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disintegration · Mar 23, 2007, 08:47 PM

hello. My name is josie and I'm 24 yrs of age. I'm engaged to be married next year. (by then I will already be 25) my future husband and I plan to get pregnant by 27. I've been on the DEPO shot for about 2-3 yrs. I haven't had a period since. I'm due back for my next injection on the 28th of this month. My question is, would it be wise to get off the shot now? Or wait another year? (being that it takes 9 months to a little over a yr to conceive.) or so I've heard. If someone has answer or ANY advice to give, id really appreciate it. Thank you

averybojangles · Mar 23, 2007, 09:40 PM

I am an nurse... of course I always recommend that you talk to your OBGYN, but it might be a good idea that you stay off the Depo and take a monthly BCP or patch for as long as it takes for the two of you to decide that it is time.
The half life of oral BCP is much less, so when you decide to get pregnant, you won't have to stop your birth control for as long.
You are obviously sensitive to the Depo since you haven't had your cycle for so long.
Hope this helps!
Talk to your MD.

vrooje · Mar 25, 2007, 12:59 AM

I'm not a medical practitioner of any kind... just someone who was on depo for about 4 years.

I had none of the side effects with depo that I had with the pill -- it seemed like it was just a little pinch a few times a year, and poof -- no worries about pregnancy. I was thrilled.

However, I did eventually notice that my libido had decreased, to the point where I had no sex drive at all. At first I didn't correlate this with the depo; I just went to talk with my OB-GYN about it, and she said, "of course you have no sex drive. Did you know that they give depo to pedophiles to reduce their libido? You basically have the hormones of a post-menopausal woman." I was shocked -- out of all the doctors and nurses who had given me the shot over the years, not one of them had mentioned this.

When I thought about it, I realized that the decrease in libido did correlate with the time I started depo. But it was so gradual that I didn't realize it was happening at first.

It took me 6 months to get my period back, but it has taken nearly two years for my sex drive to come back to anything approaching what it was before depo.

Again, I'm not a medical expert, but if I were you I'd stop the depo not just because of conception timing worries, but because I'd hope to avoid potential marital problems arising from having no sexual desire for my husband.