I am considering going back on the mini pill (progesterone only pill) known as cerazette. Im sick and tired of taking iron tablets and pain medication that barely helps the pain caused by endometriosis and adenomyosis, which the pain medication i am on damages the kidneys. So I don't want to be taking it for life.
Im sick and tired of having extremely heavy bleeding and intense pain. So im going to see if I can try this pill again. Last time I got acne and breakthrough bleeding and hot flashes. But I know it disappears within 3-6 months. I'll have to stick it out this time. Not give up after 3 weeks like I did last time.
I am hopeful it will help me in the long run and hopefully stop my periods altogether. If anyone has any experiences being on it, please share!
i’m planning on coming off the pill this month. i’ve been on it ten years to the month so i’m quite nervous about it - if anyone has any experiences they’d like to share to prepare/reassure me a bit, i’d be very grateful!! 🤍 i know it’s totally different for everyone but i’m researching lmao (feel free to dm or anon message/i can respond to a message privately if you prefer 💙)
is it okay to take mini pill while on testosterone? I have been taking mini pill to stop periods for quite a while now and I was planning on taking it for the first month of being on T so that my period's don't start again before the testosterone stops them?
Yes, it’s fine to take the mini pill - according to the Faculty of Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare, progesterone-only contraceptives such as the mini pill aren’t thought to interfere with hormone regimes.
I will say that how quickly testosterone suppresses your periods is difficult to predict - it could take anything from 1-6+ months depending on your testosterone levels and personal factors. Also, withdrawing something like the mini pill could potentially cause a little bit of breakthrough bleeding whenever you do it (this doesn’t seem to be reported often, though!).
Of course, you should also be aware that testosterone by itself is not a contraceptive, and while it doesn’t sound like you’re using the mini pill for its contraceptive function, others reading this might be. If you want contraception then you should continue taking the pill or make sure you use another method, such as condoms.
You might like to talk to whoever is arranging your prescription about how long you should stay on the mini pill after starting testosterone, too - they might well have further suggestions about this.
is anyone on the contraceptive pill (specifically mini-pill/cerelle hopefully) that can tell me how long bleeding is normal and not normal? looking at this i’ve been spotting/light bleeding for 31 (?) days. never heavy or medium, barely fill a panty liner. as of today i’ve just started my third month packet. internet says in the 4-6th month the bleeding will go back to regular and stop but idk if my bleeding is normal or nah so idk if that implies to me, yanoo?
If you are taking the mini pill (specifically norethindrone)as a treatment be sure to check and make sure you are receiving the correct dose.
Upon some online research,which I’ll add links for, the dose I’ve been receiving is way far off anything that would be helpful. For general contraception uses .35 mg is fine but for the treatment of endometriosis the dose starts at 5mg.
Norethindrone (Oral Route) Proper Use - Mayo Clinic
Detailed Norethindrone dosage information for adults and children. Includes dosages for Contraception, Endometriosis, Abnormal Uterine Bleed
Hey, I just need to vent, but just to give a heads up:
I talk pretty openly in this post about weight loss and BMI, with numbers included, as well as sensitive mental health topics in regards to PMDD and SI, and also some talk about birth control in relation to both. If you're sensitive to any of those topics, please skip this post!
So, I'm not saying I want people to, but I do think it's a little odd people haven't commented on my weight lately?
A bit of background info, I guess I got so used to people always mentioning my weight and my body last time I lost weight fast, although to be fair I guess, this time it's not been intentional? Like I haven't started dieting or doing lifestyle changes again, so I also don't talk about it, obviously, and I think if I did, there would maybe be more opportunities for others to do so? Assuming anyone has even noticed, it might not be noticeable, or even water weight, idk.
But yeah idk, it just feels a bit weird if nobody really notices I guess? Simply because like. It's a lot of weight I've lost veeery quickly? I had originally started the combination birth control pill, because I was absolutely certain I had PMDD, and I'd looked into it and saw that there was a chance that birth control pills could help my PMDD symptoms (although it seemed honestly there was just as big a risk it could make it worse) but with how awful my PMDD (and PCOS, I should mention, of course doesn't help) was, I was pretty desperate to try anything, even though when I was freshly a teen I'd tried birth control for like 2 weeks and got insane migraines, it would still be worth it just to have less PMDD symptoms going on. So I talked to a gynecology nurse and got on it, and..
Relief. My period cramps got so much lighter, my period itself went from like 5-7 days of a medium-heavy flow, to a 2-4 day light-to-medium flow. Most importantly, my PMDD got so. Much. BETTER.
I went from being affected by my cycle for like 3 out of 4 weeks every month to only a few days. I went from intensely feeling the hormone fluctuations effect my body and brain every month in extreme ways. Aside from the huge drops in motivation, energy, mood, the increase in brain fog and bad brain days that I'd feel varying fluctuating levels of throughout the month, the 2 weeks up to, during, and right after was hell on earth. I'd get so depressed and unmotivated, not to mention emotional, irrational, extremely irritable and annoyed, easily angered, bored, sad and miserable, and around my period I'd get extremely painful cramps that sometimes leave me unable to move for like an hour I guess, idk I never timed it. And the reason I wanted to try birth control pills was because the worst of my PMDD symptoms, the one I have the hardest time dealing with, is suicidal ideation (and the depression that comes along with it) because it would happen almost like clockwork during my cycle, and only then. For most of my life actually (that I remember at least) I was, at least passively, suicidal. But that's been gone for a while thankfully - except around my period. And the thoughts when it's because of PMDD vs depression are so much more intense, because it comes on so much more quickly, but it's like it brings all of the baggage along with it that I used to deal with, and just uses it to smack me in the face with it. It is so intense and so bad that it sometimes, and sometimes often, would creep into active suicidal thoughts. (Just to clarify, I do not mean in the way that I was ever about to literally do it because of my PMDD, but just that the passive thoughts would switch to active thoughts in ways I'd rather not take the time to describe right now, I'm already writing way too much, but that if you've experienced those thoughts yourself you know the difference and what I mean)
That all got so much better, like I said. I felt so much better mentally and physically around my period. I still had PMDD symptoms, but for a few days, not several weeks. I didn't feel like I was always in the middle of both preparing for one dive in mood and recovering from the last one, with no time to truly rest in between. My mood was also so much more stable during the month generally.
But I do also have migraines. I have them a lot. I didn't know they were migraines for a very long time, I just thought they were bad headaches, but I sometimes have migraine with aura.. and if you do, you cannot be on the combination pill due to like cardiovascular health and a slight increase of having a stroke or something like that. And I didn't know that, I had just spoken to my doctor to get help for migraines, and then I had a follow up with the nurse and went back and forth for a bit because even they weren't sure what to do, because while my migraines had gotten debilitating (i was having migraines like 4-5 days a week) and there was a chance the combination pill was making them worse, there was no guarantee that it was, and that taking them away might not give me any relief from the pain. At the same time they were hesitant, because of how much it helps my PMDD, and probably also because of how much I emphasized that I can live with migraines but not the PMDD symptoms AND migraines (which of course I can if I have to, but I wouldn't want to have to do that if I can help it) but the long and the short of it was that despite how much it's helped me, despite that there is no guarantee switching to the mini pill would have any of the same benefits, no guarantee the migraines would get better, nothing like that, my doctor simply was not comfortable letting me continue to take the combination pill, because according to official guidelines, she is really not supposed to. And honestly that's fair. She didn't write them, she just has to follow them and use her best judgment, and overall she has been an incredible doctor to me, so I'm not mad at her at all.
So anyway, the weight thing. I changed from one birth control, around the 20-somethingth of february, same time I got into a relationship. At that point I'd been pretty stable in my weight at like 94.5kg, but the first month or so I gained 3kg. Annoying but fine, because I have to lose weight for some fertility clinic stuff (not my own idea) and I hadn't had motivation. Like I was supposed to, ideally, have hit a BMI of 30 like 6 months ago. When I was initially told that about a year ago or something I was annoyed, because my BMI at that point was 31, and at my highest weight years ago, my BMI was 47.6 so I was like wow, that 1 number difference from 30 to 31 is really gonna matter? Apparently so. And I was soooo burnt out from when I lost weight on purpose back in like 2020-2021 because I was so obsessive about it near the end that my brain thought of nothing else, and honest to god the idea of having to calorie count again makes me want to never look at food for the rest of my life, just to not have to deal with the hassle (even though I did lose a lot of my weight back then doing so in a healthy way - it was only after I realized how obsessive that I'd gotten again near the end that I forced myself to stop). But yeah, that's how much energy and motivation I have to actually lose the weight I needed to. Zilch.
So yeah, the first month of switching, I did gain a bit of weight, around 2 months ago, which I did think was odd because I've spent most of the time at my boyfriends' place, and unlike me, he is not a snacker, and I primarily eat snacks because I have a hard time remembering to eat if they have to be full meals, so I didn't eat a lot of food generally that month - again, not on purpose, but my ADHD ass literally works like either A: There's a snack? I either cannot stop thinking about it non-stop and I want this snack. I'm going to eat it (which was so much fucking worse before I started victoza for my IBDs, as liraglutide, - which victoza is - seems to really quiet my food noise, which makes sense as liraglutide is similar to semaglutide but not the same. I usually call them cousins) OR B: I will forget it exists about 5 minutes after I put it away behind something opaque, and forget it's even there until I visually spot it again I will also most likely forget to eat anything else, because if there are few visual cues to remind me, few options to choose from, and I'm on..
Stops to count lmao, uhh.. 4? Medications? I think? Yeah, 4 different types of things that suppress my appetite. Essentially I guess it's weird if I ever DO have an appetite, with all the medication I'm on that can fuck with it, but still, it wasn't until I started the mini pill (which I count as number 4) that the weight started coming off. Last time was when I started the victoza initially a few years ago, and that was slower, not as much weight, and also stabilized and stopped pretty quickly.
This hasn't. Since I had gained the 3 kg, my BMI was 31 (I had lost a few kg since the fertility clinic conversation but regained them over time, so it was down to like 30.6 or 30.8 or something before technically)
Now it's down to 28.8. Which means, I've pretty much lost 10kg in like 2 months. And again, I'm not trying. Genuinely. The birth control switch has been absolute hell on earth for many reasons (including that the positive effects the combination pill had on my PMDD symptoms, the mini pill seems to NOT have, and in fact I almost feel it made my PMDD worse? Only thing so far that's still a little better is I bleed less) and it has absolutely disintegrated my appetite. I've never in my life eaten less while also thinking so little of food. Which in a way is nice! I've only ever been able to eat so little when I've been severely fucked up mentally and doing it on purpose, but even then I was thinking about food constantly, but it's also not nice because I am a human being and my meatsuit needs sustenance and vitamins and shit, and I'm not an idiot - I know that just because I'm not hungry or have the motivation to find food, it doesn't mean I magically started photosynthesis somehow. I do need food, it's just such a difficult thing to remember to do well at the moment.
But yeah I'm definitely gonna talk to my doctor about all of this when I see her, because I kinda just wanna quit these pills cold turkey and see if I feel better. I've been so fucking miserable the past few months, despite also being the most content and happy at the same time with my relationship, and it's just fucking up every aspect of my life.
Except the weight. I'm only staying on them for now so that I hopefully lose a bit more weight so I don't regain past BMI 30 in the 3 months I have to be off another medication before I can start the fertility treatments. But GOD I do not want to do this for another month 😭 but if I do then maybe I can finally get this shit over with so I can get my ovaries out, and then it's never a problem ever again. I can do another month 😤
Hey, can anyone tell me if it’s normal for zelleta (mini-pill) to cause stomach pain in my lower abdomen, nausea and headaches? I’ve tried googling and a lot of results say they’re normal side affects but then others say I should consult my doctor but like. it’s only been a day lol so will this pass?
