I’ve known about hormonal period suppression for a long time. I heard about Seasonale back in 2003, I think. There was some back-and-forth between those who couldn’t wait to be free of their periods forever (at least reduce them from 12-13 to four per year) and those who thought medical science was effectively medically demonizing femaleness by asking women to suppress what was natural.
Personally, my attitude towards my period has swung from one end to the other. It is messy and painful and inconvenient, it interferes with my mood, can make me more sensitive to smell and pain, usually makes my head hurt, and often makes my eyes extra-sensitive to light. All of these symptoms have been alleviated to an extent by being on the contraceptive pill, though Nordette, which was the first brand I took, didn’t seem to correct my mood swings to the extent that Estelle does, perhaps because the latter (a generic version of Diane) was prescribed specifically to treat my PCOS.
But somewhere in all of that, it’s also a bit of a relief to have it. I can’t really explain how that is. When I was on Nordette, I’d wait for my period as the one week per month when I actually felt normal and light again. The rest of the time, it was as if I was feeling my body through bubble-wrap or cotton wool – some kind of barrier that let me get a sense of the outside of it, but effectively locked me out of it. But I adapted eventually and then, when I switched to Estelle, things got much better. I got a lot of my old sensitivity back, lost weight, and the mood swings and cramping, which the earlier pill didn’t do much for, were reduced. They’re not completely gone and from where I sit, it doesn’t really look like they ever will, but they’re much easier to deal with now.
Still, when I’m under pressure or emotional stress, the prospect of having my period can be anything from depressing to frightening because I know how much worse it can make things. That’s why when, towards the end of September last year, I had something of an emotional meltdown, I decided to take my girlfriend’s advice and skip my period by continuing straight on to the next set of pills. And god the relief! Just by removing the specter of those first three days of swinging wildly between stupidly happy and suicidal, followed by approximately 8 hours of cramping, followed by another four days of feeling generally spaced out and scattered – everything else seemed to settle down a bit. I was still a wreck, but I wasn’t a wreck on her period, and that’s something.
But by the second month I think I was about ready to have my period. I felt blocked up and heavy – a bit like I used to feel on Nordette, come to think of it, so I went ahead and had my period. No spotting or other annoyance, no extra heaviness or extra lightness in the flow. Just your regular run-of-the-mill period. But I was curious about the heaviness I’d felt so I asked my doctor when I went in last week.
She told me that, first of all, there was no harm in suppressing one’s period with the pill (and that often it’s anemia caused by excessive bleeding that can be the real problem). But she did explain that the reason some women experience spotting when they suppress their periods is that, regardless of ovulation, the uterus is still programmed to shed its lining once every 28 days or so. If that lining isn’t shed as a period, it can sometimes ‘leak’ anyway because (excuse the complicated medical terminology here) it wants out. It also continues to get thicker, apparently – which would explain why I feel so ‘heavy’ at the end of six weeks on the pill – so letting it go isn’t a bad thing.
I think I can live with that. I don’t know if I want to make a habit of skipping every other period because I can’t see that it would really make a huge difference to my life. It would be more convenient, certainly, and I do relish the prospect of not having wild mood swings every single month (though this one has been relatively less extreme – I only cried once and that too during a semi-argument, not spontaneously). But for some reason I’m still not sure. It may just be habit. However lousy the process may be, I know it intimately, I know what to expect, and I know how to deal with it to a large extent. I also can’t help partially buying into the whole me-time thing – I like having time to focus on my own body, to listen to its bitching, and to do all the soothing things I usually do for it(most of which involve chocolate). And given that I have fairly light periods, anemia isn’t really a worry for me, so I can afford to have them monthly. But then I think of not having to sleep or walk around or sit with a pad on (tampons make me feel dehydrated) for six consecutive weeks instead of just three and I think, hm, there might be something to this after all.
