To ask how people 'accidentally' get pregnant?

[Butterflyone12e]

I honestly do wonder how people say they fell pregnant by accident. Of course I can understand the horrific situation if sexual abuse/rape was involved but do people honestly fall accidentally pregnant?

I'm 33 years of age and have never fallen pregnant because I've not wanted to fall pregnant.

I wondered what peoples stories are. I really disagree with terminations (again unless medial or abuse).

I think people are being a bit disingenuous to pretend that there aren’t loads and loads of cases where someone will claim it’s an accidental pregnancy when in reality anyone with half a brain cell can see that they acted in such a way that pregnancy was extremely possible. Loads of people use ‘it was an accident/surprise’ as shorthand for ‘we weren’t actively trying’, or because it sounds better and attracts less judgment than ‘we weren’t actually using contraception properly/at all’. It makes it sound more like an unpreventable random act of god so to speak and absolves the couple of any blame for getting pregnant.

One of my friends for example would say she’s incredibly fertile because both of her children were complete accidents/surprises, however when you actually know the story you realise that baby one was conceived because she missed the pill for three days (so she was unprotected, as she didn’t use condoms), and baby two was conceived while they were on zero contraception and using the withdrawal method and her partner didn’t pull out in time.

Neither of those are accidental pregnancies imo, a true accidental pregnancy is when you’ve used contraception properly and fallen pregnant anyway, and the failure rates stated in actual medical trials are FAR lower than how frequently you hear of it happening on places like MN and in your social circle!

I get the PP point when she said something along the lines of ‘actual efficacy rate of the pill: 99%; efficacy rate of the pill on MN: 50%’ or whatever.

Yes, genuine contraceptive failures occur but it’s statistically impossible that everyone you come across who claims their baby was an accident/surprise actually is telling the truth.

Also, OP was wrong and goady to include her irrelevant views on termination in her post imo, but I’m just as disgusted by how many posters seem to take some joy from gleefully pointing out ‘perhaps you’re just infertile’. Not seen many people actually phrase it as a point to consider, but I’ve seen plenty use it in a smug ‘gotcha!’ way. Not having had any contraceptive failures doesn’t indicate infertility, and it’s kinda cruel to try and get one over on OP by suggesting that might be the case tbh even if you don’t agree with her points.

So an accident is when an incident happens unexpectedly and unintentionally - so i think it is pretty understandable that people can get pregnant by accident surely?

For me, I got pregnant by accident because we had a careless night of unprotected sex when on holiday after drinking a bit too much. It was unexpected because I was told I had PCOS and my cycles all over the show (and I knew that fertile days are few in a cycle too) and it was unintentional because we had only been together for 3 months and not in a position to raise a baby (so we thought). Best accident to have happened, we are a beautiful family and becoming a mum has made me very very happy.

I uses to have a smug attitude like this OP. I didn't fall pregnant for 14 years until planned DS1, until one night of unprotected sex after a drunken night out resulted in DS2 currently sat beside me. We call him a "happy accident" although at the time I was far from happy, pregnancy is not kind to me and DS1 was having some serious issues(ASD diagnosed) so I did consider a termination. I am of course glad I didn't as I adore him. I am now on the mini pill and paranoid as hell that I'll get pregnant again? so this has had a drastic affect on our sex life due to the known failure rates, even though I am religious at taking it and have condoms always in the house. I cannot/will not go through another pregnancy, so I avoid sex for the most part

I do know close friends who have the coil in and conceived, also when map has failed after condom split etc.

Also, pill failures.

All the while the only 100% reliable way of not conceiving is to not have PIV then babies will keep being born, even if its only 1 in every 100, thats a lot of babies in any population.

Yeah, a far higher number will claim it was a contraception failure than admit to m/any that they took a risk and got caught. Thats not just MN thats human nature and its noone else's business.

Just like its none of OPs business judging others who have had to deal with contraception failures.

It is real and it does happen. Horrible judgements

I think the majority of the time it's just people rolling the dice and thinking they'll be OK. For example missing the pill for a couple of days then not using any other contraception, or chancing your arm and not getting the morning after pill when you probably should.

Then there are obviously genuine 'accidents' too where people get pregnant despite using contraceptives are planned.

I was switching pills and must have misjudged how to do it. I was coming off the one I had used while breastfeeding and going back to the one I had been on before. It took me a couple of months to realise I was pregnant.

There’s such a range of things that fall under accidentally getting pregnant really.

The women who use contraception correctly and are genuinely part of the percentage that fail.

Those who use contraception incorrectly (miss a pill or condom splits and they don’t have back-up) but are genuinely not trying to get pregnant and are shocked.

Those who take a risk once thinking nothing will become of it and end up pregnant despite not wanting/planning it.

Then there are those who probably use ‘accidentally’ as a way of saying not trying but not actually preventing. I also think some women may say their pregnancy was a shock or unplanned if they feel they’d receive judgement for intentionally becoming pregnancy, so it’s just easier to say it was a ‘surprise’.

I'm in an online group from my DC's birth month and a lot of the siblings are described as "oops" babies and the pregnancy tests are posted with an "OMG I can't believe this!" In practice once they elaborate, this seems to mean that they were actually using the withdrawal method (I was really amazed how often in this day and age) or skipped a pill here and there. I think they take chances because they know that another baby wouldn't be the end of the world. Of my close friends and female cousins/sisters in real life, all of whom would be horrified to get pregnant to the wrong person or at the wrong time, not one has ever got 'accidently' pregnant. Maybe we are an uptight, controlling bunch of friends by personality (!!!) but I find that anyone who is really fanatical about not getting pregnant simply doesn't. I also think a lot of women seem to be told they have low fertility because of eg. PCOS when actually fertility is more of a 'try it and see' kind of science.

My youngest was a burst condom incident.
Elder kids were also ‘accidents’ but more of the bit pissed can’t be arsed to get a condom kind.
Definitely don’t want any more so dh has had a vasectomy. I am absolutely pro choice but don’t feel that abortion is a choice I could make for myself.

Pill, mirena and injection failures. 3 kids that weren't planned. We since found out that hormonal contraception does not work on me. It happens.

ScarletAnemone
See in your situation I get it. It was unplanned and accidental but you're very much like "human error, I got the swap wrong".

The situations I find odd are like Petra and neon mention where people claim they're so surprised that they're pregnant, but then haven't been taking the pill properly, have been using the withdrawal method, have had unprotected sex etc. They will claim blind it's such a surprise and so out of the blue.

Then there's the sheer number of women on MN who claim they have some gift from the fertility gods where they can take the pill properly, not have sex at all in the fertile window, use a condom, and take the morning after pill but somehow are just so super super fertile that they conceive when there's only a 20% chance each cycle with regular unprotected sex (which amuses me because surely if you're using two methods of contraception and they've been used properly then you'd not need to get the MAP because you'd obviously used 2 forms of contraception properly, which suggests probably not using the contraception properly).
Sure, I can see how genetic differences in a small number of people might affect a hormonal contraception, but there's so much hurt and pain on the infertility boards, i find myself wondering how with all medical advancements there's been no way to harness this magic power of the sheer number of apparently super duper fertile people on MN.

My “accident” was just a bit ahead of schedule really. I get what people are saying about it not really being an accident, because I stopped taking my pill- I thought it was giving me terrible mood swings and we weren’t having sex anyway due to having a small baby and said mood swings. Turns out my mood swings cleared up when the baby slept through the night and in the joy and excitement of her sleeping through at 6 months, DC2 was conceived! We had planned to start trying for DC2 when DD was one, so only a little ahead of schedule.

However, I do remember reading somewhere that 50% of all people, not just pregnancies, are unplanned. Unplanned doesn’t necessarily mean unwanted.

I got pregnant with the copper coil. It lead to an early miscarriage but it still happened. No contraceptive is 100% foolproof except abstinence. You have just been incredibly lucky your contraception hasn’t failed.

My daughter is here because a condom split and the morning after pill failed. Good for you that you haven't accidentally fallen pregnant, have a star. Perhaps you're just not as fertile as I am.

Yes, we should have used a condom that one time too. But we aren’t reckless - I had regular periods that I was tracking, we used condoms nearly all of the time, and we had a vasectomy planned.

I think the OP is being a knob, but come on, that was pretty reckless if you didn't want to be pregnant. You had completely unprotected sex. A planned vasectomy doesn't prevent preemptively, and just tracking periods is well known to be very unreliable as a method.

I got pregnant twice accidentally in my relationship (12 years so far). You may think that sounds reckless. Taking a very very rough guess we've probably had sex around 3000 times so that's a 0.07% failure rate, which actually shows we've been very careful when you look at the average failure rates! No contraception is 100% other than abstaining, and who wants to do that?!

I’ve only ever got pregnant when I wanted too. I’ve used two different types of pill and the depo. I think a lot of pill accidents are oooops forgot one pill shhh accidents. My last child I conceived before my first period after stopping the pill and my other two living children where all conceived extremely quickly. I want to come off the pill so dh is going for the snip.

Rather rude of those to assume people who don’t have failures are infertile or will need help to conceive

Perhaps you're just not as fertile as I am.
Nice bit of MN fertility bingo.

I thought I was safe with the coil and having sex once at the end of my period.So did my gp who said let's do a quick pregnancy test while he told me it was nigh on impossible to get pregnant in my situation.

Got a stomach bug and threw up. Didn't occur to me when I had sex two days later that I'd thrown up the pill.

Luckily DS2 is pretty fab.

Didn't use contraception on the day period was due

Contraception isn’t 100 percent effective.

Saying that, I get your point. I fell pregnant when I was 18, by accident. I say it was an accident but I stupidly had sex knowing I had missed a couple pills and had recently had anti bs so yeah maybe u should have been more careful. My beautiful son is now 8.

It does happen. It would surprise you how many children were never actually planned but their parents wouldn’t have it any other way!