I was suddenly sleeping really well. Turns out I forgot to change my estrogen patch for two weeks!

I reapplied my patch on Saturday night and slept for four hours -- woke up at 3:00 and nothing could get me back to sleep. Not Zopiclone, deep breathing, binaural beats, small snack -- nothing.

I ripped the patch off Sunday morning and last night I slept almost eight hours.

But today I'm sad, lethargic, headache, body aches and extremely irritable. It's the sudden drop in estrogen (I'm on Climara .75) -- obviously! And gauranteed I'm going to have a hot flash today or tomorrow.

But what do I pick? Symptom relief or sleep?

I do drink caffeine -- two cups of green tea first thing in the morning. So maybe if I completely cut caffeine? It's hard to believe that 2 cups of green tea could be the culprit. I quit coffee and that helped a lot, so maybe?

I don't know.

Anyone else have sleep issues with the estrogen patch? I searched this sub and found a few threads but not a lot of responses. The wiki and Google both say that the estrogen patch is supposed to help with sleep.

Perhaps I'm the oddball. I do have MCAS and Long COVID, and both of those syndromes can cause paradoxical drug reactions. But to hormones? I find that hard to fathom.

Argh!

Edit to add: I had a hysterectomy eight years ago. And also, progesterone (bio-identical) made my breasts hurt so much! Sooooo much. It hurt to breathe deeply. It hurt to turn suddenly. Even 100 mcg.

UPDATE! Wow...I should have looked into MCAS and estrogen more closely. Estrogen can cause mast cells to degranulate, which might be why I'm having difficulty sleeping. Some experts recommend starting with only micronized progesterone first. I might give that a try.