It's hard to tell during peri. Your own ovaries could be sometimes contributing something or they could not. The amount the patches give will remain the same but you don't want big variation anyway in estrogen levels, because it's that which causes symptoms. So adding in more estrogen will only mean that if your own ovaries contribute anything, there will be less of a difference in the amount between when they are and when they're not. If that makes sense.
If your periods are barely there, and if you've been on sequential HRT for about a year at least, you could ask your doctor about trying continuous HRT. That just means taking the progesterone every day at 100mg - instead of for 2 weeks of the month at 200. That way, you shouldn't bleed at all. There's no harm to trying it and the only thing that would happen if it's too early for you, is some break-through bleeding so you would then go back to sequential for a while longer. (I'm peri and 44yo but I am on continuous because I have a history of mild endo and continuous progesterone is recommended for endo sufferers, to suppress any endo throughout the whole month.) Continuous actually gives better protection of the uterus than sequential.
Definitely from my own experience recently, increase gradually - it can't hurt to increase gradually and it might really help. It's a v good idea to do half a 25 if you have some of those patches, for a few weeks, before 75. I just went right from 50 to 75 and am left wondering if some of my estrogen-related side effects (palpitations, throbbing etc) might have not happened if I'd done this more gradually. It's one of the good things about the gel, that you can estimate half a squirt and that sort of thing - it's harder to do that with the patches especially if you don't have access to more than 50 patches for eg.
