My wife takes the Ortho-Tricyclene (Lo?) pills, and in the literature that comes with it, it says to start the set of pills on the first day of her period, or the following Sunday. Obviously the “Sunday” part is for slightly irregular cycles, and as a normal status quo (new pills always starts on Sunday).
My question is, let’s say someone’s period starts on a Monday or Tuesday, regularly. How can starting the first pill (one set of hormones) almost a week later (and then repeat for every week), medically work out? Should a person in this situation take the pill earlier?
But for what it’s worth, my experience has been thus: my period starts on a Tuesday, and I start my pills the following Sunday. This has been the case through well over ten years, four doctors, and at least a dozen different brands of pills, and no harm (nor unexpected accidents) has come to me.
It seems that (in Toronto, anyway) SOP is to start pills the Sunday after the period starts, rather than the other way around.
The Sunday start is purely for convenience. For most people, it means they don’t get their period on a weekend (They would generally get it Tues-wed-thurs, maybe fri). That is why you have the option of choosing either the first day of your period (you will keep your exact cycle) or the next Sunday (your cycle will reaarnge itself in the abovementioned manner) for your start date.
You aren’t supposed to use BCP as your sole birth control in the first month, at least as suggested by my doctors and nurses. After the first month, generally the cycle is permanently reset to the pill’s cycle (although for some women it make take up to 3 cycles for the actual period to settle down, birth-controllingly speaking, after the first month it is regulated).
Oh, and no, the person should never “adjust” the cycle of pill taking, EVER, without explicit instructions from their physician. That way lies babies. My period bleeds over (har har) into sunday even though I am sunday start (amazingly, my period IS shorter on the pill than off, off the pill it was an aggravating 8 days). Doesn’t matter. I take my sunday-scheduled pill even though I am still menstruating.
The actual period is less relevant to the BCP cycle than you may think; one brand, Seasonale, eliminates the period except for 4 cycles a year by taking the “active pills” straight through for 3 months.
Those instructions are just for getting started. It doesn’t really matter when you get started since the pills will take over your cycle eventually, but it goes smoothest if it is somewhere in touch with your natural cycle and most people choose sundays because it is easiest to remember.
After that, your natural cycle doesn’t matter at all. You’ll remain 3 weeks on 1 week off for as long as you take the pills.
Also, it’s worth asking your doctor if your pills can be taken according the the same cycle that Seasonale uses. Under my doctor’s supervision, I use Levlen to skip most of my periods and it works out great. The 3 weeks on 1 week off cycle was implimented by marketers when the birth control pill first came out to emphasize that it “natural” hormones that operate in a “natural” way and (they hoped) to open the market to reluctent birth control markets like Catholics. There is no real medical reason for this particular cycle and some doctors suggest that we were never designed to mestrate as often as we do now that we are pregnent less often, better fed, and start earlier.