Should I use a cycle tracking app if I'm on the pill?
Friends often ask us whether a cycle tracker is any use if the pill is already taking care of birth control. We think it is, and the reasons depend on which kind of birth control you use, so it helps to start with what each one does in your body.
What the combined pill does
The combined pill has two hormones, estrogen and progestin, and it works mainly by stopping ovulation. With no ovulation, there's no egg and none of the rise and fall of hormones that makes up a natural cycle.
The bleed you get in the hormone-free or placebo week is called a withdrawal bleed. It happens because your hormone levels drop when you stop the active pills, and the lining of your uterus sheds in response. Cleveland Clinic describes it as something that may look and feel like a period while being a different thing, and it's often lighter. It doesn't mean you ovulated that month.
So on the combined pill, a tracker can't tell you where you are in a natural cycle, because you aren't having one in the usual sense. What it can do is keep a dated record of your bleeding, spotting, mood, sleep, headaches, and anything else you notice.
The minipill and IUDs
The progestin-only pill, often called the minipill, works partly by thickening the mucus at your cervix so sperm can't get through. It can stop ovulation too, though less reliably than the combined pill, so some people on the minipill still ovulate and have something close to their own cycle.
Hormonal IUDs release a small amount of progestin inside the uterus. They partly suppress ovulation, and Cleveland Clinic notes that most people with an IUD keep ovulating. Hormonal IUDs often make bleeding lighter or irregular, and for some people periods stop altogether, even while ovulation carries on.
The copper IUD has no hormones. It prevents pregnancy inside the uterus and leaves your natural cycle in place, so you keep ovulating and having periods. Those periods and cramps can be heavier, especially in the first months. If you have a copper IUD, a cycle tracker works for you much the way it does for anyone else.
Why tracking still helps
Patterns are easier to see written down than remembered. Say you notice low mood, irritability, or anxiety that shows up at the same point every month and lifts once bleeding starts. That's worth bringing to a doctor, because the timing is how premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) is told apart from other kinds of low mood. MedlinePlus suggests keeping a calendar or diary of symptoms for this reason.
Notes help with pain too. Endometriosis often causes pelvic pain around your period, and the cramps can get worse over time. Hormonal birth control is sometimes used to manage it, which can make the pain harder to read. A few months of notes about when the pain comes, how bad it is, and what helped gives your doctor much more to go on than "it hurts sometimes."
Tracking also helps when you come off hormonal birth control to try for a baby or to see how your body runs without it. A record lets you watch your own cycle come back. The NHS says fertility usually returns to previous levels about a month after stopping the pill. Cleveland Clinic adds that you could ovulate as soon as two weeks after the withdrawal bleed that follows stopping, though the exact timing can't be predicted. If you logged your mood and symptoms while you were on the pill, you'll have your own notes to compare against.
Marking birth control in Barkat
In Barkat you can mark a birth control stretch for the pill or an IUD, with the month you started and the day too if you remember it. It's a note for your own record, and it doesn't change the cycle math. Barkat won't guess at fertile days from a pill pack or adjust its estimates for hormones.
Barkat is a tracker, and it was never meant to be birth control. Please don't rely on it to prevent pregnancy, and keep using the method you and your doctor chose.
Science and other ways of knowing
We trust science, and we're grateful for vaccines and for the research behind every fact on this page. We're also open to other ways of knowing your body, such as following the moon or simply paying close attention to how you feel from day to day.
Robin Wall Kimmerer, a botanist and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, writes in Braiding Sweetgrass about braiding scientific knowledge and Indigenous knowledge together and learning from both. That's close to how we think about Barkat. The cycle tracking is checked against medical sources, and the moon, the lunar day, and the tarot sit beside it for anyone who finds meaning there.
If you'd rather have only the tracking, tap the ☼ in the footer to open Settings. Turn off the Astrology switch, and the Tarot cards switch too if you like, and Barkat shows you your cycle and your notes without the rest.
Sources
- Cleveland Clinic, Withdrawal Bleeding
- Cleveland Clinic, Progestin-Only Birth Control Pills (Minipill)
- Cleveland Clinic, Intrauterine Device (IUD)
- MedlinePlus, Premenstrual dysphoric disorder
- MedlinePlus, Endometriosis
- NHS, When will my periods come back after I stop taking the pill?
- Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Milkweed Editions)
This is general information, not medical advice. If something about your cycle worries you, talk to a doctor or midwife.