Don’t get pregnant! That is what we are told our entire lives! 24.4% of women between the ages of 15-49 in the United States are on the pill or have an Intrauterine device or contraceptive implant, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

In this episode, Carolina speaks with board-certified Reproductive Endrinocologist and Infertility Specialist Carolina Sueldo, MD FACOG about everything a woman should know about birth control. We even debunk some birth control myths. 

Ready to be in the know about birth control? This is the exact episode for you!

What you’ll learn:

1:53 Does birth control cause irregular cycles?

4:31 Carolina’s message for women out there

5:42 Physicians want to help people

7:03 Is birth control the reason for irregular cycles and infertility?

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Professional bio
The Carolina Sotomayor Podcast is brought to you by Carolina Sotomayor and the Fertility Foundation.

Carolina Sotomayor is an Expert Womb Healer who helps women conceive by removing physiological blockages with Reiki. She is the host of the Carolina Sotomayor Podcast, a show that covers everything from fertility to postpartum to motherhood, and the creator of Fertility Foundation Collective, an online membership that helps women heal at their own pace to boost their fertility.

Carolina has served over 500 women from around the world to heal. She is passionate about helping women create their families. As a result, there are over 60 reiki babies in the world.

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Full episode transcript:

Hi, I’m Carolina, your podcast host and womb healer, and today we’re having a very special guest. This is Dr. Carolina Swo, and I’m gonna go ahead and hand her introduction over to you. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for taking the time to speak to us.

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Carolina. I’m so excited to be here today. So as she mentioned, I am a doctor. I’m actually a double board certified OB G Y N and fertility specialist. So what that means is after medical school I did four years of OB, B G Y N training. I then did three more years of reproductive endocrinology and infertility.

And then for both specialties you have to take a written exam and an oral exam. So lots of lots of training to get to get to this spot. That’s so impressive, . Thank you. Thank you. So let’s dive into it. Let’s dive into birth control. So birth control is such a hot topic here in 2022, especially here in the States.

And most women have encountered or have done some type of birth. , does birth control cause irregular cycles? Is that a myth? Yeah, I, I love this question. I love this question cause I get it so much and I think there’s. So much misinformation out there about birth control. I’m so glad that we’re talking about this today.

So the short answer is no. Birth control does not cause irregular cycles. And so I’m gonna expand upon that, but the short answer is no. If you have to take away so fact, no, your listeners, if there’s any hesitation, there is no hesitation. Okay? So it does not cause irregular cycles. Basically what happens?

is that when a patient presents either with irregular cycles or painful periods or you know, there’s any number of things. One of the first line treatments that we use is birth control. and a birth control pill has both estrogen and progesterone hormones. And so for women with painful periods, that progesterone, if there is endometriosis, that progesterone will have a suppressive effect for patients with irregular cycles will give them a nice, you know, predictable monthly bleed.

when you come off of the birth control, you go back to whatever your baseline was. So if your baseline was irregular, guess what? You’re gonna go back to being irregular. If your baseline was painful, you’re gonna go back to having painful periods. Now the third thing is most women use birth control as just that as birth control or contraception, and many women.

Tend to start it in their teens because that’s when they become sexually active. And many of us, myself included, continue it for years and years and years. So really the first time that you’re taking note of your baseline, you know, non-hormonal menstrual cycle is when you’re now coming off to try to get pregnant.

And so really this is a first time or first assessment of what your baseline fertility is or your birth baseline cycle regularity. . I will say, I think it’s super important if a patient presents with symptoms, so she’s not just presenting for birth control as a birth control method, but she’s presenting with irregular cycles or painful periods or whatnot.

I do strongly believe that a complete evaluation needs to be done. So there’s hormone testing that needs to be done. There’s an ultrasound that’s typically recommended. We’re trying to identify the underlying cause for her symptoms, right? So you don’t just wanna throw birth control at someone just because you wanna be thoughtful and intentional as the physician in terms of your workup and your treatment.

That said, birth control is a great first line treatment for many of these ailments, and so a lot of physicians will use birth control as that first line. I’m gonna pause you there. For the ladies that are listening. I want you, when you’re going in to your OB G Y N, and you’re suffering from whatever it may be, whether it’s irregular periods or maybe you’re bleeding too long, or whatever it may be, you have the right to ask for what is the reason behind this?

If your doctor’s gonna ask you not do that testing or not do a complete evaluation, Pause and ask questions and learn to advocate for yourself. You’re allowed to ask questions in your doctor’s appointments, and doctors are authority figures, but they are also people and they’re serving you. So I find that a lot of my listeners, they don’t advocate enough yet.

For themselves and doctor’s appointments are not brave enough, you know, ask their questions and appointments to get to the answers. They leave with more questions than they came with, and I just always wanted to preface that. , you’re empowered to ask things so that you have questions, and that’s what they’re there for.

So absolutely. I can’t tell you how many times patients will come to me on a treatment and they don’t really understand even why they’re taking the medication. I will say for most physicians, I know I speak for most of us, obviously, we went into this to help people, right? So we went into this to help, to improve, to treat, to cure, et cetera.

All the positive verbs that you can think of. And so most of us will never. Dismiss you or your symptoms or your questions intentionally, right? The vast majority of the time, it’s never intentional, and so really, I couldn’t be more aligned with what you’re saying is feel empowered to ask those questions, feel empowered to understand.

you know why the treatment plan is being recommended or you know, why you’re receiving, you know, this or that medication, and then what’s the next step? So like, I do this medication. What do we check in again? When do I see you again? Like what is, like what’s next step? So you actually have a plan.

Sometimes I’m like, okay, I have a discussion with a client and like either in my membership or my group program. I’m like, okay, so what’s your fertility plan with your doctor? What do you mean a facility plan? Like what are the next steps? Like what are you doing? Where are we going with this? Where are we going?

Cause we have goals here, we got babies to make. So like what is your plan? So it’s okay. Sometimes it takes a while for like a plan to be put together cuz you gotta do the task, you gotta like find out answers and then move forward. But we’re always working towards that plan. So absolutely. This is a very popular question, is birth control.

The reasons why my cycles are now irregular. . Yeah. So this is a question that I get all the time, you know, and, and I’ll kind of parallel that with, is this the reason my cycles are irregular? Is this the reason I have infertility? I took birth control for whatever decades, ten four years? Is this the reason that I’m now having trouble?

And the short answer is no. For most women, whether they were put on birth control as a contraceptive method, or whether they were put on birth control for, you know, an underlying ail. The idea is that now that you’re off of the hormone suppression, we are seeing what your baseline fertility is, and your baseline may be irregular cycles because of P C O S or you know, any number of other issues.

Your baseline fertility may be really painful periods because of endometriosis, you know, there’s a whole host of things that are now gonna pop up because you don’t have that suppressive birth control. So the short answer is, Birth control does not cause irregular cycles. It does not cause infertility, and really there’s no waiting period.

So if you were on a birth control pill, different with some other forms like the depo shot, but for most birth control forms, including the pill as the most common one, when you stop the pill and you get a period from that stopp. You really return to your baseline fertility. So there’s many women who even get pregnant that first month right off of birth control.

I love that so much. Thank you so much for your time today. And can you tell our listeners, are you on social? How can they follow you? How can they learn more about you? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I have a YouTube channel. I drop episodes there weekly. They’re just quick 10 minute clips of those little blurbs that you wish you knew.

And it’s my name, Dr. Carolina Aldo. So very easy to find. And then I’m also on social. I’m on Instagram and Facebook. I would love for you to send me a DM after this episode and let me know what you thought about it, and if you have any questions, I would love it to work with you. I would love that. I love also that we’re twinning with our first.

Yes. Carolina. Carolina, the Carolinas. So I’m so blessed to have had you here today and thank you so much for your time. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. This was so fun. Awesome. I hope you have a good day.