I have been on Mirena since September of 2006 (6 weeks after my y...

I have been on Mirena since September of 2006 (6 weeks after my youngest was born). I can't ever remember to take the pill, I've always had really heavy (super tampon and overnight maxi) periods for 7 days with really bad cramps, and I'm not sure if I want any more children. I had seen the commercials, read about it, and decided this was what I wanted. Well during the settling period (about 9 months - 1 year) I experienced the cramps, bleeding and bloatedness. However I've now had it for three years with no problems, that I thought anyways... until this month. I haven't had a real period (other than spotting for three days or so) for over two years now. Well this month I started spotting and didn't think anything of it. Then it slowly got worse. Luckily I had an appointment with my Dr. coming up (this past Monday), so I figured I'd talk to her about it then. Well, when she checked she said that it looked like the Mirena had come down a bit, as the strings were several inches longer than they were on my last visit. She has now scheduled me for an ultrasound this Friday to see if they can find out what's going on. It's been two weeks since the bleeding started, and just as I think it's gonna stop, it gets heavy again and I pass more clots. After reading everyone's posts, I'm a little scared. I start to think about how I've been over the past couple years and wonder if maybe some of my moodiness and irritability has been because of this little thing. I'm usually one of the most laid back people, but I do tend to snap at my children and boyfriend a lot. I know now that I also have the side effect of the lack of sex drive. I had trumped that up to having a little one, but that's probably not really the case. I hope I will find out more tomorrow. Just on another note, my boss also had Mirena put in. I'm not sure that she had any side effects, because she never mentioned any to me, except about the discharge because we both had that. Anyways, she had hers out in March and she just found out she is pregnant (but only a few weeks along).. but she's been bleeding, so she's going in twice a week to make sure her levels keep going up. Anyways, I wasn't aware that the way Mirena worked was just by self aborting the embryos. I don't like that idea at all, so after I figure out what's going on with me, I need to really sit down and weigh all my options because right now my side-effects aren't near as bad as anyone elses on here. Anyone know of another IUD that doesn't have the side effects like this one?