However, Shepherd says this is a potential side effect of pretty much every form of hormonal birth control. As a result, Cackovic says that some doctors recommend that women take calcium and vitamin D supplements while they’re on the shot. “This is concerning now, as we are finding more and more women have been on it for long periods of time,” Cackovic says, noting that Depo-Provera’s label warns that the decline in bone density increases with duration of use and may not be completely reversible even after the drug is discontinued. Using Depo-Provera for more than two years can cause you to lose bone density. “It’s not a good medicine for family planning” if you want to get pregnant soon, he says, in the sense that you can have a pretty much instant return to fertility with options like the Pill.
Michael Cackovic, M.D., the obstetric director of the maternal cardiac disease in pregnancy program at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, tells SELF that a person’s “return to fertility” can take anywhere from 10 to 22 months after they stop using the shot.
That means about six out of every 100 shot users will get pregnant each year.
The shot also thickens your cervical mucus to keep sperm from reaching an egg.Īccording to Planned Parenthood, the shot is more than 99 percent effective when it’s used perfectly but, in real life, the shot is about 94 percent effective because sometimes people forget to get their shot in time. It’s given as an injection once every three months, the Mayo Clinic says, and it works by suppressing ovulation, i.e., it keeps your ovaries from releasing an egg each month that could get fertilized, resulting in pregnancy. But there’s a slew of other options out there, including one that doctors say is popular but often overlooked in birth control conversations: the shot.ĭepo-Provera, the brand name for medroxyprogesterone (which is often just referred to as “the shot”), is a contraceptive injection for women that contains progestin, a synthetic version of the hormone progesterone. When you hear the term “birth control,” the Pill probably springs to mind, followed by methods that are growing in popularity, like intrauterine devices and the Nexplanon implant.