My girlfriend is currently using the birth control pill to regulate her period because she has endometriosis. I don’t know the name of “the pill,” but I know it comes in those circle packs, and she takes it for 3 weeks and then stops the 4th week for her period.
Last week she went to a gynecologist for a checkup, and her birth control is getting changed to some different pill that will make it so that she only has her period once every three months. The reason for the switch is because it’s painful for her to have her period, so now she has to endure it one third as often.
Do any of you have any information on these meds? What are their success rates? What do you know about endometriosis? Do you know about this “three-month” pill? Is it less or more effective then the regular pill?
Thank you for your input. It’s a touchy subject, so I thought I’d consult with all of you (If you don’t mind, I’d rather learn about the birth control than get into why it’s a touchy subject.)
Okay, I just did a little research, so I’ve narrowed my question. Instead of taking the sugar pills once a month for a week, she will take the birth control continuously so that she doesn’t get her period.
My new and more focused question is: will this make her more or less likely to get pregnant?
Neither. The pill is more than 99% effective if taken correctly - by which I mean taken every day. Not having a period every month will not make her any more or less fertile. I read somewhere (and sorry, no - I don’t have a site for this) that this is actually a good thing, as in pre-birth control days, we spent more time pregnant and/or breastfeeding, and therefore we’re now having more periods in a lifetime than ever before, leading to other associated problems, such as anaemia. The injectable contraceptive can stop periods altogether and many women, such as myself, find this a blessing.
Hear, hear! Depo-Provera is a wonderful invention. I am 44 and have no desire to get pregnant again, and not having PMS and bloating and cramping, never mind the messy stuff—it’s a miracle drug!
From what I have read, missing your period is not a health risk at all. Some women arrange to have one 4 times a year, some two, some not at all until they are ready to get pregnant.
Another question: what is the success rate of the pill? I heard something in the tune of 98%. At times I get nervous, because I’m sure we’ll have sex more than 100 times . . .
I guess what I’d like to know is how many of use only use the pill as your contraceptive and that you’ve never gotten pregnant (i.e. I’d like to hear from you that it works)! But I guess even more importantly, have any of you gotten pregnant even though you were on the pill?
Sorry if I’m getting too graphic on you, but we also employ the “pulling out before” technique as well, which I know in and of itself is highly ineffective, but must add a measure of increased effectiveness (I’m aware of what happens to men before the orgasm, but it has to decrease the chances for pregnancy to have a small fraction of the little swimmers in there as opposed to the whole team).
Do you think that the combination of the pill (obviously the most effective part) and the pull-out is playing it pretty safe?
My God, how paranoid are you??! I’ll probably get pitted for saying this, but my experience women who get pregnant while on the pill weren’t taking it properly. But I suppose there’s no such thing as being too careful, so I’d recommend tight briefs for you, which decreases male fertillty (sperm don’t like heat), or you could use a spermicidal jelly as well. Alternatively, the best form of contraceptive around is…celibacy!
There’s obviously a difference between “ideal” success rate and “actual” - because some women don’t take the pill properly. Besides the reasons listed, some women don’t use another method of contraception during that month if they have to go on antibiotics. Some women take St. John’s Wort with it, which reduces its effectiveness level.
The success rate is expressed in terms of how many women became pregnant after a year of using that method of contraception. So it’s not 100 acts of sexual intercourse, but rather X women out of every 100.
This effectiveness chart from Planned Parenthood says that perfect use of the pill would result in 0.8 out of 100 women becoming pregnant after a year of use. The typical (“actual”) rate is more like 8 out of 100. Withdrawal is listed as 4 for “perfect” use, 27 for typical. So it’d help some, sure, but probably not a heck of a lot.
When my husband and I were more paranoid about it, we used condoms + the pill. We soon stopped and are just using the pill, with condoms when necessary (antibiotic use, forgetting to take the pill). We’ve done that for years with no problems. For a few years, we also used condoms only with no accidents either. Your mileage may vary, and the only totally foolproof way to avoid pregnancy is either abstinence, or sterilization and appropriate lag time to “flush out the system” (barring any surgical accidents that don’t do the job properly).
To be even more accurate, the sucess rate is measured in “woman years” that is, per woman who has used it for a year.
So, 98% effectivenes means that out of 100 women who used it for a year, 2 got pregnant in that year. It is not per um… activity… to keep it PG.
I’ve used BCP as my exclusive form of birth control for the last… (counting) 6 sexually active years and I ain’t got preggers, not even once.
Also, in case this hasn’t been made clear, the right way to take BCP is to take it every day at the same time of day. If that is too difficult for whatever reason, other hormonal options - such as the depo-provera shot or the trans-dermal patch (can’t recall the brand name) – require less remembering.
Your girlfriend’s BCP pak comes with “detailed patient labeling” in every package that explains this and more. You can also find the same information on the web, google it by brand name. A third source of information is the Physicians Desk Reference, available at most larger libraries. Once again you look it up by brand name.
If, for whatever reason, you can’t ask your girlfriend what brand of BCP she uses we can probably deduce it from the color of the packaging (pink, peach, green, blue, etc.) as I’m pretty sure only Ortho uses dial-paks and they are color-coded.
It shouldn’t affect the level of protection at all, provided she keeps up with taking the pill properly. Of course, the effectiveness can be altered by other medications or dietary supplements, bouts of vomiting or diarrhea, etc.
She might also look into other hormonal methods with less room for mistakes, like the patch, the ring, Depo, or the Mirena. Depo and the Mirena can stop periods in some women, but they can also cause a lot of cramping in other women, so those are options she’d want to research very carefully first.
As others have pointed out, effectiveness rates are not figured per acts of coitus, but by woman-year. This means per woman who used the method for a given year, but it can be extrapolated to number of pregnancies a given woman will have with this method in a hundred years of use.
For the Mirena (I’m too lazy to look up rates for other methods, so shoot me) the failure rate is .1%, which means that 1 out of every thousand women who use it will get pregnant over the course of the year, or that I will, statistically speaking, have one pregnancy in 1,000 years of use.
Along with what the others have said, I will point out that certain medications, especially antibiotics, can decrease the effectiveness of the pill. If your girlfriend is ever on any antibiotics make sure you use a back-up method.
The pill is one of the most reliable forms of birth control if taken correctly (at the same time every day, no skipping pills). There is actually a form of the pill that is supposed to be approved within the next year that is specifically meant to be taken the way your girlfriend is taking her pills - they come in packs that last several months instead of one month, enabling women to skip their periods. For women like your girlfriend, Dr’s have been prescribing the pill taken without placebos for a long time. Women will often also take them this way to skip or delay a period when it is inconvenient (over a vacation or honeymoon, for example). It does not increase or decrease the effectiveness of the pill.
I would say the only thing would be to make sure she takes them as directed, as if she did for some reason get pregnant she would not have the symptom of a missed period to tip her off. If you are really, really paranoid she could take a home pregnancy test every month to be completely sure, but I wouldn’t really worry about it. The pill worked just fine for me and has for many other women as a sole means of birth control. I’m sure skipping periods that are painful will be a relief to your girlfriend and is a very good reason to take the pill this way.
Been on various pills for six years. I’ve had one scare, during a transition between pills when my partner and I were using condoms as a back-up method; the condom broke, I took a morning-after pill, and no pregnancy resulted.
Your girlfriend must take the pill regularly (you can help by reminding her to bring her pill pack on trips, etc.), and if you’re extra concerned, condoms make a good back-up (and are less stressful than the pull-out method, I believe).
Also, as others have mentioned, she should check with a doctor or pharmacist to make sure no other meds (that she’s on now or may be prescribed in the future) will affect the efficiency of the pill.
The pill is called Seasonale, and it’s already in use. I believe it’s what the OP is referring to. You can check it out at seasonale.com
I used the pill from the time I became sexually active, at age 15, until just two days ago, when the doctor took me off of it because I’m now over 40, and there’s increased risk of stroke. The only time I became unintentionally pregnant during those years, a doctor had taken me off of the pill for a year because he was an ass. I was using the Sponge, and, voila, I have a 16-yr-old daughter to show for it!
Yes, Seasonale is the one I was thinking of. It’s the same thing women have been doing for years - it’s about time someone got around to marketing it that way. I didn’t know it was already ok’d for use!
