexually active so i wouldn't have to worry about pregnancy if a condom ever broke or a similar scenario arose. at the time i dismissed the statement because i wasn't as informed about birth control (and i also didn't want any of the potential effects of taking something that increases estrogen) and i also didn't feel like handling my mother's response. but the more i've been thinking and given there was already an incident where i thought i might be pregnant, i think my doctor was right and that's probably a solid option for me.
the issue is, not only is my mom very toxic, she is also incredibly sex-repulsed and is made extremely uncomfortable by any talk of anything pertaining to reproductive organs or sex. she never even told me about periods, yet got mad at me when i was 10 for looking them up, saying i should have just asked her but she never made me feel like i could be comfortable having these discussions with her. even now that i'm 16, she still quickly changes the subject whenever anything moderately sexual comes up. i've never been given "the talk" and i was never told what would happen during puberty, i had to learn everything on my own; she never even got me one of those books that explain puberty as a kid which is what most uncomfortable parents do as an alternative to talking to their kid about it.
as a result of feeling unable to communicate sexual issues / topics i also never tell her when i have a partner because i know she would go to unreasonable lengths to prevent us from having sex. i feel very disappointed in her for this, especially considering that i was groomed as a child, i feel she should have done more to ensure i could develop a healthy sense of sexuality, but instead of doing this she shut out the subject entirely.
so, how can i navigate around this to access birth control?

[Stephanie]

Being it is sounding like open conversation with your mom about this is not likely going to be easy - let me link you an article first about how you can go about getting birth control on your own: https://www.scarleteen.com/article/advi ... m_breaking. You want to look past the information on proper condom use and there's information about your rights and getting BC on your own.

If you want to go through her to your doctor and do things that way, there are plenty of reasons people get birth control that are not simply for use as birth control (cramps, acne, etc) - but the bottom line is due to you being the patient while if billed on their insurance they could see you were prescribed birth control, if you tell your doctor you don't want your mom to know why, they legally aren't allowed to say.