At-home shot (Depo-subQ Provera)

Everybody responds to birth control differently. If you feel like your birth control is changing your mood, it’s time to talk to your health care provider. It might be a matter of switching methods or deciding whether to avoid hormonal birth control altogether, or you may choose to wait it out since some negative side effects go away with time. The shot is effective for 3 months after you get it and it’s not possible to stop using it during that time, but a health care provider might have some tips for handling moodiness during that time.

Unfortunately, yes. The hormones in the shot are slowly released after getting the shot and stay in your system for at least 3 months. There isn’t any other medication or anything else to do other than wait for the shot to wear off. For some people that takes exactly three months and for others, it can take a little longer.

The hormonal IUDs, shot, implant, and progestin-only pill have all been shown to overall reduce periods for most people. For some people, that means they don’t get a period at all, but for others it can cause bleeding when you aren’t expecting it even if you have less total bleeding.

You can use the pill or the ring continuously to intentionally skip your period altogether.

“If you have health insurance—whether it’s through your parents, school, job, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace, or Medicaid—chances are good that you’ll be able to get the shot with no out-of-pocket cost.

If you don’t have health insurance, it’s true that the cost of each shot can be high. If that isn’t an option for you, the manufacturer of the shot offers a discount and you can also check with the family planning clinics around you and find out if they offer discounts or payment plans for the shot.”

Everybody responds to birth control differently. If you feel like your hormonal birth control is changing your mood, it’s time to talk to your health care provider. It might be a matter of switching methods or deciding whether to avoid hormonal birth control altogether, or you may choose to wait it out since some negative side effects go away with time.

The shot stops or lightens periods, so it can really help you with things like anemia or endometriosis. And using the shot now can help protect your uterus from cancer later in life. A couple other little-known tidbits: If you have sickle cell disease, the shot may help you have fewer sickle crises. Or if you have grand mal seizures that get worse with your periods, the shot can decrease the risk of those, too.

“As long as you get your shots on time, this method is very effective. With perfect use the shot is more than 99% effective; with typical use, that means how real people use it in real life, it’s closer to 96%.

In other words:

For people who use the shot exactly as directed for a whole year, fewer than 1 in 100 will get pregnant when they don’t want to during the first year of using the shot.

For people who use the shot as people typically use it, fewer than 4 in 100 will get pregnant when they don’t want to during the first year of using the shot.”

Most birth control methods will not cause weight gain. Everyone’s body responds to birth control differently, but research shows that the pill, patch, the hormonal IUD, the ring, and non-hormonal birth control methods like a copper IUD or condoms don’t cause weight gain (or loss). Studies do show that about 1 in 4 people who use the shot will gain some weight (around 5% of body weight).

Using a method of birth control with estrogen, like the pill, patch, or ring, increases the risk of forming a blood clot, but the risk is so low that if you don’t have any factors that increase your chances of having a blood clot, you can safely use all types of birth control. If you do have an increased risk of blood clots because you’ve had one before you’ve had a stroke or heart attack, or you have a medical condition that increases your risk of a blood clot, like high blood pressure, then adding birth control with estrogen to the mix increases your risk too much and it’s not recommended that you use birth control with estrogen in it. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a birth control method for you! 


If you can’t take estrogen, you have quite a few options available to you. First you have the non-hormonal methods, like the copper IUD. You can also use any of the hormonal methods that only contain progestin, not estrogen, like the implant, mini-pill, shot, and hormonal IUDs, like Mirena, Skyla, Liletta, and Kyleena. These don’t increase your risk of blood clots and are all really good at preventing pregnancy.

If you’re worried about blood clots or don’t know if you have risk factors, talk to a health care provider about which birth control methods are options for you.

While the Paragard and hormonal methods that don’t contain estrogen—the shot, the Mirena IUD, the implant and the mini-pill—are safe for people who are postpartum to use immediately after giving birth, combination pills, which contain estrogen, shouldn’t be used until three weeks after giving birth, since estrogen can increase a postpartum person’s risk of blood clots.

One of the main ways hormonal birth control prevents pregnancy is by stopping ovulation—meaning that the egg never leaves the ovary. The pill, the patch, the ring, and the shot are the methods that are the most reliable at blocking ovulation, so people using these methods may have fewer ovarian cysts. If you tend to get ovarian cysts, your provider may recommend one of these methods to prevent future cysts. The progestin-only pill, also called the mini-pill, has an unpredictable effect on ovulation and may actually lead to more cysts. These cysts almost always disappear on their own, but if you’ve had problems with cysts in the past, the mini-pill may not be the best birth control for you.

In a word, no. The best way to guard against sexually transmitted infections (STIs) if you’re having sex is still the good ol’ condom. If you’re concerned about both pregnancy and STIs, doubling up with the shot and condoms is a great option.