I started 100 mg of oral progesterone a little over a week ago, and I haven’t had a good nights sleep in at least 5 days. I wake up between 2 and 4 in the morning, usually within a half hour of 3. Sometimes from a nightmare, which I never used to have until I realized I was trans, sometimes I’m just awake. Last night I didn’t sleep at all so far as I can tell. I see most people saying it does the oppositw for them, just knocks them right out in underan hour, but I definitely don’t get that. I really don’t want the cause of my inability to sleep to be the prog because I’ve already noticed my boobs feel bigger, but has anyone else had this experience?


Breast growth is going to take longer than a week to occur.
Progesterone is known to cause drowsiness in some people, but not everyone. It’s not a guaranteed side effect even if it’s common. I am not sure I would say I feel drowsy on progesterone as much as it helps me stay asleep and sleep longer when my estrogen is peaking.
It also depends on how you’re taking it, oral progesterone is mostly filtered by your liver so it doesn’t meaningfully raise your blood progesterone levels.
If you want to use progesterone, I suggest taking it rectally (just gently push the oral pill up past the sphincter using a finger; using lube is often a good idea and try to relax - it should never hurt).
I have never heard of someone having insomnia due to taking progesterone. It’s also possible the insomnia can be caused by anxious or alert thinking about whether you’re falling asleep, maybe onset by stories about progesterone effecting sleep? I know that sounds silly, but it happens to me - I can struggle to relax and just let go, I get so nervous about whether I’m going to fall asleep that I develop “sleep resistance” and anxiously keep myself up.
You might read about and implement some sleep hygiene practices:
https://health.arizona.edu/sites/default/files/data/Sleep Hygiene.pdf
Nightmares and strange dreams are actually commonly reported on oral progesterone. The prog is metabolized into other hormones that have a wide variety of mental effects, including feeling giddy when awake and such.
In my and other people that I know’s experiences, oral can feel like a slight alcohol buzz or outright drunk. Rectal was/is completely different.
oh, interesting - yeah, maybe it’s the secondary metabolites 🤷♀️ still, I haven’t heard of insomnia as a side effect before (not that this means much, it could still be a known side effect - I just can’t find it mentioned anywhere)
I wouldn’t say my boobs definitely are bigger in the last week, but I’m definitely noticing their size being in the boob range than slightly overweight guy range more, so it might just be my brain doing brain things. In so far as sleep habits, my wife saw a sleep specialist a while back and I’ve incorporated a lot of thing she was told to do into my routine, like getting up if I cant sleep. I’ve been able to get back to sleep eventually every night except last night when I felt on the edge of sleep the whole night. I just really don’t want to find out the progesterone is the source of my insomnia before I get to see any real benefit from it
It’s unlikely to be the source, but biology is wild - so who knows. Especially if you’re taking it orally and your liver is producing a bunch of secondary metabolites from it - those typically create drowsiness as well, but maybe your biology is different? Usually when you see “progesterone causing insomnia”, the discussion is about prog levels dropping too low or a lack of progesterone (not due to levels being normal or high).
So, I wouldn’t expect it to be the cause - have you found any evidence that shows insomnia can be a side effect of taking progesterone?
A couple reddit threads, but other than that, no. The timing just seems too perfect to be coincidental.
you could stop taking it and see if that helps?
oral progesterone probably isn’t helping much anyway, and even taking prog at all isn’t strictly necessary (I mean, ironically I mostly took it to help me sleep).
I was mainly hoping it would help my libido, but it sadly hasn’t done that yet. Estradiol didn’t really start effecting me for about 3 weeks.
It depends on the dose and route of administration as to why it took 3 weeks for you to notice changes from estradiol. I noticed changes within hours to days - particularly after 3 days my mood pretty radically changes as my body stopped producing testosterone. (But I injected a significant enough dose of estradiol valerate, so the estrogen was peaking at day 3 instead of like day 7 - 8 with estradiol enanthate injections.)
I find prog definitely helps libido, but … I don’t know whether taking it orally will help with that or not (since it doesn’t raise blood levels). My experience with taking it orally is that it just doesn’t work, I think I felt a different kind of drowsy that didn’t help me stay asleep like when I take it rectally.