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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To Think Accidental Pregnancy Does Exist?

159 replies

TigOldBitties · 01/07/2013 19:59

Just had a very bizarre conversation with mother collecting DDs friend.

I won't list of the exact details of the conversation, but on discussing a certain topic it came to light that she doesn't believe anyone accidentally gets pregnant.

I informed her it bloody well does, I've 3 of my 5 DC as evidence. She then scoffed at this and gave me a wink before walking off with her DD.

She used the sentence, "everyone knows accidents are bullshit, people never buy that excuse". Is this true? Or have I been bullshitting my way through the past 20 years without realising.

I feel quite annoyed that she implied I was lying. I'm a confrontational person but as this is DD's new friend I was trying to keep it under control.

AIBU to think its pretty fucking obvious, especially to those with a child or just basic sex education, how one might become pregnant by accident?

OP posts:
HappyMummyOfOne · 01/07/2013 23:28

Unplanned pregnancies i believe happen but not accidental ones. You take the risk having sex that you may become pregnant. Lots of stories on here are not accidents.

YoniBottsBumgina · 01/07/2013 23:42

OP you do sound very fertile :o I wasn't having a go re the maths part, am now trying to work it out but getting myself in a muddle. For me 3 contraception failures in 2500 times of having sex is pretty high. I find the planned ones hard enough :(

Buildershateme · 02/07/2013 00:16

Stop talking about coil failures damn you, I'm four days late and la la la la not worried for all I'm worth.

olidusUrsus · 02/07/2013 01:06

I agree olgaga!

musicmadness · 02/07/2013 01:27

I believe in accidental pregnancy but I can understand how people can be very skeptical. I know a woman who claims that 7 of her pregnancies were accidental. I honestly don't think that it can happen that many times if you are correctly using contraception (and according to her multiple methods have all failed).

MrsMook · 02/07/2013 01:27

Product of nieve teenage firsy relationship reporting in.

My friend (19 at the time) was in an ambulance with suspected appendicitus. The ambulance man thought differently... It was labour. Adds a new meaning to having a "suprise"
There was the solider last year who "randomly" had an unexpected baby at 7 months pg while on active service.

nooka · 02/07/2013 01:43

Thing is though as those who try to conceive for a while can tell you, having sex does not equal getting pregnant, so the one off mistake leading to pregnancy can be very unexpected.

My dd was certainly unplanned, and I would say that she was a bit of a (happy) accident. But she was the result of a single incident of unprotected sex. ds was pretty little and I'd not long stopped breastfeeding. I thought the chances of me getting pregnant were small. I suspect that over the ten odd years that dh and I had been having sex before that there must have been occasions when I wasn't fully protected as I'd never been that careful with the pill, but I'd not even had a late period once.

Dictionary definition: An unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally

We didn't expect or intend to have dd (at least not then), so I don't think that saying the pregnancy was accidental is incorrect.

Swallowing · 02/07/2013 03:55

I am not sure you are necessarily more fertile than average OP. your first accident doesn't sound like much of an accident, and you say yourself that you had many years of success with the pill. I think human error is a more likely scenario in most of these 'accidental' pregnancies reported in this thread

Swallowing · 02/07/2013 03:59

Nooka, you call it an accident, I call it carelessness. I am not having a go, but I think this illustrates that many 'accidents' are completely avoidable, which is why many people don't believe true accidents are all that prevalent. Having unprotected sex may equal pregnancy, that is just basic biology, it is definately NOT unintentional.

raisah · 02/07/2013 04:02

I had 1 out of 2, was planning a 3/4 age gap between my kids rather than the 2 year gap I have now.

nooka · 02/07/2013 04:50

Well the sex was definitely intentional. The pregnancy less so :)

Most accidents are caused by carelessness, when our children knock things over unintentionally don't most people say 'it was an accident'?

Car crashes etc, mostly called accidents (except for the rare occasions when someone deliberately aims to crash) often caused by stupidity, often claimed to be 'an accident waiting to happen'.

I would hazard a guess that the majority of accidents are avoidable.

On the other hand my dh's cousin claimed that all of four/five? of her pregnancies were caused by a condom splitting, which frankly seemed unlikely.

TheRealFellatio · 02/07/2013 05:10

I definitely believe that accidental pregnancies exist - I know because I've had one. But I think they are rarely as the result of cast iron birth control gone wrong. They are usually accidents resulting from a degree of negligence - as was mine. It certainly was an accident but it was also 100% caused by my own stupidity. I took a chance with BC thinking I was at a safe time of the month (not very regularly but I had done it more than once, although usually months apart.) But as far as I'm concerned it was an accident because I didn't mean it to happen and I didn't want it to happen.

So I suppose it depends on what your definition of genuine 'accident' is.

I also believe (in fact I know) that many women claim a pregnancy was accidental when it absolutely was not. Very often when people have birth control 'slip ups' it's willful, deliberate negligence with a large dose of wishful thinking. You can usually tell the ones who secretly wanted to get 'accidentally' PG because they are the ones who despite claiming they are devastated, shocked etc, are adamant they can't have an abortion.

Not always, the case, but very very often.

BubaMarra · 02/07/2013 08:30

Condoms have failure rate, okay. It's small, but still exists. Other means of contraception have their failure rate. Small, but exists. But what is a JOINT probability of condom AND pill failure? Miniscule, I'd say. Statistically, far lower than this thread would suggest.

cory · 02/07/2013 08:36

Even a minuscule probability, if it exists at all, will happen to somebody.

There are medical conditions so rare that only a handful of people have them. Statistically, therefore, the likelihood of any one of those people having them is minuscule. But it doesn't make them liars.

Quite a few people on this thread have got pregnant with a correctly positioned coil. So how did they manage their negligence?

reggiebean · 02/07/2013 08:36

I'm really surprised at some of the posts on here. Yes, I agree not using any form of bc cannot be referred to as an accident, but I feel like I really have to justify that my pregnancy was completely an accident, in any sense of the word. No, I didn't have a "slip up" in my birth control, I was devastated and terrified when I found out, and I did have an abortion because it was such an unwelcome accident.

So yes, it happens, and not just to bunny boilers who are trying to ensnare men.

BubaMarra · 02/07/2013 08:43

cory, I wasn't saying that miniscule is equal to zero. Mathematically, that would be nonsense. As I said in the last sentence of my previous post, that probability is far lower than this thread would suggest. Did I anywhere claimed it was zero? Did I calimed that ANY mean of contraception is 100% succesful? No.

samandi · 02/07/2013 09:09

Of course it does. Three accidental pregnancies is quite unusual though, I'd imagine.

samandi · 02/07/2013 09:12

On the other hand my dh's cousin claimed that all of four/five? of her pregnancies were caused by a condom splitting, which frankly seemed unlikely.

Perhaps try a better brand of condoms? Confused Or another method of contraception altogether?

SanityClause · 02/07/2013 09:19

I fell pregnant on the Mirena. My GP said afterwards that if 100 women were on the Mirena for 100 years, one of them would fall pregnant.

People get pregnant when their partner has had a vasectomy, FFS.

Of course accidental pregnancy can happen.

Careless pregnancy can also happen, of course, but that's different. I would describe your first pregnancy as "careless", TBH.

Bearfrills · 02/07/2013 09:53

YANBU, accidents do happen and often carelessness falls under the heading of accidental - anything you weren't planing to happen is generally referred to as an accident.

There will always seem to be loads of people with accidental pregnancies on these threads because purely by their nature they'll draw in people with that experience.

Crinkle77 · 02/07/2013 15:07

What some people claim is an accident on here astounds me. 'Oh mine was deffo an accident. I thought it was a safe time of the month...' Really? It was not an accident then. You had unprotected sex so was hardly an accident.

BeeMom · 02/07/2013 15:55

Well, whether sterilised using contraception or doing it free as nature, one thing MUST occur to become pregnant, and that can't happen "accidentally". So... technically, she must believe she is right.

My pregnancy with my son was unplanned, but not an accident. I had intercourse with my husband, and sometimes intercourse makes babies Hmm .

My daughter, OTOH, was very much a surprise. It was 4 months after I suffered a spinal cord injury, I was taking oral contraceptives faithfully, and was on a course of antibiotics. The chemist neglected to tell me that the antibiotics might render my birth control pills ineffective. Oops. Still - technically not accidental, though, as that one piece of the puzzle still had to be added. Contraceptive pill + antibiotics =/= pregnancy. Contraceptive pill + antibiotics + intercourse = new bundle of joy Grin

Original poster
TigOldBitties · 02/07/2013 16:48

Well as someone said earlier, the Oxford dictionary definition is: An [unfortunate] incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury.

That doesn't mean if its preventable something isn't an accident, because then you could say that about every accident down to the nth degree; you shouldn't have got in the car that day, you shouldn't have left the house t that day, you shouldn't have put the oven on at that exact time.

There's an element of risk in most things we do and a large proportion of accidents can be blamed on a human error or choice somewhere along the line.

As far as I'm concerned you can have sex without planning or expecting to get pregnant, such as because you're using birth control (presumably in what you believe to be in an effective way, it usually only later you find out you might not have been). Therefore if you didn't plan or expect the pregnancy it's an accident.

Just because its not an accident you would have, it doesn't mean it isn't an accident, it just means that you've a different approach. To use the car analogy one more time, 100 people might drive along a road, with a small percentage misjudging the bend, doesn't mean it's not an accident because others passed it with ease, just that some were unfortunate, they may be fine on another stretch of road where some other drivers aren't.

OP posts:
Justforlaughs · 02/07/2013 16:57

4 out of 5 were unplanned for me ( I prefer the term "unplanned", I'd hate my children to think they were "accidents"). The first I was taking the pill (although may have missed some) and using condoms as well, the second was planned and took 3 years to conceive. The third, we thought would take longer than 2 weeks off the pill (so not really unplanned so much as a surprise!). The 4th, I was depo and the fifth I had a coil - which obviously didn't work either - now we'll see how a vasectomy works out. All I can say is "I love my accidents"!! Grin

Swallowing · 02/07/2013 17:01

But if you do something to prevent an accident ie, use contraception correctly (and not be too drunk to remember) then yes it is an accidental pregnancy. Your first pregnancy, whilst not planned, could have been prevented, therefore it was not an accident. I guess this is why many people don't believe that accidental pregnances are that prevalent, many could be prevented.