When to take progesterone in sequential HRT cycle?

[Trigons]

I have started HRT in sequential cycle. 2 pumps gel and 200 mg prog. My dr advised starting prog with estrogel on day 1 of cycle. its now day 9 and most of the day I have felt really spaced out. I did some research and saw that the advise is to take progesterone on day 15 of cycle so have I been taking it when I shouldn't? I also read somewhere some drs have prescribed for day 1. How does it affect periods?

I don't think it matters when you start it, you will most likely end up having a bleed after you finish the 12 days of progesterone. I asked Chat GPT to make me a schedule and it recommended that I take it on the 15th to the 26th of every month, just to make it easy to remember, rather than count days of a cycle.

Yeah, I take it the 1st to the 12th of the month to make it easy to remember.

The GP told me to just take it from the 1st to the 14th of the month. As it happened that was completely out of sync with my cycle so I ended up with periods every 2 weeks for about a year (light withdrawal bleeds around the 15th of every month, actual periods around the beginning of every month). I switched to patches (not for that reason) and they eventually settled down to once a month.

Choosing calendar days is definitely the easiest with the gel, otherwise it's easy to lose track and take too much/too little.

The progesterone tablets made me very spaced out, I do better on the patches. But you need to give it a few months to see if you get used to it or need to try something else

Also, I take it with food about an hour before bed and sleep like a log. I heard an expert on a podcast suggest this and it works like a charm.