There is no excuse for unplanned pregnancy when contraception is readily available

[HoneyDragonWearingLederhosen]

Am I really that unreasonable to get a little narked by that turn of phrase and think its only used by really, really pious people? The sort of people who on hearing you are pregnant ask whether the child was planned before offering congratulations.

And the face and bemused really face, if you say "yes, I was taking it properly, yes I am aware some medications affect it".

BTW I am not horribly offended by people saying this,just as I said narked. It says on any literature you get with any contraception that it may fail. And secretly I believe failure statistics are a lot higher than those quoted on the packet

AIBU to correct the phrase to "There is no excuse for unplanned pregnancy as long as you stay at least 10 foot away from any uncontrolled sperms", next time I hear this helpful nugget of wisdom?

I fell pregnant with my first after the condom split and the map failed .
I fell pregnant with my 4th after i had my tubes tied, so sometimes it is contracetion failure and not human error.

To those of you saying "well I never got pregnant on the pill etc" you're not really thinking this through are you? That's hardly proof that the pill never fails.

In my case I was on the pill for years, came off to TTC, after 2 years we decided we needed a break from the emotional stress of it. So I went back on the pill, after a month on the pill (no missed pills, taken at the same time each day, no illness) I was pregnant with DS.

DD1 was the result of taking the pill and using condoms. We didn't ever notice anything wrong with any of the condoms (I suppose it is possible there was a small tear, but nothing noticable), and I took the pill exactly as I was told to do. I'm not entirely sure how she happened but I'm glad she did.

My 3rd pg was also unplanned, but that was more our fault as we weren't using contraception. We were relying on the fertility problems we'd had when ttc dd2, so pcos and a low sperm count as well as still bf and not having regular periods. Luckily/unluckily we fell pg anyway, but it ended in miscarriage so I wish we'd been more careful in the first place.

and the person who said her son came out holding the coil in his hand- surely that's just an urban myth?

just to add i do think contraceptives fail, but i think some use it as a convenient excuse but at the end of the day that harms no one.

i also think people have different definitions of the word unplanned. To me it means using contraception 100% of the time and it failing, to others it clearly means not planning but not taking steps to prevent either

Whoops. Sorry honey and Hectate I totally misunderstood the OP.

Your right it is really annoying when people think there's no excuse for it.

DS came to be despite all the precautions in the world - not that we didn't want children just we were going to buy the house first.

The MAP doesn't fail - it just means the sperm found an egg before you had time to take it. So a pg as a result of a split condom and MAP is human error.

My cousin says "up the bum so no babies come" .... maybe there could be a government campain?

You can get PG through anal sex too it's well documented.

NOT an urban myth - the MW said he was lucky, one of the 'coil babies' they had seen had to have it surgically removed from his leg, as his leg had sort of 'grown into it'. .

He was just lucky. The Gynae thinks that my coil must have become dislodged, and therefore no longer effective, and I was just lucky that it didn't adversely affect my DS2's development in the womb.

I AM using condoms for now, but my old Ex-P was, erm, on the large side, and we had problems because he was latex allergic, and they don't make the 'larger' size in Latex free, so he was essentially having to use ones that were too small. . Might explain what kept me there even when he was being very emotionally abusive.

My New Man is a more, erm, average size, and we haven't had a problem once with condoms.

Yes, if sperm leaks out of the anus and sneaks round to the front end.

Of course things fail without human error

And yes it is annoying when people say there is no excuse, they've just been luckier with their contraception

Also it's hardly human error if you've already ovulated before you have sex causing the map not to work

My coil went on the missing list, luckily I didn't become pg

In that case can someone tell me my user error so it doesn't happen again

Was on the pill for over a year, had an alarm on my phone and the pack was always in my bag so I knew where they were. I never missed one only side effect I had from it was no periods great I had no illness or took any other meds...

It's probably fair to say that a lot of unplanned pregnancies could have been prevented with a little thought and common sense. Not all though, obviously. And people should mind their own business, it's pretty rude to ask and comment on the circumstances of someone's pregnancy!

The split condom is the human error :)

Some of the young people were having a lot of anal sex thinking it was safer but in doing so damaged the wall between the anus and the vagibe allowing sperm through.

It really isn't just about being more lucky, a lot of the time it is about being more careful. A lot of people are careless, a very few are actually just purely unlucky.

The only way of describing all split condoms as human error (i.e. not just the ones which weren't put on correctly etc) is if you say that the manufacturers are human therefore it's their fault. That's not the same thing as user error though. You have been talking such crap in this thread.

Haven't you ever had something which broke (e.g. electronic item) without you misusing it (e.g. dropping it, running it for too long etc)? Contraception isn't magically the only infallible item on the planet!

Well I've never seen anyone develope an anal fistula due to anal sex but some STI's can cause them. You'd probably notice you had one though as if you were leaking sperm into the vagina you would probably be leaking poo too

I was unlucky, pill every day at the same time. No illness or medication so yes some people are more lucky with contraception than others

I have and it doesn't neccessarily - it only has to be tiny to let a sperm through.

Lots of people on this thread commenting that they became pregnant after the MAP failed. The most effective post-coital contraceptive is the copper IUD (coil), which can be inserted up to 5 days after intercourse, or up to 5 days after the calculated ovulation date in a woman with regular cycles, and has a very low failure rate compared with the MAP. It can be removed with the next period, or kept in to provide excellent ongoing contraception (even better if used in combination with condoms). It should be offered as an option to every woman requesting the MAP

Even the nhs website says that if used correctly 2 women a year out of every 100 will become pg

Hecate- there was actually a case of a woman who got pregnant after a hysterectomy- the embryo attached itself to her intestines, it's something like a 1 in 5 billion chance.

I've known intelligent educated women who don't read the instructions and don't understand how their pills work- like women not understanding the 12 hour rule or how differently the combined and pop pills work.

Fwiw we had an unplanned pg with no apparent contraceptive failure, we can only surmise that there must have been some pre-sex 'leakage', sorry for tmi!

One of my friends was using condoms while she & her DH waited for his all-clear following his vasectomy; condom split so she took the MAP...the resulting DD will be 8 this year. That was one baby determined to be born!