Skipping my progesterone to prevent period

[user1485182339]

I only recently started on HRT so it hasn't been long enough to fully understand how my body will react to changes. I need to go on a complicated field trip this week but should be starting my progesterone pills today, so will have a fairly heavy bleed which will really be incredibly inconvenient. I want to hold off with the progesterone until next week and hope my withdrawal bleed stays away for those few days but my GP can't find me an appointment before I go so I can ask them. What do you think? Is it likely to be okay?

Dismissive? How? By linking to medical research? Maybe read the extract first.

No one has suggested that the OP uses estrogen only for a whole year.

I have posted the NICE prescribing guidance. Are you taking issue with them too?

I think you can - I switched over from progesterone patches to pills and my new doctor (meno specialist) wanted me to get into a routine with my progesterone where I started it on the 15th of each month.

This meant a gap of a few days between where I should have started my progesterone patch and where I started my pill instead. She wasn't bothered by this.

Jingling thanks for all the info (and links too.) I think based on all this it looks fine to delay with a few days. Will go back to the GP afterwards to talk about what's best for future trips.
Thanks everyone else for input too.

I can’t see that anyone gets hyperplasia from staying on their progesterone for several more days or delaying returning to it for several days. People get slightly out of sync all the time, or run out of it etc. A few days won’t matter.

Apologies for reviving a zombie(ish) thread but wondering if any of those experienced with combined oestrogen gel/progestorone pills can help (can't get a GP appointment for a couple of weeks)?

Am into my second month of this and GP just said to follow instructions in the packets - which say I should be taking the pills Days 1-25 and gel every day. I still have periods (historically slightly irregular but more or less consistent at 28-30 days the last couple of years). First month on the HRT, my period duly came three days after stopping the progesterone (i.e. Day 28) so I started taking the pills again then. This month I stopped taking pills on Day 25, have had PMS symptoms (sore boobs, cramps etc.) for over a week but still no sign of bleeding. Would you start taking the progesterone again anyway or wait until bleeding starts? Apologies if a stupid question - very new to this, and still confused!

The probability of a histopathologist finding clinically relevant pathology in an endometrial biopsy specimen of a patient on HRT is low and is more likely to be a manifestation of pre-existing disease.
dx.doi.org/10.1136/jcp.54.6.435

This is interesting, thanks. I had a total hysterectomy (ovaries, tubes, uterus, cervix) last week because of hyperplasia with atypia. For the last three years they'd been unable to decide whether or not there was atypia or not and finally they decided there was and although I had no symptoms (probably due to the Mirena), everything had to come out, and fairly rapidly. I asked the specialist whether my HRT had triggered the hyperplasia and he thought not, probably genetic. I haven't stopped my HRT and of course it's just oestrogen now, no need for progesterone.

I was still getting my regular period, so timed my progesterone to start around day 11. I didn’t get a bleed when I’d completed the days on progesterone because I was having a regular cycle so would get a period of sorts around day 26. It was still perfectly on time, but obviously had changed to as short as 2 days and very heavy, so I assumed that was the progesterone influence on my bleed?
However, I completely lost that nice few days after ‘ovulation’ point where you feel normal and energised, because I have an intolerance to progesterone and instead ended up with a plunge in my mental health on these days and bad PMT returning for the first time since before I had DC.

So whilst I know you can take them anytime, you might want to consider your current cycle and how you might benefit from timing it for up to period days? I remember looking up a similar question and found others who took it on ‘date of month’ rather than cycle related, in order to establish a routine. If progesterone doesn’t have a negative impact on you, finding a routine that works for you will really help you feel the benefits of HRT😊

Thanks NeedtoThinkofOne. That's really useful and sorry to hear you had bad side effects on the progesterone. Touch wood I don't seem to be suffering from that so far and in fact am feeling far more energised generally than the zombie I have been for the past year or two. Will maybe try getting into a "date-based" progestorone cycle and see how that goes