Bit of my history, I was on birth control between the ages of 14-21. After realising I hadn’t actually had a normal period since I was a child, I went off of it and got pregnant. I now have a one year old. My entire youth I had issues with birth control, the injection made me gain alot of weight, I would keep forgetting to take the pill, the patch was okay but I always felt a bit like hormonal and had occasional spotting. I finally decided on getting the implant put in when I was about 16. It worked amazingly for 2 years, until one day I just started bleeding, and did not stop. I bled every day, for months, for about a year before I just couldn’t cope anymore and stormed into my local health centre and demanded they take it out in tears. I went back on the patch, but found the bleeding never really did stop much, but it was alot better. I then get pregnant, gave birth, and after some time decided to go for the patch again.
Ive now been on the patch for almost a year, and I started off using it regularly (3 weeks on 1 week off). But my doctor said after some time I could go for the continuous method (9 weeks on, 1 week off) and even in the future skip the bleed if I wanted. I’ve been doing continuous but found that I started bleeding. I thought that my body just didn’t like that, but even with the 3 weeks on 1 week off I am still constantly spotting. But it’s not every single time, I won’t spot for like 2-3 weeks and then I’ll start to spot. Or sometimes it’ll be 2 months with nothing and then I’ll just bleed for a while week. I’m honestly just so sick of bleeding all the time. My brain is telling me I’m being over the top because surely this occasional bleed is better than a weeks worth of period but it’s just starting to affect me constantly. I really don’t know if there’s any better alternative out there, as I’m really not interested in the IUD again or a coil. I don’t personally feel like condoms are a good enough deterrent for pregnancy, it’s just putting me off sex all together tbh.
This is just a rough imagery of how it goes:
Week 1 fine no issue
Week 2 no issue
Week 3 little bit of spotting
week 4 fine
week 5 bleeding for a whole week
week 6 fine
week 7 fine
week 8 fine
week 9 a lot of spotting
patch off.
If I do it the normal way it’ll go
week 1 fine
week 2 spotting
week 3 fine
week 4 no patch
week 1 spotting
week 2 fine
And so on….
honestly I’m just ranting, would be nice if fellow women hate birth control just as much