I did the same thing 3 months ago...since an operation in May for an ovarian cyst I have been on every single brand of pill there is, each one with god awful side effects. I don't blame the pill entirely for my 3 stones weight gain, but I think it had a HUGE part to play....it is entirely responsible for severe mood swings though.
We are doing the 'if we do we do, if we don't we don't' method of birth control...we want a second child but I would ideally like to lose all my weight and maintain for a while first.
You can get a little device from the chemist (can't remember exact name of it) which you can pee on and it tells you if it is okay for you to have sex safely, and it has the same protection rate as the pill. It's a faff as you have to pee on it every day as it's a learning thing and it predicts ovulation etc, but after 6 months you'll know your cycle so it would only be 6 months of effort. It's certainly something we will use if we decide we definitely don't want to conceive.
We have also learned that if I do get more cysts (the reason for the pill) then they will try to laser them off next time (!) quite why they couldn't do that the last two times instead of cutting me open I don't know - grrrr.