Can you get PMS while on Birth Control?

[backpackco]

I just started my first placebo day of the first month being on birth control, and here during the 3rd week (I've been told there's more hormones in the 3rd week, is that true?) my breasts have begun to hurt, I'm really anxious about unnecessary things, I'm kinda irritated, and I have some weird fluttering and cramping feelings in my uterus... These are usually my PMS symptoms, so I'm curious if it's possible to get PMS symptoms while on the pill...

I'm on the pill Tri-Sprintec if that helps.

[Heather]

Yep.

The pill and other hormonal methods do not take away your cycles, nor do they totally overwrite them. Rather, they influence the hormones that are part of them so that your body works differently mostly in regard to the ability to become pregnant.

You may find once you have been on the pill for a few cycles these symptoms are not the same, or are more mild, however. Or not!

[ratperson]

If you're on a tricyclic pill (it sounds like you are, since it's Tri-Sprintec, I'm on Trinessa which is a tri-cyclic one), the third week has the highest levels of hormone. It's set up so that the first three weeks have increasing amounts of one hormone (first week has x level, second has x+y level, third has x+y+z level) and then the fourth week is a placebo week.

I get PMS on my cycle, it seems to have gotten more severe in my case but if I'm not excessively stressed out it's not as severe, so it seems that reducing stress helps a lot. I do know that as soon as my period starts I feel almost sedated emotionally because I go from the constant on-edge feeling of PMS to ....completely emotionally relaxed, I guess. It's a very nice change and I always look forward to it because I have a tendency to bite people's heads off and then cry after when I'm in the PMS-stage, and I hate that emotional roller coaster.