Birth control - Seasonique?
 

I posted this on a similar thread in this forum, but thought it was different enough to warrant its own and avoid hijacking.

Has anyone taken Seasonique, or Seasonale? How did it work out?

I asked my Gyno about that, and she just suggested I take my regular pill (which my body is already used to) back to back for 3 mos., then take my regular week off. She said it's basically the same thing, and my generic pill is much less expensive. :shrug:

I personally don't trust something that stops something your body is supposed to do naturally. I might try it in a few years if people don't start suing for cancer or whatever. For me is just too soon from its release to jump in and try.

My gyno says the same thing as carinna. In high school and college all my friends and I did that. Especially if our TOM was falling at an inconvenient time like vacation. We'd just skip it that month and continue taking the pills.

My insurance plan covers it, so I'd only have to pay $15 every three months. Right now I'm paying $5 every three months for my regular 28 day generic pill. I'd be willing to pay the extra $40 per year if I like it, but I've heard the side effects can be pretty bad.

Have you (or anyone else) tried taking your regular pill back to back? Has it caused breakthrough bleeding between periods? I understand Seasonique can have the same effect, but it's supposed to go away after a while.

Oh, also, I've heard that if you take two packs of pills back to back, you should take the second one in the reverse direction...?

That would depend on the pills. For packs that are only two doses (colors) (white and orange, in mine), you only take the white pills and they're all the same, so it wouldn't matter which direction you went, because you just skip the orange. However, if your pack is three different doses (usually also three different colors) you might want to ask your doctor about how he/she wants you to take them. I have only heard of stacking the two dose packs.

I hope that makes sense. For the two dose packs technically only the white pill has a "dose", well I guess you could say the orange pills have a dose of zero.

I took Seasonale and got through 3 weeks of it. I know some people who like it, but if you're going from a low dose pill to it, it takes some adjusting to. I gained 1 bra cup size in about 2 weeks and all of the estrogen in it made me completely emotional and nutty. If you're on a regular dose pill, you probably won't notice a change at all.