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?
For me it hasn’t affected my sleep. But different people get different effects.
As for breast growth, I can’t really say for sure if it has helped, but over the last few months I feel like I’ve had more firmness than the several months before I started it. But it’s been very minimal if anything. It’s one of those things that unfortunately there is no real research to understand if it does or doesn’t make any difference, only a lot of anecdotal evidence. Anyway, it’s not quick.
Ask your doctor first, but you could try stopping for a bit to see if the sleep issues resolve or if it is something else that’s causing the sleep disturbance.
But in general, what little research there is for transwomen seems to show increasing estradiol dosages generally has been more tied to breast growth than progesterone. I had more growth when I raised my peak estradiol levels to just above 300 pg/mL by changing from 3 to 4 patches. A lot of older recommendations say to stay under 200 pg/mL, but newer ones that take into account that we don’t use the old type of estrogen with a higher cancer risk say 200-400 pg/mL. But I’m still quite small with a 34A US bra size, so I added the progesterone to see if that would help. We’ll see in a year or so.