Skip to content
Sign in

Switching, stopping, and what your cycle does next

Nobody is committed to a method. The useful question is how to change without a gap.

Lesson 3 of 4

11 min Text

What this lesson says

  • Switching usually needs a plan for the overlap so there is no unprotected gap
  • A method can be removed or stopped whenever you choose and nobody may require you to continue
  • Cycles usually return within a few months, but after the injection it can take longer
  • Side effects that started in the first three months often settle; ones that begin much later are different
  • Take a list of everything you take with you, including over-the-counter and traditional medicines

This is general education. It is not advice about your own situation, and it does not replace seeing a clinician.

Written lesson.
  1. 1. Choosing a method is not a commitment, and a great many women use three or four across their lives as their circumstances change. The practical question is not whether you may change, but how to change without leaving a gap.
  2. 2. Switching almost always needs a small plan for the overlap: when to stop one, when the next becomes effective, and whether to use condoms in between. It is a two-minute conversation and it is the part that gets missed, because the discussion tends to be about which method rather than about the week between them.
  3. 3. You can have a method removed or stopped whenever you choose. That is true of a fitted method as well as a daily one, it is true whether you paid for it or received it free, and nobody may require you to continue with one or make removal conditional on anything. If you are met with reluctance, it is reasonable to ask for a second opinion.
  4. 4. What happens afterwards depends on the method. With most, ordinary cycles return within a few months and fertility with them — so if you are stopping and do not want a pregnancy, another method needs to start immediately. After the injection it can take several months to a year for cycles to return, which is worth knowing before you start it rather than after.
  5. 5. Your first few cycles after stopping may be irregular, and that is usually the body re-establishing its own pattern rather than a problem. If your periods have not returned at all after several months, that is worth a conversation.
  6. 6. On side effects: the ones that arrive in the first three months often settle as the body adjusts, and knowing that in advance is the difference between waiting it out and abandoning something that was going to work. A change that begins long after you had settled is a different matter and should be looked at rather than attributed to the method. So should bleeding that becomes heavier rather than lighter, and any bleeding with pain, fever or offensive-smelling discharge.
  7. 7. Take a list of everything you take with you, including anything over the counter and anything traditional. Some medicines reduce how reliable a hormonal method is, and some hormonal methods affect other treatments. It goes in both directions and it is easy to miss.

All lessons in this course

  1. 1 Deciding what matters to you, before anybody offers you a method 10 min
  2. 2 Privacy, cost and actually getting hold of it 10 min
  3. 3 Switching, stopping, and what your cycle does next 11 min Reading now
  4. 4 Saying it in the room, and what to do if you are not heard 9 min

No lesson is locked. Ticks appear once you have an account, so that what you have read is yours and not this device's.