Does Breastfeeding Affect Your Menstrual Cycle?

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1. Birth control pills that don’t affect the way of your body in making milk for nursing. Estrogen-progestin pills are not too recommended because it can be potential to affect the milk supply. Progestin-only pills are usually prescribed by doctors for birth control in women with breastfeeding.
2. Practically barrier methods, such as the use of condoms.
3. If you don’t like taking pill for birth control, you can consider using Depo-Provera.
4. The use of IUD or intrauterine device. In this method, a hygienic and appropriate device is placed inside the female uterus to prevent pregnancy.

Consult more with your doctor for in-depth information about these birth controls. Learn also the side effects of each method so thus you will find and use the best one that meets to your body needs!

However, the absence of ovulation due to nursing after childbirth also can be used as birth control. This kind of birth control is medically called as lactation amenorrhea method (LAM).

But there are some points you have to follow in order to make sure that it works optimally. You can take LAM for your birth control if you have ALL of the following conditions [4]:

1. The age of your baby must be not older than 6 months. As written before, about 6 months after childbirth, your body is more likely to become ready to get ovulation which means you chance of getting pregnant is high.
2. You have to exclusively breastfeed your newborn. In other words, your baby is still getting the nutrient supply from nursing alone. Furthermore, your nursing should be regular either day or night in order to make sure that your brain keeps responding that your body is still active in nursing so thus there is no chance for ovulation to come back.
3. And you still don’t have any menstrual period. A spotting or menstrual bleeding can be a sign that your ovulation has returned.

If you have all of those conditions, the use of lactation amenorrhea method can work effectively. It can provide about 98 percent of protection from getting pregnant [2].

It seems that LAM is not easy to be implemented for your birth control. The point ‘2’may be the most challenging.

It’s not easy to make sure that you can be always able to maintain your exclusively breastfeeding for both day & night all the time, particularly if you have to back to work soon after childbirth.