I've been on prog for about 1.5 months now and had a few different experiences so far, some good some bad, and I'm trying to get a sense for how typical these effects are. For the record I started prog after about 11 months and change on HRT, and I've been taking 200mg Prometrium rectally every other day (pharmacy had trouble stocking 100mg). The following are some of the effects I've experienced categorized by how I feel about them

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The Good:

-Breast growth seems to be resurging, lots of soreness and tenderness like in the early days on HRT and definitely noticing better shape

-More energy, finding myself a lot more motivated to exercise and stay on my workout routine

-Libido is much stronger than before

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The Bad:

-Getting occasional morning wood. Sometimes I attributed this to "oh I had my hand down my pants so maybe I self-stimulated in my sleep or had a hot dream or something" but other times I've definitely woken up abruptly at 7am with an uncomfortably hard erection

-I think my hair loss might be increasing? Hard to tell for sure as I've only started paying attention more recently and might just be paranoia, but I seem to lose a lot more in the shower than I was prior

-Generally find myself sweating more (though it has been hot as hell here lately so 🤷‍♀️)

-A lot more physical dysphoria than I've had lately, been super paranoid about my face looking a little worse but have not been able to tell for sure through pics so again might be a paranoia thing

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All in all it's really hard to tell rn if this is just totally normal stuff and my anxiety is causing me to overreact, or if I am indeed seeing a mixed bag of the good results from progesterone and some of those remasculinizing ones. I get my HRT through Planned Parenthood, and when I asked my clinician about getting my DHT checked she said they basically can't do that because they don't have a treatment plan for DHT if it is abnormal. So I'd need to go and find a dedicated endo to get the bloodwork ordered to see for sure if this is a DHT resurgence thing, which is kind of tricky with my insurance rn so trying to make a decision based on observable effects here.

For those of you who are on progesterone or have tried it in the past, how closely does my experience line up with your own?