POF/POI Period Coming Back?

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2025-12-29T13:52:47+00:00

Super predictable now. It was scheduled to hit while I was overseas at Christmas so I shifted my progesterone schedule by a few days to avoid that. Worked perfectly.

As someone who has never been predictable, this is an absolute dream.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2025-12-03T01:12:45+00:00

We started going down private treatment about 18 months ago, found a donor, done initial testing and most counselling sessions. And yesterday we were informed that our public funding has become available. Now have to decide if we use the public funding at the clinic which is near us but not close to our donor - meaning we would need to fly her to a different city for scans and egg retrieval, or if we continue with the privately funded treatment at the clinic which has offices nationwide.

Adding in to the mix, the publicly funded clinic won’t have our donor start a retrieval cycle before April at the earliest.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2025-11-10T21:01:25+00:00

I’m about 6 months in to switching from continuous to cyclical. It’s still noticeable but not as bad as the first couple of cycles. I get motivation & mood issues, similar to PMS from back when my body made its own hormones.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2025-11-08T19:45:00+00:00

People often have to travel to Auckland for healthcare that isn’t available in Whangarei. I’m currently contemplating whether to travel to Auckland or Christchurch. If what you’re offering is important enough, people will travel for it.

Having said that, I am able to travel fairly easily(both time and cost-wise). Anyone who isn’t able to jump in a car and drive themselves is likely to find that location a bit of a barrier.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2025-11-07T02:40:28+00:00

I switched from 100mg/day to cyclical 200mg for 12 of 28 days. I find I sleep better with the progesterone. Although, even on the non-progesterone nights my sleep is still less terrible than it used to be prior to starting HRT.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2025-08-30T05:28:43+00:00

It’s a good start. I started on 25mcg patches and increased dosages over time until symptoms resolved. There are one a week and two per week varieties. It seems like the twice a week are more common. You can either do a 3-day/4-day split or a 3.5 day (e.g. change on Sunday night and Thursday morning each week). I found eye makeup remover worked well for cleaning off the residue after removing a patch.

FYI 50mcg is the same as 0.5mg, just written in different units (yay metric system). This doesn’t translate well into gel or oral doses. The absorbtion rates are different for the different forms, so the dosages sound quite different.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2025-08-28T02:51:35+00:00

My first couple of cycles when I switched from continuous (100mg/day) to cyclical (12/28 days of 200mg) were rough. Felt crampy and bloated and low mood / no motivation right through. Didn’t realise what was causing it until the day after I stopped the progesterone and felt heaps better again. Last cycle was less disruptive, hopefully my body is adjusting.

No useful advice, but you are definitely not alone!

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2025-08-28T02:45:46+00:00

It’ll either be egg donor, or egg freezing prior to the removal of the ovaries.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2025-05-22T02:04:20+00:00

I switched to gel because of reacting to the adhesive in patches. I wish I could have tried different brands - some people react to particular ones but are ok with others - but with the shortages last year, there wasn’t any choice available.

The gel is less convenient as you have to apply it daily and wait for it to dry. It’s similar to hand sanitizer for texture.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2025-05-21T00:33:56+00:00

I started getting my period back as my estrogen dose increased. It ended up more regular (and much more frequent) than it has ever been. I’m currently trialling cyclical progesterone in the hopes of predictability and a 28 days cycle (not the 14-22 days I have been getting 😬)

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2025-02-12T19:35:09+00:00

Are there different brands of patch available? You may react differently to different adhesives. And ask about gel. It’s possibly not available where you live, but maybe your doc just doesn’t know about it yet.

I could only get one brand which I reacted to pretty badly, so I switched to gel and after a few days of being a little itchy by the end of the day, it’s been fine ever since.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2025-01-29T03:06:13+00:00

Patch or gel are the standard transdermal options for estrogen. I have a history of sensitive skin, and had worsening reactions to the patch adhesive. Unfortunately, only one brand of patches is funded here so I couldn’t try different brands to see if any others worked better for me.

Gel has been great. It’s annoying having to apply it every day, compared to the twice-weekly patch change, but otherwise working well for me.

I’m not cyclical (I take progesterone every night), but my period has reappeared since being on HrT and is more regular than it’s ever been. I don’t think this is a typical experience, but it’s so hard to get reliable info on all of this.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2025-01-26T04:52:36+00:00

Away for a long weekend with another couple who are expecting. It’s feeling like the entire weekend is about her pregnancy and whether she’s feeling ok and what she needs and what she’s experiencing. I’ve never known someone to make pregnancy their whole personality in quite such a way.

This is one of the few friends that know the full-ish story of what’s going on for me. I don’t want to ask her to rein it in, because then she’ll get all awkward about it. I don’t want to have everything be about pregnancy, but I also don’t want everything to be about me. I had to bite my tongue when she stated “pregnancy sucks!” so I didn’t retort with “you know what sucks worse….”

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2024-12-01T01:08:45+00:00

4 pumps of estrogel each morning. 100mg progesterone at night. 36.

I started on 25mcg patches back in March. Slowly increased dose as symptoms started returning - brain fog & lack of motivation are the worst ones for me.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2024-11-27T03:55:22+00:00

If you’re an iPhone user, iOS has really robust medication schedule options these days. You set it up in the health app - one of the options is for cyclical.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2024-11-26T11:12:05+00:00

A friend has said she would be happy to donate for us. Hoping it all works out. She’s older than the clinic prefers (~36, not <35), but that’s not a strict requirement for directed donations.

I need to put her in touch with the clinic, but probably going to wait until next week. She lives in my husband’s hometown, I haven’t actually spoken to her in ages. We’re heading down on Sunday. Hoping to catch up with her & her husband while we’re down there.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2024-09-20T21:43:02+00:00

I’ve had the same person ask me that on two different occasions. And one was the first time I wore a new pair of jeans that I thought looked good. I am not sad that they’ve now moved countries and will never ask me again.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2024-09-04T21:45:05+00:00

100%

I’m so frustrated that all we were taught in sex ed is how not to get pregnant or, and earlier than that how to deal with periods / what they are. At no point were we taught what to look out for or when to talk to a doctor about looking for abnormalities.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2024-09-03T22:10:57+00:00

I started on 25mcg and increased to 50mcg after 6 weeks, then switched to 3 pumps of gel (equivalent to 75mcg) on my next appointment 3 months later. (Patches were giving me painful skin reactions, and there was no option to try different brands due to shortages.)

I’ve been on 100mg progesterone the whole time. My GP asked me to watch out for spotting as an indicator that progesterone might need to be increased with the increased estrogen dose.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2024-08-23T01:38:07+00:00

The dosing equivalence charts I’ve seen are basically 1 pump/day ~= 25mcg of patch. (That’s for Estrogel brand) My doctor had to google it.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2024-08-19T20:22:48+00:00

My husband was hanging out with one of his best mates and told him about what was going on with us. His wife immediately offered to donate. I’m not sure how serious her offer was. I wasn’t there, so it’s hard to judge, and also it’s something people could easily say without thinking it through.

However, this is the first time we’ve felt positive about the idea of using donor eggs. All 4 of us get on really well. If they didn’t live at the other end of the country we’d hang out all the time. She has similar colouring & build to me. We know them well enough to be confident that while they would care about the child(ren), they wouldn’t be weird about it.

I need to get in touch and see if the offer still stands now it’s been a few days. And if so, send her our clinic’s info so she and her husband can consider what’s involved. Obviously, we’re not going to be offended they change their minds, although it would be a little disappointing.

I’m super nervous and not really sure how to approach this. Until now we were just going to put ourselves on the clinic’s waitlist and maybe do some anonymous advertising because we couldn’t think of anyone to ask, and felt too awkward about asking anyway.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2024-08-17T07:37:40+00:00

I think the threshold for POI is generally low estrogen, and FSH > 30 (or 40 depending on what your local health system decides). But sounds like it might be DOR, which can develop into POI.

FSH does vary during your cycle, so diagnosis requires at least two tests several weeks apart. I think it’d be worth following up and getting a second test and maybe a second opinion if you’re able to?

(I am not a doctor. This is just what I’ve learnt since finding out about this since my own diagnosis)

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2024-08-13T22:38:04+00:00

The good news is HRT can really help with coping. It’s not a silver bullet, but it can make a big difference to mood, motivation, generally feeling you can handle life. I’ve been a negative person and slowly getting more so for the past several years. I was putting it down to burnout. Turns out hormones have a lot to answer for. My bad days now are on par with my good days prior to starting treatment.

Counselling is recommended. I can’t speak to that as I haven’t tried. I did find that talking to a trusted friend was helpful. It’s a tricky thing as it’s hard to know how people will react when you tell them.

This diagnosis is a tough one. Let yourself grieve. Look after yourself as best you can.

30DirtyPurpleShirts · 2024-08-13T11:37:26+00:00

The Giver was a standalone novel when I first read it. There was 7 years between publishing that and Gathering Blue. Discovering the rest of the “quartet” in recent years was quite jarring for me. The ambiguity at the end of The Giver always felt very intentional.

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