Hi! and Happy Birthday! The over 35 thing is for women who smoke, so unless you are a smoker, you can disregard that particular worry. If you could continue the pill for a month, you would be more likely to get rid of the bleeding--if you stop in mid cycle, you will very likely start bleeding again.
I usually advise my patients to take their pills at night so that the side effects hit while they are asleep, and are milder while awake. Yes exercise weight control and baby aspirin are helpful in reducing the risk of clots. Also, the risk is on the order of 3 women per 100,000 pill users--so extremely low, and usually occurs in people with a family history of blood clots.
If you are a smoker, or have a positive family history of clots, you should probably consider an alternative, but if not--I would advise a patient of mine to try to stick it out to the placebos!
Good luck!
Dr B
Does keeping a healthy weight, diet and exercise reduce the blood clot risk. And would taking a baby asprin daily reduce the risk even more? Also, it seems as the day passes the symptoms get better. So should I take it at night so I will sleep through most of them?