Bear with me guys through this wall of text. I'm sorry how much I wrote but all the details are pretty important.



Hey guys, so I made a post months ago about wanting to seek out an IUD to stop my periods. Since I am currently living with my family and not out to them, they don't know how dysphoric that time can make me.

Anyways, I went to the gyn with my mom to discuss this with a specialist. She was against me getting this from the start.

The visit to the doc proved a little bit difficult because in the end the gyn only recommended that I get BC pills (or the patch but that's even worse for me personally). It was really dysphoric due to my mom repeating triggering things. The doc didn't recommend an IUD. Not to mention my mom was very much against it.

So I'm not sure where to go from here. I really, really want to greatly lighten or even stop my periods because it's a terribly dysphoric time.

I was thinking about taking the pills HOWEVER I'm afraid of any feminizing effects. I asked the doc whether the pills change the balance of sex hormones in the body and neither my mom nor the doc knew but I asked this because I already have quite a masculine body for a Pre-T dude. I don't want to reverse any of these effects and possibly even experience chest growth (from what Ive heard BC pills can do that) if I do decide to take the pill to reduce the volume of my periods.

I'm not sure where to go from here and what decisions to make. If anyone has some advice, please do share. I need help with this situation.

How old are you? If 18+ go by yourself and get what you want. It is not your mom's decision.

Trying to remember and somebody step in if I get this wrong. I think birth control pills have gone to progesterone as the primary hormone and it lacks the ability to feminize the body. Estrogen is what does the heavy lifting. The reason for getting away from Estrogen or greatly reducing it was the cancer risk. You might explain to the doctor that you have heavy periods and are interested in knowing about low Estrogen pills as you also fear cancer when you are much older.
This might give you medication that accomplished the goal of reducing the periods without feminizing your body.

What Alexthecat said.  I'm sure your mum is just trying to help, but it seems like she's contributing to the problem.  Sometimes even the best mums don't know their kids as well as they think they do.

Progesterone only pills are available and may be a good option for you.   Dena is right that the pills with estrogen contain much less than they used to, but my experience is that it's still too much.  I took them for a while.   They made me sick, and they feminized my body a lot.  At one point I was a G cup.  You don't get problems like that with progesterone only, and they still reduce your bleeding.

I have one of those IUDs myself.   It's not a perfect solution since it doesn't stop my ovaries producing estrogen,  but it did stop me bleeding.   I would say avoid anything with estrogen in it like the plague,  but progesterone only pills are probably the way to go if you can't get the IUD.

@Alex ; The problem is that I'm pretty much under my family's/mother's control until I live by myself. So that's not an option until I'm able to move out. But I'm planning to do that once I am able to.

@Dena; I might give that a try. I didn't ask if the main hormone was progesterone or estrogen, unfortunately, but it seemed like she mentioned estrogen at some point.

Quote from: Dena on June 13, 2015, 05:51:29 PM
Trying to remember and somebody step in if I get this wrong. I think birth control pills have gone to progesterone as the primary hormone and it lacks the ability to feminize the body. Estrogen is what does the heavy lifting. The reason for getting away from Estrogen or greatly reducing it was the cancer risk. You might explain to the doctor that you have heavy periods and are interested in knowing about low Estrogen pills as you also fear cancer when you are much older.
This might give you medication that accomplished the goal of reducing the periods without feminizing your body.

There are a variety of options available for hormonal contraceptives, but the common and doctor-favored ones are combined low-dose estrogen + progesterone. In my experience, doctors are very reluctant to prescribe progesterone-only birth control (especially to younger people, which it sounds like the OP is) because estrogen is what keeps ones' bone density up - at least until testosterone therapy.

@Maleth: Not knowing that you're trans, they won't want to do something now that increases your risk of osteoporosis later. Once you're on your own, or at least have a doctor that you can be in private with & trust to keep your confidentiality, it will be much easier to hash out the pros and cons among your options. Until then? Hang in there.

Do you need to take your mother with you to the doctor? Here children can get some types of BC without parental knowledge or consent.

You are a grown person, tell your mother that and she should respect your need to go to the doctor by yourself. If she won't let you then she doesn't respect you.

You could try depo provera. It's a shot you get every 3 months. I had very irregular bleeding and I'm horrible at remembering to take a pill. Depo shots are def Worth it in my opinion. I had facial hair pre T and it didn't effect it. I had only some spotting in the first year but after that my periods were gone. I eventually just got a hysto so I didn't have To do T and depo at the same time. But it's def a good option to consider.

Skott

Thanks for all the helpful replies, guys. It seems like I don't have much of a choice because my mother's very much against the idea of me not having any periods anymore. Which is quite terrible but I can't really do anything about it until I'm on my own.

I could try taking birth control but I really doubt that the doctor would prescribe me estrogen-free pills. But I'll look into this progesterone-only stuff. Though like others have said I don't know if that would be an option since I'm so young and the risks associated with it.

It sucks how controlling my mom is about this whole situation. She was in the same room as me when I was talking to my gyn so I couldn't explain the situation to her due to my mom being right there. I wonder if I could have another appointment and just go by myself next time and explain to my doctor by myself.

I'll keep you guys posted on this. But if anyone has some additional advice I'm all ears.

Just to address your concern about the feminizing effects of birth control, I never really had any breasts until I started taking birth control pills.  This was 20 years ago now, however, so maybe the pills are different these days. 

Quote from: Wanderer on June 15, 2015, 08:40:59 PM
Just to address your concern about the feminizing effects of birth control, I never really had any breasts until I started taking birth control pills.  This was 20 years ago now, however, so maybe the pills are different these days.

That's exactly what I'm afraid of happening if I go on BC pills. I don't remmeber if my doctor recommended estrogen or progesterone based but I'm staying miles away from the estrogen. I really don't know what to do anymore. I really don't want to wait a long time just to get an IUD because my mother is not willing to let me have one.

Ask for skyla. I got an IUD at age 17 because I had hellacious periods and the pill makes my autoimmune disease glare up. I tried mirana and iuds are awesome but it didn't work for me because of my autoimmune.mune disease. Anywho they have a new IUD for younger people called skyla. It's tiny compared to other iuds and it gives out the least amount of hormones. Tell your doctor how uncomfortable your periods make you and they should understand. I usually have better luck when I come in askng for something specific too. The doctor I'm getting hormones from even recommended various birth control methods for stopping periods. Apparently a lot of transmen use it to stop periods. I never knew but it made me feel better.

I totally understand how you need to get rid of the bloody horror:

The feminizing effects was also what I was concerned with and the gynecologist informed me of there being many different kinds of birth control pills that have varying estrogen levels. The exact one he prescribed was :  http://www.drugs.com/imprints/z-16340.html

He specifically said to me that 'it won't cause more feminization effects than you already have'.

Before this, I took progestin only mini pills if you don't want to worry about estrogen at all:

http://www.rxlist.com/nor-qd-drug.htm

Also, you can ask if they offer samples. That's what my family doctor did who took me very seriously.

I'm not sure where you are, but there are clinics that you can go to with no questions asked.

When I got on BC at 14, I went to the local clinic two blocks from my school. The doctor was very helpful. If you are underage, look for those clinics. They typically have a program for underage people who are asking for sexual health problems. I wasn't active, but my doc listened. Planned parenthood or affiliate clinics are very good about it. Their main goal is to help young people. If you are still in k-12 or standardized school, ask your health teacher. I was in a program called RARE-T and I was an active counsellor at 14-15 telling others about sex safety and BC.

When I worked pharmacy years later, I found that a lot of docs where okay with prescribing depo for people with heavy or painful periods.

Captain Blood is a nightmare, but there are sources in most cities to help young people.