Hi Kittie, this sounds really frustrating. I’ve just posted a thread hoping to draw in people’s experiences so we can all start to see what to expect. For my own part, the first year was the most tumultuous with periods all over the place. They’ve now settled to about 40 days apart and a more consistent length of bleeding of around 8 days (year 2 ish of perimenopause - when symptoms became more obvious so prob a bit longer; about 1.5 years of HRT) I was on gel and utrogestan but have found the patches better for me. You haven’t said how many pumps you’re using, but it might be time to increase your dose. I was on 2 for quite a while before I saw a specialist who said to go straight up to 3 or 4 and just see how that felt. You can monitor symptoms and can always adjust down. She also advised not to wait 3 months each increase as my GP had advised. I Went to 4 and felt much better (now on evorel 100 patches, equiv to 4 pumps). I don’t think it had any effect on periods, unfortunately my experience was just having to ride out the year of crazy cycles and bleeding, but it definitely helped with sleep, brain fog and tiredness, but I have come to expect some tiredness now (but no longer debilitating). It’s worth mentioning that I said to the consultant that I slept better when I was taking the utrogestan on those two weeks in each cycle and asked what the reason was for women in perimenopause not being given continuous progestorone. She said it was simply that it can cause spotting but to try it and if it did, then decide if I wanted to go back to the 2 weeks in each cycle. Now I take 100mg utrogestan (1tablet) every night. I’ve, personally, had no spotting and it definitely helped with sleep.
