First time pill user

[Olivia15]

Alright, because I recently became sexually active, and using only condoms freaked me out, I decided to go to plan parenthood and get on the pill. I took my first one yesterday, but I had a few questions about using the pill:

How close together do you have to take the pills each day? The nurse who talked to me said "within 3 hours", but does that mean, for example, if I'm supposed to take my pill at 12 every day, can i take it from 9 - 3? or just from 11 - 1?

Another question is that i know your period comes during the sugar pills, but will it come on the very first sugar pill? or do i have to wait a few days? Is it common to miss a period when you are on the pill? The nurse told me I would have a monthly period, but the instructions on the pills say some women stop having a period at all. I'm very worried about getting pregnant, so I don't want a missed period to freak me out. I'm gonna be using condoms + pills + possibly pullout. Is this basically as effective as I can be?

My final question is, is the pill safe? When I asked the nurse if the pill increased chances of cancer, she told me no, but on the instructions inside the packaging for pills, it says that there is a correlation between pill users and breast cancer patients. I'm 17 right now, and my grandma had breast cancer. There were also some other scary side effects listed like blood clots, heart attacks, stoke, etc.

Thanks so much for the help!

[Mo]

The three-hour window is 11-1 in your example, but you do have twelve hours until a pill is considered officially "late," so there's some wiggle room there. What we recommend is a back-up method, such as condoms, along with the pill; since you're planning on that you will be really well-protected, even if you do have a missed or late pill on occasion. If you want to add withdrawal in there, that's fine, but keep in mind that part of proper condom use is holding the base snug while withdrawing; sometimes if people are trying to withdraw before orgasm they can get distracted from holding the condom, causing it to come off as they pull out - so sometimes it can make the condoms less effective overall. Just something to think about!

Once your body adjusts to the pill, you will likely have your withdrawal bleed (the technical name for your "period" on hormonal birth control) during the sugar pill week, but it won't necessarily start on the first day of those pills. Some folks have regular withdrawal bleeds around the same time every month, others don't; it's not something you can accurately predict, and if you are someone who's going to eventually settle into a regular cycle, it may take a few months to get there - so don't be surprised if you feel like your cycle's a bit wonky for a couple pill packs.

Drug side effects can be pretty intimidating to read, but most are pretty rare, and many of the worst complications are for folks with other health concerns like smoking. For specifics, though, you could call back to chat with a nurse about any you're worried about. But overall, yes - the birth control pill is extremely widely-used, and the majority of users do just fine, with no negative reactions and lots of benefits. If you want to explore other options, you can start here: Birth Control Bingo! and then chat with your doctor.

[Olivia15]

Okay, i think I understand.
So basically, as long as i'm taking my pill between 11 - 1, and using condoms every time (even without withdrawal), I can be pretty confident that I wont get pregnant? I looked on the birth control buddy system page, and it says that condom+pill is 99.99% effective with perfect use. Would perfect use mean taking my pill in the 3 hour window every day, and using a condom w/ lube every single time? I was also wondering if the perfect use percentage takes into account random broken condoms. Sorry if i'm asking a lot of questions, even if the percentage is realllllyyyy high, I can't get it out of my head that I might be the 0.01% of people that could get pregnant.

Also, when you say that my cycle might feel wonky for a few packs, could this even include skipping a withdrawal bleed here and there? When the nurse was helping me decide on the pills as opposed to different types of birth control, i specifically asked for one where i would still get my period each month.

Thanks again for so much information! its really helpful.

[Redskies]

Perfect use is laboratory-standard perfect, so no-one's quite going to reach that for a method they control themself, like the pill or condoms. Perfect use simply means using the method exactly as it's supposed to be used, every single time, for a whole year. The perfect use rates of condoms do include random breakages - "random breakages" being those very rare breakages that happen even though the user did everything right with usage and storage. (Most breakages, in practice, happen because of user error.) If you're conscientious about using your methods correctly, though, you can expect your protection to be somewhere between the typical and perfect use rates. And yep, if you're using two methods correctly, pregnancy is extremely unlikely.

Do you feel like you can be comfortable with even a tiny possibility of pregnancy? Some people don't, and that would be okay. If you don't, if you feel like you just can't deal with the thought of it, or you feel like you absolutely would not be able to handle or manage it in any way, then I'd suggest it'd be a good idea to do a re-think about whether those kinds of sex are right for you at the moment.

Sometimes people do skip a withdrawal bleed, or their withdrawal bleed behaves differently to how they're used to, or they get some mid-cycle spotting. It's not predictable what effects each individual person will have. Overall, combined hormonal methods like the pill are more likely to result in regular cycles and regular withdrawal bleeds than other kinds of hormonal contraception, so your nurse directed you correctly about that (as I'd expect for a nurse at Planned Parenthood ). Overall too, most people taking the combined pill settle into something regular, although exactly what that looks like differs from person to person and might be different to what they had before. There's no guarantee though, and it sometimes takes a few months to settle down.