in thinking that lots of you must have had "surprise" pregnancies which were actually secretly deliberate?

[oliviadehavilland]

I have. Twice.

I was (still am!) in a long term relationship. DH wanted children but "not just yet". I very much wanted them, like yesterday, and got fed up of waiting for DP to decide he was ready (it had been several years since I had first proposed trying to conceive).

We had the space and money and I was very sure that he'd be a fantastic father once it was a fait accompli.

So I stopped taking the pill and blamed a tummy upset when I got the "surprise" BFP a few months later. He has never been any the wiser.

Then, two years later I did it again.

DH loves being a father, often says it's the best mistake we ever made - not that that is the point, of course. He would be beyond devastated and furious (rightly) if he were ever to discover my deception.

I'm not defending my actions. They were wrong and deceitful. I calculatedly decided that if I never told a soul (which I haven't, until now, and have namechamed specially) then he'd never know. I made a judgement that it would work out well for us - far better imo than if I'd spent years getting resentful and unhappy at his unwillingness to commit to actively trying to conceive.

I know several women who have had surprise pregnancies due to contraceptive failure etc. None of them has ever said to me that it was deliberate on their part but I reckon that for some (most?) of them it must have been, just like me.

I'm sure that this happens a lot, just no-one ever admits to it. So I'm wondering...are any of you prepared to admit to "tricking" a partner into a pregnancy? Or am I way off beam and in a teeny tiny minority?

Lol twopeople I only revealed this to my mother recently - she was horrified, but fortunately did see the funny side. I was only 12.

This is one of the strangest and most disturbing threads I have read in a long time. I know women feel that need for a child much more strongly than men but surely a woman needs to find a willing partner to have a baby with. Not just pick a man, dupe him and then finese the deceipt by saying 'oh well he wanted sex so he also agreed to a baby with me'. I will certainly be strongly advising DSs to always wear a condom.

I do wonder how strong a marriage/relationship is if woman feels she has to trick her DH/DP into having a baby rather than discuss it openly.

It is a crappy thing to do. But sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures.

I said earlier that I bitterly regret not doing the same years ago. Not just for me, but for ds. It used to break my heart when he asked and asked for a brother or sister - growing up as an only child is fine (did it myself) and certainly has its advantages, but it was so hard trying to find a respons that wasn't "ask your tightarsed father why you don't have one". I never pinned the blame on him, although I do wonder what dp will say if, in years to come, ds asks him.

It just so happens that not long ago I did become pregnant. It was a genuine accident - as I said earlier I came off the Pill years ago and left dp to do the honours. I suppose I could have gone and taken the MAP but I will not accept the blame for not doing so.

DP's reaction was horrendous - absolutely dreadful. I thought I was going to have to leave him in order to keep the pregnancy, he was so dead against. In the event I had a miscarriage - which I dealt with (numerous scans, medical appointments, the aftermath) utterly alone.

Having had that experience I certainly wouldn't advocate getting pregnant on purpose - however I am certain that the outcome would have been far better had I become pregnant back when ds was still small rather than now. And so I still regret not having forced the issue back then.

PMSL at Lambpathia

I had the concerted efforts of both dds last week trying to get me to have another baby. Little do they know we're ttc!

Yes its definitely the wrong thing to do. BUT.

She married someone (on the understanding they would later have a family) then years down the line he was still dragging his heels while her body clock ticked away and the chances of conceiving reduced. This is well out of order.

differ

"Oh COME ON! We are NOT talking about accidents and YOU know that! You are purposefully & spectacularly missing the point!

We are talking about getting pregnant without the consent of your partner. That is entirely different to an accident where contraception failed, or both parties forgot to use it etc."

Sorry, I'm really not purposefully missing the point.

And (obviously) I don't think I'm missing the point either.

Of course we are talking about not taking contraception when your partner thinks you are.

In thinking about this, it's important to remember always that the difference between a woman who has genuinely had an accidental pregnancy, and one who has deliberately failed to take steps to prevent a pregnancy, is often internal to the woman herself. You can't tell by looking, and she might never reveal the truth.

That matters. And that was why I was teasing out the issue of consent with booy earlier.

A man who has been tricked, but doesn't know he has been tricked, and a man whose wife is accidentally pregnant, are in the same situation as regards their moral choices. A man who thinks (either rightly or wrongly) that his wife is pregnant accidentally, and who neglects the resulting child, is morally wrong. I would contend that even if he knows the child was conceived through trickery, that he is still morally obliged to care for that child.

And that's where I was going with the "consent ends with ejaculation" - if you come inside a woman, and that woman becomes pregnant, then your subsequent choices, both moral and legal, are extremely limited.

The difference in moral culpability between the two women is enormous. A woman who is accidentally pregnant and whose partner neglects their child has NO responsibility to bear. The fact that the man didn't want the child but yet has to have one is NOT her fault.

However, clearly if she deliberately tried to get pregnant with a man who didn't want a child, and if that man then neglects that child, then she is culpable. She took a massive, irresponsible risk and it backfired on two innocent people.

Where I differ from many of you is that I tend to think that in this situation, where the gamble pays off, that the ends justify the means. I think happy children and a happy father outweigh the initial lie of the untaken contraceptives.

I'm a little irritated by accusations of flippancy. I find this an interesting moral conundrum. I don't think it's simple and I have given my posts a lot of thought.

Amanda - I'm sorry if I seemed to be criticising the WTTC threads. I really wasn't. Or at least no more than the TTC threads themselves. And I have no quarrel with them either. I was just making the point that there is something of culture of obsessiveness about the correct timing of children that I think ignores how little control we actually have over our fertility.

BeenBeta

"I will certainly be strongly advising DSs to always wear a condom."

Good. You should. Because it really is the only way he can take control of his own fertility. I do genuinely think we are doing boys no favours by encouraging them to think that it is sensible to leave potential fatherhood in the hands of 16 year old girls.

I've been a 16 year old who would never, ever have wanted to get pregnant (had I been having sex, which I wasn't), but I wouldn't have trusted me to take a pill at the same time every day. I still wouldn't TBH. I only took folic acid about 3/4 of the time, maybe less.

fr

I think you would be quite cruel to expect a man who wanted more children to go through a vasectomy for your convenience.

So, pretty much the same as I think it is unfair to ask a woman who wants children to take a pill every day.

Basically if you're with someone who wants children and you don't then YOU take care of making sure there are no children.

It's far easier to come to mutual decisions about contraception when there is agreement about whether you actually want to conceive or not.

spidookly, don't misinterpret my question.

H and I have agreed that it makes sense to go for the vasectomy. Just like in other cases on here, the couple agreed the woman was on the pill.

There was mutual agreement. Am I still at fault for stopping to take a pill because I believe (based on trust) that H will honour his side of our decision on contraception?

"I think you would be quite cruel to expect a man who wanted more children to go through a vasectomy for your convenience."

again spidookly you are ignoring the fact that this is an agreement that has been made between a comitted couple. a couple in which both partners have a voice and can say "no" at any point. this is not a forced vasectomy.

why are you implying that frgr dictated this to her DH?

I'm implying nothing, I'm misinterpreting nothing.

And TBH I don't really give a fuck about anybody's vasectomy.

I don't think anybody should leave contraception up to a partner they know wants children.

Is that clear enough?

Whether your husband is trustworthy is a matter entirely for your judgement. It's laughable that you think I might have anything to say on the matter.

"I don't think anybody should leave contraception up to a partner they know wants children."

when you trust your partner, you trust them to keep their end of the agreement. maybe you wouldn't trust your DH but that's your own personal issue to deal with. don't judge others by your standards. i wouldn't be with a partner that i thought i couldn't trust on something like this so if they say they are going to have the snip/use condoms, i trust them. end of.

spidookly, you are avoiding the question. I think you know it's totally fucking unacceptable, hence your reason for not answering with a blunt "yes frgr i think if you got pregnant, you should have known to keep taking the pill even though your H said he has attended the vasectomy".

it would at least be more honest of you to admit it

Furthermore, I think equating the pill and a vasectomy is daft.

The reason I'm saying it's stupid to trust a woman to take the pill if you 100% don't want children, is not because she might lie (although she might), but because the pill demands a reliability of people that I don't think you can assume of them.

It doesn't matter how effective it is "if taken correctly", what matters is how effective it is when taken by an actual fallible human. If that human wants a baby themselves, I think their fallibility might be increased when it comes to taking their pill. Not deliberately, necessarily, but perhaps subconsciously.

Unless you think your husband in likely to show up late for his vasectomy, have a different operation instead, and fail to notice, I can't really see how the two situations are the same.

Lastly, I think lying about having had an operation is different from lying about having taken a pill.

why is it different?

booy, it's not just about trust though. It's about fairness.

I don't think it's fair to ask someone who wants children to be the one who takes steps to avoid it.

I'm not judging anyone by "my standards" or by what I think my DH would do.

I mean I would never in a million years lie to my DH about contraception. But just because I wouldn't do it doesn't mean I have to think that someone who has done it is wrong.

Yes frgr I think that is the right analysis, if you really really don't want to get pregnant. What's so heinous about it?

What's so heinous about it?

That your relationship is completely ruined perhaps ?

I was on the pill when I fell pregnant. I didn't always take it perfectly (at the same time, etc) and did forget occasionally. I decided I was becoming increasingly crap with taking it due to hectic schedule, and frankly both of us being pissed quite a lot of the time, so I asked DP to accompany me to the family planning nurse to discuss alternative "longer lasting" contraception as we did not particularly want to use condoms. We went to the appointment and discussed the options, we were going to try out the patch, but never got around to it (between also becoming ill with something that could potentially affect my fertility, and being treated with antibiotics) before I fell pregnant a couple of months later.

DP was aware that my pill-taking was crap, that it always had been crap and I had never gotten pregnant before. We had discussed having children but had no fixed plans (he wasn't sure he even wanted kids but expected that he might in the future, I knew I probably wanted them but not yet). However we hadn't really discussed how we would deal with it if I had gotten pregnant, and he didn't know that I was firmly of the attitude that if I did get pregnant then I would be keeping the baby. Although since my health/fertility scare I had mentioned to him with not much of a response that I may want kids sooner than I had anticipated.

Does this mean that I tricked him by not disclosing that I would keep any baby conceived by us even though we were both aware that my pill-taking (ultimately MY responsibility) - not helped by the possible interference with antibiotics - was a bit crap?

When I discovered I was pregnant and we discussed it, I put no pressure on him (ie, did not start from the outset with "I'm keeping the baby and nothing you say can stop me") and we both came to a mutual decision that although timing wasn't ideal, we had no reason not to keep the baby, and so we would continue with the pregnancy and start a family.

Since becoming pregnant I have realised that this is something I really want, and I am glad that I became pregnant by accident, because I don't think it would have been long, if I hadn't become pregnant, before I started to become broody and possibly start to resent him for not feeling the same as me. I am only mid-20s (he is early 30s) so no "time running out" issue, I just always envisioned myself as a young-ish mother, although this was exacerbated somewhat by my health problems.

I sometimes think that if I had been REALLY opposed to getting pregnant, then I would have been more responsible around my pill-taking, and feel guilty that I have somehow "trapped" him by getting pregnant, but then I think, he knew what the situation was with my pill-taking and the fact that I had been treated for illness which may compromise its effectiveness, and he did not choose to take extra precautions and use condoms.

I don't think many situations are black and white, mine included, but I would hate for anyone to think I got pregnancy accidentally-on-purpose, even though retrospectively, it feels as though that is what happened, now that I feel so strongly about this pregnancy being the right thing to have happened at this time.

I think I would be most inclined to agree with the comments of spidookly, out of anyone on this thread. Whether that is a reflection on my situation, I don't know.

I haven't read the whole thread because it would take all day so apologies if I'm repeating anything but I think tricking someone into getting you pregnant is deceitful and wrong. If you need to do that to have a baby and are willing to lie to your dp/dh there must be something very wrong with the relationship. Having said that I know quite a few women who conceived accidentally while taking the pill. As they are all educated women capable of following instructions and the map is widely available I find it hard to believe that all of them fall into that unlucky 1% of women for whom the pill doesn't work through no fault of their own. I missed a pill twice while I was on it, I think secretly a baby would have been a nice surprise for me but there was no way I could do that to dh so I called the fp clinic for advice and made him wear a condom until I was sure I was protected by the pill again. Our ds was very much planned by both of us and I'm so glad I waited until we both felt ready to have him.

"I don't think it's fair to ask someone who wants children to be the one who takes steps to avoid it."

and I'll say again. the partner has a choice in whether to take those steps or not.

asking someone is not an agreement. they have to respond with either a yes or no answer. it is unfair of someone to agree to take contraception if tehy think tehy wont be able to. they should be adult about it and say, "no, i can't do that. we have to agree another method" the person who wants children is not devoid of all responsibility wrt making a contraceptive agreement (note i said agreement not responsible for taking contraception). if tehy want chidlrn then they have to be adult and say "i am not going to use contraception" agreeing to when they don't want to is avoiding the issue, and not the way to maintain a relationship.

Well lying about having an operation seems to me to be a bigger lie.

There's a lot more duplicity involved, I think going off to have a vasectomy, but not having it done is closer to sabotaging a condom or replacing pills with placebos, than it is to just not taking a few pills and not mentioning it.

It does come back to the consent thing though - does accepting a man's semen mean a woman has consented to pregnancy should that occur?

I think for the sake of consistency, I'm going to have to say yes, although it troubles me.

The physiological differences here make equivalence hard to judge.

I suppose one difference is that a pregnant woman has the option of terminating, so parenthood won't necessarily be a result. Although it is also the case that many women will not want to terminate even if they are unhappy to be pregnant.

OldGreg
we were going to try out the patch, but never got around to it

Was he aware of that ?