Question. RE: Taking pills continously

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-21-2003
Question. RE: Taking pills continously
1
Sun, 06-13-2004 - 8:55pm
I am on Alysse, and I take them continuously to avoid having a period and it works beautifully for me. My question is, can you take them continuously or should you only do it on something like a ninety-day cycle? I skip a week maybe once to twice a year (usually only becasue i forget to get a new pack on time). I have no problems doing this, but I wonder if I really should be taking them all the time like that. When I do skip a week and have a period, it’s nothing to write home about. Three days tops of very light spotting, not enough to even have to use anything for it.

If you should only take them in ninety-day cycles (or other time frame) why should you do that?


Thanks for the info

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-19-2004
Mon, 06-14-2004 - 10:45am
I think the 90-day cycle is most widely accepted because most women will tolerate it better than a longer cycle, and there's less of a chance of a pregnancy getting beyond its first trimester without you knowing.

If your 6-12 month cycle works for you, there shouldn't be anything wrong with it. You might want to consider talking to your doctor's office for confirmation that it's OK for you to do it, and they can probably increase your prescription by the appropriate amount so that a year's prescription will actually be a year's worth of pills.

I'm doing the extended cycle on Seasonale, and since I'm responding so well to it (no breakthrough bleeding, my side affects started wearing off around the 6th week), I'm going to call my doctor's office and see if it would be okay for me to extend the seasonale cycle to 6 or 9 months, just because I don't see the point in getting a period at all.

But, yeah, if you've been extending your cycle and it's been working for you, I can't imagine any reason why you should stop.