[Becky]

One year at the San Antonio BC Symposium I went to the Gold Medal award winner presentation speech (this award is given to a scientist as a Lifetime Research award - very big thing). This person (woman's) work was tracking about 150 girls from the time they were 7 until they were in their 50's. Pretty cool (Jean from this board was with me during this). This woman tracked everything from diet, exercise, and menses. Just about everything you can track, she tracked. One big part I remembered is that of course, some of these girls had menses problems - many due to intense exercise (big soccer players etc). Others for unknown reasons. The girls that didn't have periods while they were young for exercise or other reasons had a nonexistant BC rate. Her explanation was that since they were not menstruating, they didn't get the rise and then spike in estrogen that happens every month. Someone did ask her about birth control pills and she said, why would you want to do that for any other reason than birth control as she felt it does contribute to BC eventually. Big talk on Birth control pills then.

However Paula, your daughter does get her period and is suffering. It seems to me, she is greatly suffering and this may be a medical/quality of life issue. Way different than just not getting her period. Therefore, you need to really explore options that may help her and the pill may be one of them.

I want to comment on Lien's - I too had really bad cramps that took me out day 1 of my period. They greatly subsided after I had my first baby. They didn't go away but a couple of Advil took care of the problem.