PMT + mini-pill + breastfeeding + hormones + mood swings + PCOS questions!

[justkeepswimming]

I am bfding ds2 (nearly 6mo) and have been on the mini-pill (Cerazette) for a couple of months now.
Have recently started BLW with ds2 & he has dropped his number of feeds during the day (not really counting, just a general impression that he's not as bothered anymore), not that he's eating loads of food but some is going through

In the last 3 days I have ended up in tears twice, sobbing-and-gibbering-wreck type tears, not just a wobbly lip! first time i lost it with ds1 (2.2) who wouldn't nap (think he's given up on daytime naps now, boo hiss), today was with dh (who announced that the planned next 2 months when he should be working from home/locally are actually only going to be 1 month around here, then 1 month back in London! and that although he doesn't PLAN to have to stay in London overnight exceptional things MAY come up......and breathe!)
anyway i def over-reacted (not that i'm telling him that!), but still feel pretty 'near the edge' emotionally.

With ds1 af came back at around the same stage (weaned him earlier with purees).

So, finally getting to the point (!), am i actually suffering from PMT cos my body wants to have a period, but the pill is stopping it? Can you have PMT without the 'M'?
Or am I just suffering from weird hormones??

oh, also, i had pcos before ds1 and feel like i've got lots of the symptoms back again, sweating & BO , dandruff & greasy skin. thought the pcos was gone as ds2 appeared rather quicker than we expected .

Anyone had PCOS come back?
Anyone just had similar ups and downs without actually having af?
Or anyone want to tell me to a)get a grip or b) sympathise?!

[PazzaPlusTwo]

hi

am BF-ing twins (my first - 12 weeks) and am also totally premenstrual. I thought it was just the tiredness but then my SIL said she felt like she had terrible PMT until the day she stopped BF-ing her boy and it lifted like a weight off her shoulders. It suddenly made sense.

Also like you I started Cerazette a month ago, so last week I stopped taking it as I thought it might be contributing to me feeling like the end of the world is nigh. I am not sure if things have improved since I was on holiday last week so any routine etc was in disarray anyway. I just felt like if I was feeling like crap I should get off the extra hormones and just let my body do its thing naturally.

... and we only had sex once in the month I took the pill so it's hardly worth taking a pill every day is it!!!

[justkeepswimming]

thanks for replying Pazza+2

i have wondered about the cerazette, have heard it can cause mood swings and tho i could give up for the same reasons as you i really don't want to get pg again just yet!

i always said i wouldn't go back on the full pill as it messed my body about before but thought the minipill made more sense but now not at all sure...

i bf ds1 till he was 1 and i did suffer from worse pmt than pre-baby but at least i was having afs then so i knew what it was! (a few days later admittedly, poor dh!).

well done you on bf twins, not for the faint-hearted

hopefully you are feeling better and it's not just the holiday.

[PazzaPlusTwo]

what's BLW and afs??

[scorpio1]

I stopped taking my mini-pill, it made me terrible after less than a month. lots of crying, bad thoughts. Now i have stopped taking it i am normal

[PazzaPlusTwo]

Scorpio were you taking cerazette too?

[scorpio1]

Yes, because i am bf-ing dd. It was seriously bad, after less than one month, like it turned a switch on. I was crying, didnt want to go out, no interest in sex, etc. I stopped it 2 weeks ago and im back to normal - no tears, back to sociable me.

Am not on any hormonal contraception now.

[PazzaPlusTwo]

isn't it scary that they don't mention it as a possible side effect

I also think it's a bit off that no-one mentions that breastfeeding can make you feel like crap mentally too. ALL the information I got or read on BF was positive - it seems to be heresy to say anything against BF at the moment.

[Tigerschick]

Hi justkeepswimming,
Can't help with most of your questions I'm afraid but, as I understand it, PCOS can have phases where it seems to be less of an issue and then it can 'flare up' again.
Remember, it is a hormonal problem so, with all the hormones in your body at the minute, it is highly possible that it might be getting more pronounced.
Hope things sort themselves out very soon - don't be shy of asking for help.

[scorpio1]

I sometimes find it hard going, especially when she has a growth spurt, thats so hard. Do you express? That really helps me.

Re pill - no-one told me about the side effects of that at all. dd is my third child; now i realise that when i have had 'pnd' before, it actually may have been this pill.

[scorpio1]

[PazzaPlusTwo]

you can "yellow card " (report the side effects) here:
yellowcard.mhra.gov.uk/

Here's also a thread with a lot of mums reporting the same symptoms:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/2330/397249

[PazzaPlusTwo]

Scorpio - I don't express as it's draining enough just bf-ing the two.

I did express a few times around 6 weeks for the freezer, but since then I was so exhausted, I didn't do it again. Guess what - that's when I started taking Cerazette! I should have been getting less exhausted since the girls have been sleeping longer at nights and I've been able to reduce the number of feeds from 7/day to 5/day, and I've been more organised.

Normal PMT (for me, 2-3 days of feeling very negative and stressed just before my period) I can handle because I know what it is. Cerazette did my head in because I felt like that all the time!

I'm sos angry my GP didn't mention anything about possible side effects.

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

Justkeepswimming,

Re your comment:-
"Anyone had PCOS come back?"

PCOS never goes away I am sorry to say. It is a very individualistic disorder and does affect each woman with it very differently. The commonality though is the cystic follicles on the ovaries, the ovaries can appear larger than normal (walnut) size.

The pill if anything masks the symptoms of the underlying problem, it certainly did not cause PCOS to arise.

www.verity.pcos.org.uk is a good website with lots of information on it

[justkeepswimming]

pazza - sorry blw= baby led weaning (when you basically don't puree stuff, just let them gum/chew finger foods from the beginning) and af=period (aunt flo, tho i never personally call it that!).

scorpio - sad that you suffered but happy that you are off it and feeling fine now. i felt that i was off sex for a while too but not so much now (tho still not like pre-baby but is anybody? ).

pazza - you are right, it's like one of the many pre-baby conspiracies. everyone tells you how wonderful bf will be. with ds1 i had some problems (felt big to me but hearing others stories they were only tiny problems!) and got mw and hv to check for positioning. eventually they said sometimes it just hurts until you get used to it!

growth spurts are a killer aren't they?! ds1 never really had any but ds2 has had lots! from 1 feed a night to 4 then back to 1 and so on....currently on 1

(and how different are children, ds1 slept through form 10weeks, i thought it was me and my wonderful parenting skills , ds2 still not sleeping through at nearly 6 months....as far as i know i'm still me!)

tigers - thanks for that. think with bf, starting weaning, minipill and pcos history i'm doomed to have weird hormones! doc did say at 6 week check to go back if sweating was still an issue after 3mo but i just haven't had a chance, may try soon. though i had thought that the pill might even out the hormones?

attila - i guess i sort of knew that pcos doesn't GO entirely but since i had regular cycles & got pg so easily with ds2, i thought things might have cleared up.
re my ovaries:
jul 05 - scan to diagnose pcos, more than 12 follicles on each ovary
aug 05 - started metformin
sep 05 - got pg
oct 05 - early scan at epu cos of bleeding, all fine with pg, and scanner could see one 'shadow' on one ovary where i had ovulated but no other follicles.
so all had cleared up in 3 months!

so if i'm suffering because of the pcos, presumably the docs would suggest the full pill but i'm bf so can't have it anyway. so is there a point in going???
if i'm suffering because of the mini-pill, they might suggest a different one but cerazette was the only one with the bigger window to take it.
ho hum, may just warn dh to watch out!

[Chaotica]

Hi JKS

Sorry to hear you're feeling bad. If it's any help (and not merely confusing), I had PCOS pre-pregnancy and now have horrific PMT now I'm weaning DS (DC2) but i'm not on the mini-pill. (I felt better when on it after DD (DC1) was born, but it failed and DS is the result -- wouldn't be it happened again though.) I don't know what my hormones are doing now. But we're all different though.