just so others are aware, OP is a cis woman who is planning to take DIY HRT because she’s insecure in her gender and wishes to be more feminine like her sisters

you can read more context from her prior posts:

• https://lemmyverse.link/thelemmy.club/post/44532451
• https://lemmyverse.link/thelemmy.club/post/44568513

Ive been on HRT for about a year and a half. I honestly haven’t had as major of changes as I was originally thinking. I currently use estradiol patches, changed twice weekly. My goal being to have peak estrogen levels over 300pg/mL. Recently, moved from 3 to 4 patches and added 100mg of progesterone a few months back. Biggest things:

• breast growth: 34AA only, so far, but still slowly growing and I do have a wider chest for my size so it’s probably spread out more
• more emotional: this has been fairly minor, but I do find it harder to hold back strong emotions. Cried in front of someone for the first time since I was a young child.
• orgasm differences: my orgasms changed to be a little less intense peaks, but instead stretched out to up to a few seconds long, and before I had bottom surgery, ejaculate had greatly decreased and sometimes there was none

That’s about it though. My skin hasn’t changed much and I haven’t gotten wider hips or any other body shape changes other than the breast growth. I did a lot of body hair removal and it hasn’t come back quite as thick and my male-pattern hair thinning seems to have stopped, but not reversed, really.

Taking hormones made Me gay. Before I started estrogen I was aromantic. Six weeks after My first dose, I developed a crush on a girl for the first time. I asked her out and she said yes.

I am 5 ish months in. I started at 2 mg, then bumped to 4mg and now 6mg oral estradiol and 50 mg of oral cyproterone for the last 2 months because there’s a spironolactone shortage plaguing where I live. Before switching, I was on 200mg of spironolactone.

Breast growth started 2-3 weeks in with a lump behind each nipple which have steadily grown to be ~7cm across along with very minimal fat collection so I’m a little bit jiggly with slightly larger areolas and nipples which are leading the way away from my ribcage giving me cones for boobs. The things I never see mentioned about breast growth are the itchiness that comes with increased bloodflow (it’s nearly painful sometimes, like a horrendous mosquito bite) and the fluids. I was playing with my nipples one day early on, gauging the size of the lumps behind my nipples, and drops of clear fluid came out of my nipple and scared the shit out of me! Turns out, that’s totally normal unless it starts coming out on its own and is a result of the development of milk ducts, but it would have been really nice to know beforehand. That particular effect stopped after about 3 weeks of monitoring it.

My emotional range spiked to be insanely wide when I started for about a week, then shrunk back down to what it was before, then another spike about 2-3 weeks after each time I upped my dose, and this time it seems to be staying mostly open. If I had to give it a number, I’d say I can feel about 250% more than before, which sucks when a dysphoric low hits me, but it’s totally worth it when I go into an instoppable giggle fit, or get aroused by a spicy scene in my book, or have my heart melt when one of my niblings does something adorable.

My relationship with sex has been… weird. Initially, when I was on spiro, erections ceased to exist. I could get it up for a few minutes if I found something particularly arousing, but that was it. Sex with my wife dropped from 3-4 times a month to maybe once every other month. Cyproterone has let some of that come back, random boners haven’t made a comeback, thank god, but my penis is far more sensitive than it once was. My wife and I have tried to have sex a couple times recently, but insertion is just too much for me to handle, and sex has ended up with us grinding on a vibrator between us. Another thing I never saw anyone write about was the difference between boy horny and girl horny. There was one day when my SIL was staying with my wife and I in our one bedroom apartment, so sex was off the table, but I felt a need to jump on my wife and ride her to the stars, but so far as I could tell, I wasn’t horny. Some conversations online later, and I realized I was horny, it was just a very different kind of horny and I had no way to identify it. One person described boy horny as a hunger and girl horny as appreciating fine art, but for me it’s a lot more subtle. More like boy horny is a hunger to get off, and girl horny is a desire to enjoy the sex part of sex, not just the orgasm with someone. I talked to a friend of mine about it, and she hasn’t really experienced any difference in how she gets aroused, and she’s about 5 months ahead of me on HRT.

I haven’t really noticed any size difference in my genitals, but tucking has gotten a lot easier with practice and trial and error to find what panties/gaffs work for me. Period panties are great for smoothing things out, and have a wide gusset to hold everything in place, but they don’t let sweat breathe, and I find an extra pair of my everyday panties on top of them are necessary to keep them from slipping and letting things out.

I already had a pretty nice butt, but my wife and I have noticed it’s a little fuller and getting more dumptrucky in the last few weeks. My thighs are following suit, getting a little thicker and more jiggly, but my hips have not gotten any extra on them, so I’m still shaped like a tube from the front.

Muscle atrophy is a bitch! I work in trades, so moving heavy things (50+ lbs) is expected, and I’ve started noticing carrying an empty ikea cabinet across the room absolutely gasses me. I don’t know if it’s because of the rate or the overall amount I’ve lost, but my butt, thighs and shoulders get sore totally at random like I ran a 10k with no prep the day before. I play ultimate frisbee, so muscle soreness like that is very familiar to me and it feels identical.

Temperature regulation is also weird. I used to be comfortable in slightly lower temps and wasn’t bothered when the weather was -30C, but now -10C is horrible! There was a month or so when my wife would sleep half covered by our comforter, and I would have the comforter and a doubled over fleece blanket on top of me and a heated throw under me on full blast to barely be comfortable in bed. I’m not that bad now, sleeping with just the comforter again, but I still prefer it warmer than my wife, when I used to be the one who wanted to set the temperature a bit lower.

That’s my experience so far, and I’m going to ask my doctor about progesterone next time I see him, so hopefully bigger boobs soon.🤞Wow this was a long comment!

Almost six years in, 4mg/week estradiol valerate shots, 200mg progesterone, 50mg spironolactone.

I grew D cups and have a very different face. My hips widened. I’m shorter, and my hands and feet are smaller. My skin became smooth and shiny. My arms, legs, and butt changed shape. I got way weaker and switched from lifting to running. I was 50/50 bi before but now I’m close to straight. The world is more colorful and I’m much happier.

I also take DIM, Zinc, and grapefruit juice in the evenings after the shot. Switching to IM injections and taking the progesterone rectally made the biggest difference.

first of all, i would like to note i am blessed in that the women in my family have BEAUTIFUL genetics when it comes to muscle and fat building/distribution, and that this likely won’t be your situation. nevertheless, i myself when starting HRT would have liked to have heard of a couple accounts similar to mine, because these would have eased my anxiousness with the sudden changes to my body.

i am currently at 6 months, at first two milligrams per week of estradiol cypionate, and then transdermal patches with spironolactone (total of four .2mg/day patches per week with 50mg spironolactone per day)

after about ten or so days, my breasts were considerably tender, and i think a little past two weeks you could notice some breast tissue if i shook my torso. i also began to get a LOT more susceptible to emotion.

about two months in i started not being able to hold onto objects as well just by clamping on stuff with my fingers (i wasn’t good at this prior), and at about three my cystic acne just… stopped being a problem, which was cool. :) honestly kind of expected it but i’m surprised just how effective it was.

at four months, my breasts were fairly noticeable, and the increased fat in my buttocks and thighs was becoming decently apparent. please do note i have little fat on my body in general (weigh 9.5 stone/60kg, a lot of it muscle, and am six feet/185cm tall). my body hair was also growing considerably less, and i noticed for the first time a little fat redistribution on my face too! facial hair still isn’t fun though

as of now:

• pretty much everything related to my reproductive system barely works (tucking is also easier)
• building muscle is a bit more challenging, but is doable, at least for me
• i can definitely be a bit more emotional/mood swingy, but i feel SO much better mentally
• my temperature regulation is a lot worse and i try to make sure to wear something warm that can also be shedded with ease
• i noticed a lot more body smell than before, and i must take care to not drench myself in sweat.
• measured my breasts to be B cup size (a bra is super necessary!)
• nipple soreness comes and go, but nevertheless they are always quite sensitive
• i bike a whole lot, and already had the “T-rex build”, but now my body is becoming very much an hourglass figure (like my family). i definitely am tall, but my legs are especially long compared to my torso, and due to more current clothing trends that means i am very lucky in that i somehow have more clothing choices with traditional womens clothing than mens, of course your mileage may vary
• my allergies seemed to improve?? i don’t know if this is related, but it happened
• also became a LOT more fond of physical affection

overall have liked HRT a whole lot!! my only regret (like many other people) was not having started it sooner, but apart from that having boobs and thighs RULES

please note that i started (and still am) fairly young and am very physically active, my body was also on the more feminine side to begin with (again, like much of my family).

i sincerely wish you the best with your future endeavors! :)

I’m 4 months in, using 0.1mg/day Dotti patches (twice weekly) and 50mg 2x a day Spiro pills

• i have noticeable breast growth already (holy fuck they hurt lol)

• my skin is softer and way more sensitive and I’m ticklish again (that was surprising, never heard anyone comment it before)

• body hair takes longer to grow and is a bit lighter in color, face hair is still dark and scratchy though

• hair feels more healthy and a small amount of lost hair has some fuzzies again

• beginnings of fat redistribution are popping up, hard to tell because I’m so skinny though. face is a bit more fem now

• muscles are definatey starting to atrophy. i need to get some weights lol

• hard to know how related it is but my sexuality is flopping around like a fish, mostly sapphic still but leaning more pan

• mentally I feel much more comfortable in my body, hard to explain. it just feels right

• I can cry again

all in all this stuff is legit a magical girl potion for me, its wild

about 1 year in, estradiol valerate 0.2 mL im weekly, Spironalactone 2x daily, started progesterone about 9 months in.

it wasn’t long before i felt tenderness in my breasts, maybe 6 weeks. grew to B cups then progesterone has really made them fill out more and still gaining, on the light side of C currently. i decided to weight cycle using cheese (i love cheese) and that worked out pretty well, i gained about 30 lbs permanently (in all my favorite places).

i also decided to really try to eat healthy other than being a cheese monster, went mostly vegetarian and worked out about 2x or 3x weekly just legs and core.

I started a bit later in life, at 31 but I identify as NB so its fine. I do still get a lot of confusion though I like being able to tone it up or down with clothes as a determining factor.

People treat me differently now, in good ways and bad ways. I am about 1000% more emotional, for better and for worse. I personally love that i get upset enough that i can cry over dumb stuff like missing someone or being TOO HAPPY. The crying got much worse with progesterone, but it isn’t a lasting sadness, it’s acute. to the point that I’ll be crying and logically know that there’s nothing to feel that strongly about, but the physical reaction happens anyways. my wife thinks it’s been really therapeutic for me, probably euphoria related mostly.

uhhh what else, idk but it was a great choice. take your time, hang out with people that actually care about you and don’t waste time on anyone that brings you down.

Four weeks in. Estradiol pills, 2mg, twice a day sublingually. At around two weeks I noticed my nipples had gotten bigger and much more sensitive and my skin is much softer.

Now four weeks in, I have the beginning of breast development, my chest occasionally hurts, I’m much more confident and a good bit happier and weight redistribution has started, but not much. My face looks a bit different. I get carded every time I try to buy alcohol (I’m 28 btw) and multiple bartenders and convenience store clerks have expressed astonishment at how young I look. I’ve gained nearly 10 lbs, my hips and chest are a bit squishy now when they were pretty bony previously. I’ve also been hungrier and eating more. My muscles are softer and more squishy now too, not quite atrophied, but I’m a very active person. They’re less defined even when I flex now.

It’s apparently hitting me much faster than is common, but I have a friend who had a similar timeline and the doc seems to think it’s fine.

Edit: I forgot to mention that my dreams are different now and my libido has dropped considerably as well.

Twelve years in. My levels are in the high female range.

No noticeable breast growth. Can’t remember my face enough to notice if it’s actually changed, because I can’t remember faces at all. Hips are reasonably feminine.

I’ve got a rather rare body type though, so I don’t expect that anyone else would have my experiences.