Vomiting after taking HBC

[fushigi-na-chou.livejournal.com]

Last night I went out to celebrate my birthday, and I got a little over zealous with the drinking. I took my birth control (Lo Loestrin FE) when I got home (which would have made it about four hours later than usual, but I figure it's not that big of a deal), but I ended up throwing up like, thirty minutes later. I wasn't able to keep anything down until this afternoon (2:00 or so) and followed the directions for missing a pill (took one as soon as I was able to). Since I'll be taking my birth control again this evening to be back on schedule, it will put me a pill short in my pack, and Lo Loestrin FE is biphasic (the last two active pills are a lower dose, followed by the two inactive pills). How should I approach this situation? I unfortunately don't have any other packs lying around that I could borrow from. Will I need to get a new pack and take the one I ended up throwing up from there at the end of the month, or should I just use a backup method around that time and forget the missing pill?

Sorry if this has been asked before. I tried looking through the tags/memories, but there were a lot, and I didn't stumble across anything helpful yet, but I'm about to be heading out the door soon. Thanks so much for any help. :)

Comments

[archangelbeth]

How many non-active pills do you have? With most pills -- including most 24/4 brands -- you'd go by the 21/7 rule, so you'd be able to extend to 5 no-hormone days safely, but it sounds like this is ultra-low enough to maybe be an issue?

I'd suggest that for maximum protection you can skip your last two lower-dose pills (so the drop in hormones doesn't start a bleed), skip the inactives, and start a new pack instead, or just start using backup contraception around the time of the lower-dose pills and till you've taken 7 pills of the new pack.

Sound reasonable?

[fushigi-na-chou.livejournal.com]

I only have two non-active pills. I think with the lower dose HBCs there is a slightly higher risk of pregnancy when missing a pill or taking one late, just because there's a smaller amount of hormones still floating around in the body, but I could be wrong.

What I'll probably do is just skip the last four pills (two lower dose active and two non-active) and start the new pack straight away. The sounds like it would be the safest bet. Thanks for your help. :)

[emptysthemepark.livejournal.com]

I had this happen to me once with a stomach flu.

You should use back-up anyway for seven days, just to be sure of no unexpected pregnancy. Because of the biphasic thing (none of mine were) I would follow whatever the drug company advises. Mine told me to take another asap and use back-up until I started a new package. I did notice that the taking of the extra pill (because I'd kept the first one down maybe an hour and saw part of it come up) caused breast tenderness and nausea so don't panic if that happens.

Here's the full rundown:
http://www.drugs.com/lo-loestrin-fe.html

[fushigi-na-chou.livejournal.com]

Haha, breast soreness is all just part of the package for me anyway (I get one or two non-sore-boob days a month, maybe, if I'm lucky). Thankfully I haven't noticed any other nausea or anything. I think my digestive system took a couple days to recover fully afterwards, on top of now catching a cold (or something like it), so hopefully my body will return to full normal soon.

Thanks so much for the advice. :)