Is Stopping Birth Control for a While a Good Idea?

For the past 15 or so years, I’ve been part of the oral-contraceptive club. For almost as long as I can remember, I’ve woken up, walked haphazardly to the bathroom, popped my daily birth control pill, brushed my teeth, and gone on with my day.

Last week, as I was finishing up my current birth control pack, I went to tap “refill” on the drugstore app on my phone, and I had a moment of pause. Some background: I’m a single woman in my early 30s, riding out the new coronavirus pandemic on my own in my small New York City apartment. What’s the point for me to be even on the pill? I wondered.

As someone who uses the birth control pill primarily for pregnancy prevention (in addition to condoms for protection against sexually transmitted infections), I clearly won’t be needing that in my current sheltering-in-place circumstances. If you’re in a similar position, you might be wondering: Is now a good time to take a break from birth control?

So, hold up, does your body ever need a “break” from birth control?

It turns out there is actually no medical reason to give your body a temporary break from the pill, Alyssa Dweck, M.D., a gynecologist in New York City, tells SELF. “For a while there was a myth that women should take a break from birth control and see if everything was still working the ‘right’ way,” says Dr. Dweck. “That’s actually just not necessary.”

To explain why, let’s talk about what happens when you’re on the birth control pill. (FYI: This actually extends to all combined hormonal contraceptives that contain both estrogen and progestin—a synthetic form of progesterone—including the pill, the ring, and the patch.) When you’re taking the pill, your body gets a steady dose of estrogen and progestin to prevent pregnancy. Estrogen suppresses ovulation by inhibiting the secretion of hormones that are responsible for kickstarting a chain of reproductive events. Meanwhile, the progestin makes it more difficult for sperm to travel through the cervix by thickening cervical mucus and also thins the lining of the uterus so that, in the event that an egg does become fertilized, it has a harder time latching on for nourishment.

When you go off of the pill, these effects stop pretty much immediately, says Dr. Dweck, and the hormones are out of your system within a few days. You can read more about what happens to your body when you stop taking the pill, here. But, in general, you don’t need to take a “break” from birth control every once in a while, unless of course you don’t need or want to take it anymore, or if you have a medical reason to stop taking it.

When it comes to other birth control methods, the advice ranges a bit. With implants and IUDs, for example, you do need to be mindful of replacing them at the end of their useful life. But you can often remove and replace an IUD on the same day, with Dr. Dweck adding that there is no harm in using them back-to-back. And then there’s the birth control shot, which is not recommended for use longer than two years, as it can cause you to lose bone density. It can also take longer for your fertility to return after taking the shot than it would with other birth control methods, so this is one method where you actually should be mindful of when you’re starting and stopping it.