"Perhaps I am not the most patient creature in the universe to date, but it seems to me that I have been awaiting the Today Sponge's return for years. I would appreciate some concrete information. Where is it?" demands another.

Others can express only gratitude: "I am so glad that [the Today Sponge] is finally coming back! I am so miserable without them! I cannot be on the Pill anymore, and I used to use these things all the time! Only went to the Pill because they got rid of the sponge! My prayers are finally answered!"

Who can blame them for being anxious? It's been five long years since the Today Sponge sat on drugstore shelves. In March 1999, the newly formed Allendale Pharmaceutical Co. announced it would bring back the sponge, possibly as soon as fall 1999.

Fall came and went, then winter. Now Allendale predicts its resurrected product will be released in Canada sometime this month, and in the United States no later than May. For fans of the contraceptive sponge it can't happen soon enough.

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I was 22 when American Home Products halted production of the Today Sponge -- too young and promiscuous to have considered it an option. When it comes to birth control, I've always preferred my methods to be chemical and imperceptible -- provided I'm in a long-term, monogamous relationship that supports such characteristics.

During the times in my sexually active life when I haven't been on the Pill or Depo Provera, the trusty condom suited me. Unlike female barrier methods such as the female condom, the diaphragm or, god help us, the vaginal film, condoms effectively stop pregnancy and disease without similarly putting an end to the mood.

For many women my age (and younger), when the Today Sponge returns it will feel much like it did in 1982 for another generation of women when a brand-new form of birth control was introduced.

The sponge was invented by Bruce Ward Vorhauer, who struggled for seven years to get the device approved and on the market. The Today Sponge was the first new contraceptive method to appear in decades and, for more than 10 years it was the most popular female, over-the-counter birth-control method around. Five years after its release, 75 million sponges had been sold. During its 12 years on the market, it is estimated that 6.4 million women (11 percent of all women using contraceptives at the time), had tried the sponge at least once, according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit family-planning advocacy organization.

(Vorhauer, meanwhile, spent his fortune on a lavish lifestyle, was forced to sell his company to American Home Products in 1987, moved to Montana where he ran for the U.S. Senate and lost, went bankrupt again, set fire to his yacht in an insurance scam and was facing potential arson charges when he committed suicide in 1993.)